Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g5fl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-27T13:36:31.552Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Videogames and Hamlet: Experiencing Tragic Choice and Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2021

Get access

Summary

Abstract

This chapter argues that videogames help us to see tragedy as a form of serious play, engaging the dynamics of choice and consequences in developing character and plot. It represents Hamlet as a gamelike play in the context of its adaptation into videogames, including Ryan North’s “To Be or Not to Be”: A Chooseable-Path Adventure; Hamlet, or The Last Game without MMPORG Features, Shaders and Product Placement; Robin Johnson's The Most Excellent and Most Lamentable Text Adventure of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (2003); and Elsinore (2019). Often now viewed as a paradigmatic early modern tragedy, it is also a powerful example of how games and tragic theatre can inform each other.

Keywords: videogames; Hamlet; tragedy; choice; agency

In the videogame called The Stanley Parable, the player inhabits an avatar named Stanley, who punches computer buttons all day. A soothing voice with a British accent begins the game with a past-tense narration, telling the player that one day Stanley found himself unaccountably alone. The player starts by moving in concert with the narration, and Stanley emerges from his office to seek his absent colleagues, and thus embarks on an adventure, the nature of which will depend on the player's choices along the way. The narrator leads the player early on to a room where the player must choose which door Stanley enters, the left or the right. The narrator says Stanley entered the left one, but the player can also go in the right door, in effect disobeying the narrator. If the player chooses the left door and conforms with the narration throughout the short story, Stanley can escape the office building and its “mind-control machine,” and the player will be told Stanley is “free” and that he has achieved happiness. If the player disobeys the narrator at any point, those choices can lead to many different endings, where, for example, Stanley might die, stay in a broom closet, get lost in an infinite loop, go mad, or even enter another game.

The Stanley Parable thus not only parodies the mechanisms of choice that underlie most videogames but also exposes a fundamental tension at the heart of tragic theatre: the conflict between a narrative's drive towards a satisfying conclusion and its need to imply that characters are free to make choices, however terrible.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×