Month: February 2018

In the early levels of the game, I felt little emotional engagement with the narrative because I was merely instructed to defend the village of Shaemoor against the attacking centaurs with no incentives or understanding of my position in the Krytan nation. However, as I witnessed my character’s death time and time again, I developed an aversion to, and even felt distress upon, encountering a centaur, despite still having minimal knowledge about the nation I was defending. The information conveyed by the Non Player Characters (NPCs) – the centaurs, the Commanders, the Lieutenants – automatically inserts my character on a ‘side’; I am to stand with the Krytan humans and defend them against the enemy centaurs and thieving bandits, made clear by the tasks I am given. Guild Wars 2 strategically uses its NCPs to influence the players’ engagement with the narrative; I, myself, began feeling emotionally connected to my own character, as well as to the NPCs, whether my emotions were positive or not.

NCPs who were not central to the story were used to create an atmosphere in the game. For example, while running through the Upper City in Divinity’s Reach, I encountered many human citizens who would convey to one another their worries about the Seraph’s ability to defend and protect the nation, evoking in me a sense of worry and creating a chaotic atmosphere. Additionally, the decisions that I was responsible for making for my character prompted my emotional investment into the narrative – I experienced feelings of stress, fear, sadness, distaste, and loyalty as I made choices that I felt dictated my character’s Living Story (whether or not my decisions actually influence the outcome of the story, I am unsure of). I felt increasingly compelled to engage with the narrative components of the game, gaining an interest in the backstory of the characters, NPCs and my own, and the land that they were living on, and I found myself researching the lore of the game.

I am torn in the problematic/unproblematic digital games debate: for one, I think the violent narrative in games like GW2 are problematic in the ways it can desensitize the player from acts of cruelty, but I also believe that digital games provide players a space to express feelings of aggression or anger that they experience prior to playing the game. However, I do think it is worthwhile to study the narrative of the game. MMORPGs like GW2 reach large numbers of people, and as digital storytellers, have to the ability to influence the way players perceive their own realities. Just as books, movies, and other forms of narrative mediums, the stories conveyed in games can work to perpetuate and reinforce certain ideologies and stereotypes that can have real-life, material consequences. For myself, the story is mostly told through visual media. Being able to see the landscape and environment that the narrative exists allows me develop a closer connection to it because it invites me to see myself in that world.

In the 2% of the map that I have explored in Guild Wars 2, I identified three landscapes – the Upper City in Divinity’s Reach, and the Shaemoor Fields and Bandithaunt Caverns in Queensdale – that in my experience, are in accordance with Michael W. Longan’s argument of the possibility for video game landscapes to “reinforce dominant ideologies,” particularly those about civilization, wilderness, and deviance. For starters, in the Upper City are great architectural structures, large statues, and uniform houses – all of which convey a sense of civility and propriety. By naming the Upper City as a place touched by or constructed for the ‘divine,’ the game’s producers’ create a space infused with refinement and holiness, which simultaneously constructs surrounding areas such as Queensdale to be in opposition: wild and uncultured. Guild Wars 2’s designation of certain landscapes and their inhabitants as needing to be civilized, saved, and/or cultured echoes colonial discourses that view Indigenous land as terra nullius and Orientalist discourses that perceive the ‘uncultured’ Other (the non-Western Other) as unprogressive.

Important to note is that the nation of Kryta, which my avatar is part of, is at war with the centaurs, who are fighting to reclaim the land stolen and settled by humans. This conflict over territory has subjected the citizens of Shaemoor to numerous centaur attacks, which is largely made possible through the construction of Queensdale as an open space with only a few buildings. In contrast to Divinity’s Reach, where the tall buildings and intricate mapping convey a sense of safety and impossibility of invasion within the city, the Shaemoor village is depicted as less protected and more vulnerable to invasion. Based on this conflict, the game’s storyline encourages one’s animosity towards the centaurs to evoke a patriotic desire to defend Kryta from the deviant Other. Dominant ideologies about Indigenous land rights are once again reflected in this construction of landscape; certain spaces are designated to certain groups based on scales of civility while the owners of the land are barred from inhabiting ‘territory’ that is rightfully theirs.

Specific landscapes in GW2 are rendered utopian/’friendly’ or dystopian/’hostile’ through visual signifiers. The Bandithaunt Caverns are constructed as a ‘hostile’ space through signifiers such as the multiplicity of wild animals in the region and the cavern’s ‘underdevelopment’ indicated by the presence of a rocky landscape, wild grass and unpaved floors and pathways. The game instructs you to hinder the inhabitants of dystopian landscapes such as this, calling on you to fight the bandits, kill their animals, and invade their spaces. On the other hand, your avatar is told to defend utopian landscapes (signalled by bright lights, tiled floor, and tamed plants) such as the Upper City against the enemy centaurs and bandits.

My experiences of the landscape in Guild Wars 2 made clear to me that space is political; control of a population is made possible through control of the environment and vice versa. The indestructibility of the game’s landscape conveyed to me an intimidating message of ‘this is the way things are and this is the way things should be,’ which served as a reminder of a video game’s capacity to perpetuate dominant ideologies through the “limit[ing] or direct[ing] the kinds of lessons…that players might learn” (Longan).