We are surrounded in spirals by the paths we never took. Every choice ever made was a branching point, and just under the surface of our lives lie the possibilities of countless other lives we might have lived. This is a commonly, almost even universally explored theme – most stories involve some degree of wistful imagination for the things that might have been, most stories contain questions of whether the choice a character made was the right choice, and what might have happened had they chosen differently. One might even argue that a wistful imagination of something that might have been is the definition of fiction (and, for that matter, most non-fiction).
Games have a somewhat more complex relationship with causality, though: They are not just one story, one branch with one ending, but a system of stories, a tree with many branches. With a game’s story, there is often no need to question what might have been if you’d made a different choice, because if you’re really curious you can go to a wiki and look it up – or, if the title is too new or obscure for that, the truth of the matter is still only a quick-load away. The coulda-shoulda-wouldas that haunt us are, with this additional information, boiled down to did I, should I, ought I, a path chosen with full information and intent rather than blundered down in the dark as we are often left to do with the real decisions that burden us.
What does it imply about the world to create a simulation where every outcome is fundamentally foreseeable? Every computer game is at its core a simulation, where every action has a predictable outcome, where there’s a proper way to achieve every goal. Every simulation is a model of alternate reality, a statement that each effect has a particular cause. We can create whatever rules we want, whatever rules seem correct or interesting to us, regardless of how these causes map to the effects in reality. We can use this to forward arguments – we can hardly avoid doing so! So every game is a simulation and each simulation an argument for a given model of reality. Our alternate reality may be built on alternate facts while still purporting to be an accurate simulation of the real world. I discussed how certainty of outcome in simulation lead to misleading worldviews a couple of weeks ago, so I needn’t do so again here: Because every game is a static simulation, this creates the form of false certainty I discussed, a faith in the reliability of this most likely faulty model of reality.
However, we must ask: Is it mandatory that every outcome be knowable? With the emergence (or resurgence) of the roguelike genre, this isn’t necessarily so. Though many other genres use randomness to determine the outcome of particular decisions, the roguelike genre uses randomness to generate the entire game world – at least! More adventurous examples of the genre might dynamically generate story elements, usable items, and even the interactions of systemic elements. In this way, it is possible to create a true black box, by creating a layer of abstraction – by, rather than merely crafting the rules and world of the game, crafting the meta-rules, crafting the meta-world, and letting those generate the intermediary game for the player to directly interface with and experience.
We can take another step back: When we went from the traditional narrative form to game design, we went from crafting narrative to crafting systems that craft narrative – and, to once again attain the unknowability we have surrendered, we must make a system to craft a system that crafts narrative. Maybe we’ll get wise to that eventually, and will have to make AIs to craft systems to craft systems to craft narrative. The divine is that which can never be known, we seek it piece by piece, and it’s turtles all the way down.