Yes, I am making a terrible reference to the existentialist classic “l’enfer, c’est les autres” and the computer science stalwart “GOTO considered harmful” in a single post title, muddying the waters about as much as I conceivably can. But I want to talk about my recent experience with the multiplayer version of Red Dead Redemption.

I finally got an XBOX LIVE membership (gamertag: TheDotCompany, if you’re looking) and can thus play the online portion of games. Yesterday, Gordon and I logged about an hour or so in Red Dead Redemption. Given that the sum of my previous online play experience is the very occasional bout of Counter-Strike, it was a definite learning experience, far too full of interest to report entirely here.

A major point for me, however, was just how much there being other people jeopardized and, frankly, wrecked, the world of the game for me. And let’s be honest here, what I mean, having spent tens of hours in New Austin and Mexico, is that these people, these others, were in my world. And they were fucking it up.

That’s not to say that they were ripping up trees or anything, but other people don’t “act right” in the world. They shoot everyone and everything, for instance. They have names like Tian456 floating over their heads, for instance. They don’t tip their hats.

Central to the ‘problem’ here, I think, is that once there are other people in the world, once you’re involved in the online version, you’re playing a game, not inhabiting a world. Even though the single-player version of RDR is clearly also a game, it’s possible (and, I think, desirable) to treat it more like a world you’re existing in – perhaps even experimenting with, but still treating as a world. The introduction of other people makes it a game – most fundamentally to have the advantage over others, but even in the co-operative missions you can undertake (with strangers or with friends), the fiction/world is backgrounded by the underlying game system.

In effect, the other players tilt the system/fiction balance toward the system, which isn’t quite my preferred mode of play. That said, this is a first experience, and could easily be related to my inexperience with multiplayer games. I always hear tell of emergent narratives and joint narratives and so on and so forth. Yet, somehow I don’t see these other players wanting to ride down a trail into the sunset, idly chatting – something I’d like to think was made possible by their presence.

A different crowd makes a different world.

I fired up Bioshock 2 this afternoon, less late to the party on this particular game than I usual am (released February 2010). My main feeling was one of slight trepidation about the place of narrative in the game, because the box it came in mentioned next to nothing about any kind of, you know, plot.

The game didn’t (or is that did?) disappoint. While the first game had no overt plot to begin with – you just get dumped at Rapture with no real explanation – it had the novelty and “worlding” Rapture itself to provide the aesthetic interest the player needed. Bioshock 2 dumps you in Rapture again, informing you you’re a Big Daddy in search of his Little Sister.

But this time the whole Rapture song and dance doesn’t have the same zest for me. I know about this world, and introducing a new character, Sofia Lamb, does really add up to enough. Rapture looks the same, handles the same, feels the same. So it’s not the voyage of discovery that Bioshock was – it’s a homecoming.

And sometimes you just don’t want to go home.

I’ve started playing GTA IV again (for research purposes) and it’s reminding me of an eternal battle. The battle between the forces of acting natural and being efficient. In a nutshell, there are many games in which there’s the option to do things faster, but this conflicts with doing things in a way which “fits in” with the game world around you.

An illustrative case is the date I just went on in the game. I picked the fine lady up from her house and, with me driving her car for some reason, we set off for the carnival. Now the tension arises. Do I drive there at top speed to get the “mission” done with, or do I stop at the lights, drive sensitively, and listen to her prattle on in her flat voice?

In other words, I feel a responsibility to the fiction of the world to behave in a way that “fits”. But, on the other hand, because the “interactive bits” really lie and the ends of these drives (though driving itself is nice, too), I kind of want to get where I’m going. Further, of course, I can just drive their recklessly – the game pretty much doesn’t “notice” it in any way, doesn’t say “hey, you’re breaking the fiction!” It’s just that I hold myself accountable.

The same thing happened when we got out of the car to walk to the bowling alley. Yeah, I could walk, painfully slowly, down the boardwalk. Or I could run. And, in fact, if you do run, she runs too, so she gets into the spirit of things. But, on the other hand, who, except for extreme bowling enthusiasts, get out of their car and then run to the alley? Not many, if any. So again, it’s break the fiction or go painfully slowly.

The sad truth is that eventually Mr. Efficiency Wins out – the narrative is leached from moment to moment actions more and more as they become, as I wrote about yesterday, “just” a game.