The injunction to play
“You absolutely must play this game!”. “What? You’ve never played such a game? How is that possible?”. “What do you mean you didn’t like it? No, you just didn’t understand. Wait, I’ll explain.”
Video games and the mental burden
Between judgments and sometimes unsolicited advice, the injunction to play can be perceived as an additional mental burden. We all have our favorite title/chouchou/doudou – call it what you will! And it’s often heartbreaking to realize that the person we’re talking to hasn’t played it, or hasn’t liked it. Their reasons are just as valid as the ones that make you love the game in question. But it’s sometimes difficult to hear this, so strong is your affection for this creation. And so it should be! That’s what the community principle is based on: getting together, between people who have loved a game, with common interests. This leads to excesses, to “wars” (whether deliberately orchestrated or not) to see who likes the best console, the best game and so on. In the midst of all this, uninvolved gamers sometimes find themselves lost, torn between the injunction to play this or that title, an injunction supported by certain media describing these same games as masterpieces, cults, indispensable works.
Make no mistake: this phenomenon is not unique to video games. Cult and timeless books that are “must-reads” are legion, and every summer or Christmas (depending on the editorial office) the press delivers its famous list of the ten must-have novels for every library. The same goes for comics. Not to mention films, which are also categorized according to their degree of timelessness, their impact on history and so on. But beware! This is not to say that we should dismiss the impact of these works, or deny that they have left a certain mark on global artistic creation, or that they have changed things. But there is a difference between knowing (without necessarily having read/seen/played them) important works and pushing or forcing people to consume them, to the detriment of individual tastes and desires.
A personal example: I readily acknowledge the cinematic and historical impact of films like The Godfather. But that doesn’t mean I’ve never seen it, nor do I have any desire to. It’s the same for video games, literature and the rest of the various cultural domains.
This injunction to play ignores everyone’s desire to discover different titles and create their own frames of reference. Likewise, it denies the diversity of both player and character profiles. Adding an extra mental burden, a layer of judgment, it gives rise to labels like “the shameful game you play but no one should know about”. There’s no shame in playing video games. There’s no shame in preferring certain fringe titles to other big AAA.
Enjoy yourself and play what you want. You can enjoy a poorly finished game full of bugs (and if you doubt that, you can read the Shangri-La Frontier manga or watch the anime, since that’s the theme of this series). We can all love wholesome games and other cuddly, good-natured titles, whatever our age, our gender, our profession or our life (let’s dispel the misconception that these are games for women). Love and play what you want…!
Behind every game…
So it’s only logical that I should continue this article by urging you to play a game. No, of course not! But talking about mental load in video games, about these injunctions that are sometimes implied, leads me to present you with one title in particular, a necessary game, highlighting mental load as a gameplay and plot mechanic. And this title as an educational element, short and intense, urging you to explore the daily life of a housewife subjected against her will to her husband’s ego, her in-laws’ prejudices and her own judgment.
Behind Every Great One is a game developed by the Deconstructeam studio several years ago. Does the studio’s name ring a bell? Perhaps you’ve played Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood or read our review of the game on Point’n Think.
Available for free on itch.io, either as a download or playable directly on the browser, the game plunges you into the daily life of Victorine, a housewife married to a great artist. Locked away in your large apartment, you have seemingly nothing to do. But that’s not really the case, and you’ll soon find out.
Heralded as “an unwinnable feminist game” in 2018 by nova, Behind Every Great One is a simplistic simulation game, with pretty good pixel art graphics. Some might object that the game only scratches the surface, not necessarily pushing the principle far enough. However, while there are indeed flaws, it does stage the mental load to the point of making it an integral element in the title’s game design.
The days are short and you’re going to have to make some choices. Do you have to wash dishes and prepare meals? Clean the toilets (the only possible task in the bathroom) or do the ironing? Or smoke a cigarette and read a good book? The choice is yours, but you can’t do everything in one day. I’m consciously anticipating: you can tell yourself that you’ll do what’s missing tomorrow. But don’t forget: you don’t live alone, but with your husband, Gabriel. And he expects you to be a perfect little housewife. Any task that isn’t done will be met with… reproaches at dinnertime. What’s more, the game is an eternal do-over: did you clean the toilets the day before? You’ll have to do it again today. Like Sisyphus in front of his boulder, your tasks never end. Neither do the reproaches, because you’ll never have enough time to do it all in a single day.
It doesn’t take long to understand the couple’s problem. The evening brings with it a recurrence of scenes featuring a new mental burden: that of conjugal duty. And if you deny your man this, it will only make him angrier, especially as he won’t be satisfied with your “no” and will ask you several times to take on this task.
So yes, you could see this game as feminist, showing by example the degradation of women in their household chores rather than enjoying life and letting men take care of certain tasks. But that would be to remain on the surface of this title. There’s plenty for everyone to see, but Behind Every Great One is also a game about dysfunctional couples and toxic, narcissistic perverts. The more reflections Victorine receives or the more she spends her day cleaning up, the more she tires. And eventually, she’ll have to decompress… by crying in the toilet.
The gameplay echoes this burden on Victorine’s shoulders. Each household task zooms in on the woman, saturating the colors more and more. While the game starts out with an isometric view that’s far enough away for the whole room to be displayed on the screen (or almost, with the occasional exception of the living room, depending on which door you enter), the more tasks you perform, the tighter the frame becomes on Victorine. Smoking a cigarette or reading a book allows you to zoom out a little, since these are leisure activities and not household chores, but it takes up time you won’t have to do the dishes or the ironing.
As the game progresses, the toilets will become your refuge. Because Victorine can’t take it forever. Eventually, she’ll break down, releasing part of her burden in… her tears. A crying fit to release the frustration of the comments she’s been subjected to, of a life cloistered in an apartment you’ll never see the outside of. The more the title progresses, the more the constraints become: Gabriel, a man who knows what he’s doing, breaks his leg while working on his masterpiece and gets three months in a cast, so he calls on his parents to move in and “help” Victorine… Which means an extra burden for the housewife, who now takes unsolicited advice from her mother-in-law on her weight and the way she runs the house, or hints from the father-in-law who’s too used to having all her whims passed on to him. That’s not all, and I’ll leave you with the surprise of some of the events that punctuate your gaming experience…
Although this game is primarily focused on the mental load in the home, in a couple, at home, its purpose is universal. It’s about all those little things we’re asked to pay attention to so as not to make waves, so as to be irreproachable. An educational and engaging game, with no real end in sight other than the potential awakening of these players, it also draws parallels between the daily mental load and that present in video games at different levels.
So, what are you waiting for?
With this simple question, I in turn push you into a corner. Because “I don’t feel like it” is a totally valid response to my injunction to play. Because, even though many games and works of art have indeed had a global impact on their field, there are educational titles, which don’t pay for mines and don’t have a lot of communication, which teach you to play and see what surrounds you in a different way. They help to show the diversity of ideas and characters, and to put us in situations we may or may not experience, but with the necessary hindsight to ask questions.
Like Victorine, who can’t do all her “chores” in a day, you won’t have enough time in your life to play all the video games available to you. So how do you choose? Among the ones you want to play (like cigarettes or Victorine’s book?) or the ones you’ve been told you absolutely have to play? It’s all a question of choice, and it’s up to you.
