The player is not progressing through the game with a greater purpose or performing horrific acts for a greater good they are doing what they’re told to do by the game, the only thing they’re allowed to do by the game: “You’re not a very good person, are you?” it states (Hotline Miami). “Do you enjoy hurting other people?” the game asks (Hotline Miami). The game contains no morality, no redemption its addicting gameplay is its own reward, and yet the enjoyment of that reward is questioned by the game itself. Their violent rampages are just that, a bad person killing other bad people, given directions by likely even worse people. The player avatar is no hero rescuing a victim in distress, or a vigilante stopping bad guys from doing bad things. Hotline Miami has an ambiguous player-avatar relationship that makes the player culpable. The game makes its ultraviolent content fun and satisfying, drawing the player in, making them want more, but then questions why they so thoroughly enjoy the violent acts their avatar commits in the game. The game induces such a heart-pumping adrenaline rush in its fine-tuned gameplay that any trepidation the player might have about the sickening violence is lost in the thrill of the interaction. Baseball bats, golf clubs, machetes, knives, guns, and bare hands are all used to create bright red splatter marks that track the player’s bloody trail through the level. The game revolves around the protagonist receiving over-the- phone instructions to clear buildings full of Russian mobsters and following out those orders with a variety of weapons and in the most brutal and stylized ways possible. Hotline Miami is a game about violence, described most commonly as “ultraviolent” (Onyett). To describe a technique based in surrealism, there’s no better place to start than Hotline Miami. These situations are often presented in graphically and narratively surrealistic ways, as was the case with Earthbound’s acknowledgement of the player in its surreal climax. This is a form of player culpability, or implication of the player as accountable for the actions their avatar takes in the game. More importantly, the responsibility for the events that take place in the game are often ambiguously attributed to the player, implying that the (often horrific) results of the player actions are the fault of the player for interacting in the first place. In other words, an ambiguous player-avatar relationship is a situation in which the player is not explicitly acknowledged as diegetic, but the themes, dialogue, and overall presentation of the game heavily imply knowledge of the player’s presence. When characters look at Snake they often see Snake, but they just as often see the player, staring right through Snake's eyes. It does this by reveling in the ambiguous nature of the player-avatar relationship. Metal Gear Solid stretches the membrane between the fictional world and the real world as a way of bringing player and fiction together - not driving them apart. Matthew Weise describes this concept as it appears in metal gear solid as such This chapter will discuss the player in a diegetically ambiguous position, and specifically how ambiguous player- avatar relationships provide deep immersion and critique of the player-avatar relationship. Already discussed in earlier sections are games that explicitly acknowledge the player as part of the extended fiction, and while these games provide great exploration of interesting narrative and metanarrative concepts, they aren’t exactly searing in their critiques: Earthbound provides an emotionally resonant but not critical view of the player as a savior, Icey provides a playful, thoughtful rivalry between player and developer, and Life is Strange takes into account the anticipated goals of the implied player in order to pit them against emotional attachments to implied being. The penultimate non-diegetic element in relation to any game is the player.
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