The past month of May, I embarked on a new journey towards the ultimate quest of conquering my backlog (please imagine that in, like, moving squiggly text to signify its importance). The idea was to pick a theme, pick a few games off my backlog that fit that theme, and then tackle them with the theme in mind. I got this idea off some blog post from earlier this year that, for the life of me, I can’t track down. That’s what happens when everything’s a newsletter.
Anyway. This time, I decided to go for Memoir May.
Why Memoirs?
It was charmingly alliterative for one thing. However, if I can be honest, it’s mostly that it was convenient. I had three games already purchased and languishing in my Steam library that fell under this category. That’s pretty notable, since this is a genre of game that barely exists. Realistic fiction in general is a genre of game that barely exists. Even the games that are generally considered to be closer to “literature” (whatever we mean by that) tend to exist in some kind of genre space. That sense of rarity made this a compelling choice too.
I wanted to think about how games can approach telling a “true” story versus other media. The involvement of the player makes it hard to take full ownership over a story in a game. Telling your own story is already an act of vulnerability. Is giving someone else control over parts of it freeing, or is it unbearable?
I loved doing this theme. The whole process was great. I’m already ready and raring to do something like this again.
Media Referenced
I also went out of my way to theme some of my books and movies this month to the “memoir” category too. I don’t think that’ll always be possible, depending on whether I pick a more game-specific theme in the future. But it worked out this time!
Games
- Consume Me (dev. Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, et al.)
- Despelote (dev. Julián Cordero and Sebastián Valbuena)
- Perfect Tides: Station to Station (dev. Three Bees)
Movies
- Better Man (dir. Michael Gracey)
- Cameraperson (dir. Kirsten Johnson)
Book
- I’m Glad My Mom Died (auth. Jennette McCurdy)
Reflections
How did these works tell their stories?
Consume Me and Despelote have strikingly similar structures. The player gets to see discrete moments in the main character’s lives; for Consume Me, that’s a week at a time, and for Despelote, it’s a few hours at a time. They also both end with a sequence that acknowledges the making of the work and speaks directly to the ways the real story has been edited. Cameraperson, made up of disconnected sequences filmed for other films, feels similar. As much as it’s a story, it’s also about making a story.
The creator’s presence looms in these experiences. In Consume Me, we see some real-life pictures of Jenny and other people in her life. In Despelote, we hear Julián’s voice accompanying us, narrating the context around events. Jenny and Julián also maintain their real names for the characters. And, in Cameraperson, we see Kirsten’s hands and hear her voice speaking from behind the camera to the subjects on screen. The events displayed are edited and even purposefully dishonest (or at least removed from context) in some ways, but the creator’s presence reassures you that they aren’t trying to trick you or lie to you.
On the other hand, Perfect Tides: Station to Station transforms Meredith Gran into Mara Whitefish, a young woman attending college in the unnamed City which is clearly New York. The creator is not right there with you, but that small barrier makes it clear to the audience in its own way that this is a dramatized autobiography. Similarly, in Better Man, the barrier is placed by having Robbie Williams appear as a CGI monkey. Monkey or Mara, they’re both ways to create some separation.
This separation allows the story to breathe and exist on its own terms. I’m not worried about whether I’m picking the true-to-life books that Meredith Gran read, or whether the actor playing Robbie Williams truly looks like Robbie Williams. I’m present in the moment, experiencing the story like any other fiction.
The only work I experienced that felt like it was giving me unflinching honestly was Jennette McCurdy’s book. That made the book a difficult read, I think intentionally. It’s not a book that’s terribly concerned about drawing in the reader but rather to get these things down on the record. That’s its own valid approach to memoir – really and truly telling the truth, so that the facts are known.
Is honesty the best policy?
Ultimately, this depends on your goal as an author, as well as what you mean when you say “honesty.” I think for Jeannette McCurdy, she wanted to share her experiences in the most direct way possible. It was putting down in plain words a lot of things that she hadn’t been able to truly say for most of her life. It doesn’t really matter whether I feel connected to it as an audience per se – I don’t need to. I’m sure there are readers who will see themselves in her experiences, but that feels like a side-effect to what that book accomplishes and what it wants to do.
But things can still be honest without being correct. I really should have re-read The Things They Carried for this month, a war memoir that is entirely made-up but also entirely true. All three games that I played are attempting to communicate honestly about the things that their authors felt, and the way that they feel now, even if they change the facts.
In reality, Julián was younger when Ecuador qualified for the World Cup. He was written older to communicate the feelings of that event more clearly. It’s not correct, but I wouldn’t call it dishonest either. It also sounds like Jenny’s eating disorder was uglier than how it’s portrayed in her game (I thought about this a lot when reading I’m Glad My Mom Died simultaneously, much more unflinching in its descriptions). But Consume Me ultimately isn’t about the eating disorder but about a broader time in Jenny’s life. And so the truth is edited, in order to make a stronger point.
Why use games for memoirs?
But, if these creators are changing truths about their lives, what’s the point of calling these works “memoir”? A lot of writers draw from their own personal experience, so why make that connection explicit?
When it comes to games, it’s difficult to tell an unvarnished memoir. You could do a heavily authored VN, perhaps, or some other kind of controlled linear experience. But all these games give the player freedom to control the character’s actions and to explore their worlds as they see fit. Even if every event was carefully documented and recounted, the player could change it through how they press the buttons or move through the space. By making a memoir into a game, you give up that memoir slightly. You make it into a shared experience.
But I can see how, having relinquished that control, you still want the player to know that it’s coming from you. You, as in the creator. You’ve taken enough from your real life that to call it total fiction might feel strange, but you can’t call it total truth either. You have to make an agreement with the player to set it somewhere between.
Of the media I experienced for this month, I felt the most invited in by the games. I don’t think a memoir has to invite you in. But games connect the player and the developer. The player has to be a participant, not just a listener. It invites empathy to a deeper extent to embody a version of a real person rather than just to read or watch their story. Whether it actually does that, of course, is down to the execution. This time, I thought all three games this month were fantastic.
Wrap-Up
This was an awesome experience, and it’s one I highly recommend. Pick a theme, pick some games and go for it! Do Memoir June with these exact games! No one’s stopping you!
For me, I think my next pass at this will be in November when the rest of the world is preoccupied with Grand Theft Auto VI. I have no idea what the theme will be yet, but I’ve got plenty of time to plan.
Further Reading
Perfect Tides: Station to Station, and Wearing Another’s Eyes – Gamer Social Club