Personal Pronouns in Discussing Games

I originally wanted to talk about this in my paper, but finally decided that it was too difficult a point to support, based as it is mostly on anecdotal evidence. Still, I find it to be largely true, and I think it's worthwhile to mention regarding games, because it helps to shed light on how players relate to in-game characters, and the gaming experience in general. The topic in question is the way players talk about games - specifically, what pronouns they use.

Depending on the person of the pronoun a player chooses, she might be talking about a variety of different perspectives on a gaming experience. The first-person "I" denotes something that the player in particular did at a given point. Third-person "he" or "she" usually refers to an action taken by the character being played. The second-person "you" refers to an action that any player may or must take in a given situation. (This last is often used on shows like G4's "Cheat," to describe how a game can be played - "Pick up the gun and get onto the platform before you press the button to go up," etc.) Think of these pronouns as three entirely different (although perhaps not entirely separate) levels of gaming:

Level 1: He/She/It
The game's intrinsic story, as presented by the game designer. This level includes the immutable actions performed by the player - static cutscenes, character dialogue, and so on. This is largely the game's "context," or the self-contained world of the game itself.

Level 2: You
The game as a playable (not played) experience - all the decisions and dynamic elements that exist in the game in potentia, elements that may or may not be expressed depending on player choice. A sort of theoretical game experience that could apply to any gamer that might play the game.

Level 3: I
The actual played experience, as opposed to the level 2 playable experience. What actually happened when the player played the game. The decisions she made, the weapons she chose, the direction she decided to go in. The dialogue path she enacted, or the character skill tree she selected. This level corresponds to a single instance of game play, an actual performed example of the level 2 theoretical layer.

While the different levels that can be designated by pronoun use is interesting, what really fascinates me is the way players use these pronouns in conversation when they are discussing games. Players routinely switch back and forth from one to the other, bounding across the layers of designation, sometimes using multiple persons in the same sentence. The experience of playing the game is such a complex one that it cannot merely be related on one of the three levels - the player holds all three in her head at once, and a memorable moment can occur on any of the three planes. This can lead to some confusion of speech, as in the following (not directly quoted, but very typical of the sort of story that players might relate) description of the beginning level of Kingdom Hearts (for those unfamiliar with the game, "Sora" is the name of the player's character):

"So you run across the beach towards the island where Sora and his friends play, only to notice that Sora's friend Riku, who he was fighting earlier, is standing there, apparently surrounded by darkness. So Sora sort of skids to a halt and they have this conversation where Riku's being all weird, and then Riku opens this vortex, and you almost get sucked in, but then you wake up with this weapon, and hear these voices talking about a keyblade. So then I remember that weird cave that I explored on the island earlier, and head back to it, but when I get there it's turned into this huge white door, like the one Sora saw in his dream. And I'm like, 'oh shit,' because that door was really big and important when you run into it before."

I first took note of this phenomenon when it was pointed out to me that I myself was doing it. I had just finished playing Kingdom Hearts 2, and was rather enamored with the game. I was relating my experience to a non-gamer friend with enthusiasm and wild gestures when she smiled at me and gently reminded me, "You know that you're not the main character, right?"

I realized that I had been talking in the first person about unchangeable game events, as though I myself were in control of them. ("And so I run down the mountain, trying to catch him, because I'm pretty sure it's Riku...") It must have seemed silly to my friend that I was saying "I" when I was in fact talking about a young spikey-haired boy with mystical powers. But my connection to the game was so strong that I did feel as though I were in control of these actions, even the immutable cut scenes.

Even though Sora is characterized in a way that is completely different from myself as a player, I still felt a strong enough connection to him, a deep enough immersion in the story, that I experienced it from his point of view. His confusion was my confusion, his actions were my actions. It probably helped that I personally felt very connected to and interested in this story, just because it's the sort of genre I happen to enjoy - but other games accomplish this effect with more widely-applicable immersive tools, such as silent and/or generic (implicitly rather than explicitly characterized) protagonists, or dynamic storylines that actually change depending on player action.

To me, this sort of pronoun confusion indicates that we don't really know who we are when we play games. If we're immersed in the story, the character might be "me," otherwise, a character we feel distant from might be "him." If we're trying to describe to a friend how to play a game, we might put that friend in the position of main character, and the character might be "you." And strangely enough, all three of these persons can apply to the very same gaming experience, in the same telling, interwoven with one another. It truly speaks to the power of gaming as an immersive experience, that it can confuse our very concept of who we are.