Don’t Wake the Night: Uncertainty is the Only Guarantee
Hi, Caitlin!
You’re super bang on. Just this year I’ve had similar experiences to what you describe, and there is that anxiety of never getting the whole story (or even part of it). Thinking things like “oh this industry person is being nice and really friendly” only to find out “Well, actually they’re super shitty and this is absolutely their pattern and they’re absolutely going to use you because they did it to me and a dozen other people.” It’s rough. A huge part of what I love about Aveiro-Ojeda’s work lately (if you haven’t checked out 1870: CYBERPUNK FOREVER yet, you really need to) is this idea of the outsider stepping into a community with zero prior knowledge, which I think is an anxiety that is fairly universal and we can find multiple ways in which it intersects with our own experiences.
What I love about DWTN is that ultimately, we’re an outsider who has to make a decision — we have to pass judgment — knowing that our information is limited, our place in this community is transient and ephemeral. Uncertainty isn’t just real in Brujería at Werk’s game — it’s all you fucking get. Which is fucking dope as hell. When I think about all the games that center “player-choice,” Don’t Wake The Night’s major draw for me is that it is absolutely not interested in certainty, and well, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, KOTOR, etc. absolutely fucking are. Even if we cannot anticipate an outcome, we’re invited to own the paths we’ve committed to (or save scum, or do everything we’re not locked out of). Dialogue trees that culminate in decisions like “KILL THE BABY” or “CURE CANCER” letting us know the specific moral rectitude of the choices we’re about to make with complete strangers. Player-choice driven games can surprise us with “what happens next?” but rarely do they make the decision all that nerve-wracking, rarer still do they offer up the anxiety of getting to the decision in the first place. I don’t think there’s a moment in DWTN that wasn’t filled with some degree of tension because even snooping around on this community, hearing whispers at the periphery, trying to make sense of relationships and drama — I never felt like I got the whole picture, even after multiple playthroughs. And every time, I still had to make a decision.
In some ways, I feel like I kept embodying the role of the spirit too fully. I thought about all the decisions I’ve had to make in my life where I’ve hedged, I’ve had the option to hedge. Watching facial expressions and recalibrating my approach on the fly to mitigate potential blowback or in some cases harm. Going into college I was what one professor called “academically insecure” and my writing was filled with “seems” — never fully owning my takes, and in a way, insisting that readers accept as true positions that I myself couldn’t have conviction in. A few professors ended up burning that squeamishness out of me, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say every article I write carries with it an anxious self-interrogation of “is everyone going to think I’m outrageously missing the mark? Is this the wrong take? Is it stupid? Am I stupid?” It’s my biggest anxiety in our field. No matter how much I read, or how thoroughly I’ve sharpened my argument and backed it up, run it through my editors — The Fear of The Bad Take is overwhelming and never abates.
Even if you have “the right take” it can quickly go sour simply because of a revelation of abuse. I wrote a piece in praise of Morrowind and Night in the Woods, and a few weeks later, just as the abuse stories surrounding those games became public and widespread — my article got published, and every intrusive thought became a scathing indictment of how massively I’d fucked up on that.
One word you mentioned in your letter to me is “liminality” and I’m really interested in that here, because typically the liminal space is the threshold we cross to greater understanding, to acquiring knowledge beyond the everyday. Protagonists in folklore and mythology pass through the underworld or have an encounter with the supernatural and suddenly are ushered into a new phase of existential understanding. We go to Dagobah, have some fucked up times with Yoda, get Jungian about our Dad, and then go back to our friends as a fundamentally altered (hopefully better) person. That’s what the psychoanalysts and folklorists and Joseph Campbell’s say at any rate.
By putting us in the role of the supernatural, we become the being who is supposed to have the greater understanding, to know what rote humans do not. We’re supposed to be the fucking Yoda, right? But we’re not. We don’t know much more than anyone else. Even as we eavesdrop, we don’t have the totality of the situation. “And you can’t, so just listen and try to do your best and stay humble,” says Don’t Wake The NIght.
There’s a part of me that chuckles knowing that Brujería at Werk are ultimately the ones who *do* have that information and understanding, that as much as the spirit is called upon to aid as a higher, extranatural force — there is a higher one, a much more omnipotent and omniscient one — the game developers. But I digress…
The messages at the core of Don’t Wake The Night are hard to swallow, at least for me. As much as I acknowledge that mistakes are how we learn, gaps in understanding are normal, and that we sometimes have to act with imperfect information — I REALLY don’t want to do that. Like…ever. It’s upsetting. It’s why I’m really thankful for having phenomenal editors and friends who will read my early drafts and help me figure out pitfalls and my own gaps in understanding.
But even then, we can’t know everything. We can’t anticipate everything. Sometimes we just have to make a call and hope we’ve done our best, because there’s no other option. And if we fuck up, at least hope we can accept that with grace and diginity, and do the work towards restoration.
