In his continuing efforts to confuse readers and define his own terms for the discussion of games, Sean Malstrom used the term “Content” to refer to both gameplay and subject matter (while simultaneously claiming gameplay was an extraneous frivolity on par with eye-pleasing graphics). Not content with having one private term to misapply to the study of games, Sean came up with another word to misappropriate: Mythos. Sean has made a few poor attempts to define this term.
As for Mythos, it is a real word that comes to us from Aristotle. The phenomenon of which I label Mythos may be incorrect and different from Aristotle’s definition. But there is no other similiarity[sic] to it in the English language (which is rare). The label of “Mythos” is good to communicate to the reader because the word has the same gravity as ‘mythology’ yet it is not mythology. ‘Mythos’ should be percieved[sic], due its label, as something very old, a little mysterious, similiar[sic] to ‘mythology’.
Mythos is a type of source material but only a shadow of it. Part of Star Trek’s mythos was Horatio Hornblower. Now, Star Trek developed into a fictional history with its canon and characters. I am not referring to that. The further Star Trek got away from its ‘Horatio Hornblower’ roots, the more vapid and less ‘magical’ (if you may) it became. Star Wars mythos is, I believe, Asian myth and legends. There has been much research on Star Wars in that form so I tend to direct my attention to more unexplored areas. I think finding all these sources is all fascinating.
My favorite illustration of mythos is Alice in Wonderland being a mythos behind Super Mario Brothers. Super Mario Brothers could not exist without Alice in Wonderland. One could say that Alice in Wonderland was a seed and Super Mario Brothers was the plant.
What Malstrom wants to call “Mythos” is actually just Subject Matter informed by Archetype. Imagine players playing as Archetypes, and engaging in the 7 basic plots (or 36 basic plots, if you’re obsessive). These explain why the subject matter of certain games are eternal; it is not because of specific similarities to earlier works in a different medium, it is due to following core structures that have been known for centuries. I should mention that Sean’s example of comparing Kirk to Hornblower is really an example of pastiche, where the nature of a fictional character is reproduced as homage to the earlier work, often mixing in other elements (in this case, science fiction). But this is far less common in games, where the nature of the protagonist is often left blank. Instead we find game structure itself calling forth archetypal plots!
For example, Zelda is an engaging gameplay structure acting as the bones of yet another retelling of the Hero’s Journey. Sean comes close to realizing this, but not once does he use the well-established term “Hero’s Journey”.
Zelda is a game that contains the feeling of growth, of a boy into a man, this ‘growing up’ is no reason why the series is revered as it is. The Zelda series is, very much, cyclical. The cycle is presented as The Triforce which contains a neat little geometrical design of triangles. The villain, reborn from age to age, is of course Ganon who either attempts, or captures, the Triforce and, thus, disturbs the Cycle. It is because of that the heroes emerge by destiny: Link and Zelda. Ganon is defeated, the Cycle is restored, and all is good with the world. However, Ganon never truly dies. He returns again in another age to start the process all over again.
While the “coming of age” trope is appropriate, the plot he’s grasping at is “Rebirth“. All of these concepts are ages old, well established and understood. There’s no need to beat around the bush by waving your hands and pretending it is something mysterious. For someone so dismissive of game narratives, Sean sure does talk about them a lot! While it’s obvious he’s a fan of Zelda’s overt narrative, I’m much more fascinated by the design narrative of a game like Super Mario Bros.
Mario’s journey to the Mushroom Kingdon and the game’s increasing physical difficulty follow “Voyage and Return”, which flows through the stages of Anticipation, Dream, Frustration, Nightmare, and Thrilling Escape. (This is the same structure as Alice in Wonderland) This retelling of such a resonant and human story through the interactive medium of videogames is an uncelebrated triumph in the evolution of the ancient art of storytelling. Even more amazing is that the escalation is not conveyed textually as in a book, or visually as in a film, but physically through the experiences of the player navigating the environment! This is the Subject Matter of Mario. What would Mario be without his subject matter? Ironically, the Rom Hacks so despised by Malstrom have provided us with an insightful glimpse into such a proposition:
Playable in an emulator after patching a rom. Now Mario is about nothing!
“You are nothing! It’s up to you to save nothing from the nothing magic of the nothing!” Gameplay remains, but without a Subject Matter, even player “failures” don’t have the same impact as player “death”.
The frustrating part of all this is that so many game designers have abandoned these strong and engaging tropes for what amounts to interactive war documentaries. War documentaries have their place in telling us a political history, and the psychological history of man’s inhumanity to man, but it is extremely limiting in what archetypes and core plots will be available for use. Physical conflicts may be the easiest to computationally model, but they also limit your audience terribly. Collision Detection entertainment has been a chain around gaming’s ankle from the beginning, and it is only by embracing both unconventional gameplay and unconventional (for games) story archetypes that we will ever see games appeal beyond the shallow demographics they currently wallow in.
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