Intertextual references in computer games enhance the gaming experience, often adding a good dose of humour. However, this technique also means the games refer back themselves, sometimes verging on the cynical. Does it work, asks Veronica Stivala.

There’s a scene in Lucas Arts’ Grim Fandango (1998) where Manny Calavera, the suave skeleton, finds himself at the bluesy beat poetry nightclub The Blue Casket. Gamers will have had many a snigger making Manny read out poetry that would have made T. S. Eliot roll in his grave at the open mic at this pretentious club.

The fun part, of course, is that you get to choose your poetry lines from about four options, with the added treat of hearing Manny recite in a voice which he thinks is the height of sophistication. The finished product is not exactly Allen Ginsberg but Manny, sporting that dashing, cream dinner jacket, playing to an audience of bereted skeletons, 1920s jazz cooing in the background, is as good as it gets, for a skeleton at least.

As in Grim Fandango, intertextuality features in a good number story exploration games, effectively enhancing the gaming experience. In some, as in this game, the literary references serve as an aside, offering treats for players as they explore the game. In others, the literary references feature more strongly and serve as a basis for the story. Take the obviously titled Return to Mysterious Island. First published in 2004 and rereleased for tablets in 2009, it is based on Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island and the game’s rich non-linear storyline draws heavily on the 19th century book.

While Verne had five men land on an uncharted island, the game whittles the explorers down to a solo navigator, Mina, who lands on the same-named Lincoln Island. Like her predecessors, Mina survives by her wits and her ability to live off what the land and sea provide, including crabs, oysters, coconuts and turtle eggs.

Locations and characters in the game are recognisable: as in the book, Mina finds the body of the previous inhabitant, Captain Nemo, whom she buries. She finally manages to escape from the island by locating Nautilus and deactivating the island’s shield. The references to the original settlers on the island also provide a bridge to the original.

In other games still, intertextuality takes the form of self-reflexivity, referring back to previous games or prequels. A prime example of this is Monkey Island series, first published by LucasArts in 1990.

Fans will remember the hole in the ceiling of the crypt on Blood Island which Guybrush discovers in The Curse of Monkey Island. He squeezes through and his head pops up through a tree stump in the pixellated world of Monkey Island I. Says Guybrush: “It looks familiar somehow, as if I’ve seen it in a dream”. But we know better!

Not all self-referentiality is as perhaps as cynical as in Monkey Island

It is interesting to note that in addition to adding humour to games this self-referentiality serves to make players aware of the games’ limitations. Referring back to books, poetry and other games can be described as a form of nostalgia.

Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone takes this one step further and in a paper she delivered at the Games and Literary Theory Conference in Malta (October 2013) she pointed out that some games go as far as to take nostalgia to the point of seeming to almost kill off the genre.

“Escape from Monkey Island seemed to enact the death of the genre, playfully and a little cynically, by representing the entire franchise as a repackaged commercial enterprise – returning to its ‘theme park’ origins and spinning the myth into a satire of American consumerism, offering a further level of reified fictions with Starbuccaneer’s Coffee and PlanetThreepwood.”

She observes, however that it is difficult to shake the feeling that this kind of self-awareness drives home the closing-in of the genre – its failure to offer any new direction suggesting its demise. Guybrush Threepwood has become a commodity within his own world.

Of course, not all self-referentiality is as perhaps as cynical as in Monkey Island. A word has to be said about Fullbright Company’s wonderful Gone Home (2013) which tells the story of a young woman called Kaitlin Greenbriar who returns after travelling abroad to find her entire family gone from their home.

The game works on the premise that the player reads numerous notes, diary entries and scribbling found on scraps of paper from the past dotted around the admittedly unrealistically large mansion. But there are other intertextual references in the various books Kaitlin discovers, like her dad’s novels based around the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We learn that he eventually gives up writing altogether, suffering from writer’s block. And, speaking of books, a nod must go to Cyan World’s Myst (1993) where the player uses special books to travel to different worlds.

Does such intertextuality work? Lucas Arts get away with verging on the cynical in Monkey Island precisely because the game has such a rich history, built over so many years. We know the game’s writers have a wicked sense of humour and are not taking themselves too seriously. On the other hand, games like Gone Home stand alone and cannot afford to get so deep as it were. We never even met the characters from the past. Both work, but although it may be nostalgia, my soft spot remains with Monkey Island, which I grew up with, and which taught me the art of a good insult. You fight like a dairy farmer.

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