Part 2 of my essay: covering more of the art work outside the game and the first steps taken to becoming a culture.

other parts go to, Part 1 – Part 3

Chapter 2: The outside story

The story of a game is usually told through characters and landscapes as the player progresses through the levels. However, as a continuous play, arena style war game having narrative within the game itself would counteract the continuousness of its playability, which is why most arena games don’t even bother to have a story. But, because of the fact that immersive stories and relatable characters created a more enjoyable and memorable experience for players (SHAPIRO, PENA-HERBORN & HANCOCK 2006) the importance of valve including some kind of a story element is evident.
The closest thing you get to story inside the game is laced into the design itself. Just by looking at the design of the characters you immediately get a sense of who they are and it’s clear to see when looking at the example of the scout. His slender figure and sporty clothing style gives the direct impression that he has the advantage of speed but also the smallness of his size indicates that he can’t take a lot of damage. Not only that, the character points outside of necessary game play indicators show him with a slouch and cocky smirk on his face which gives him an attitude that combines with the nature of his in game strengths and weakness’ and together creates a sense that he thinks he’s bigger than he actually is, over compensating for his size with a tough guy approach. Using the game play aspects of the character to develop its personality almost created a forth point to the identification hierarchy in the game because it allows even new players to identify character weakness to exploit, and strengths to avoid. So, this essence of story behind the characters can be gathered just by looking and interacting with their models, however this was taken one step further with various promotions out side the game and although, seemingly unnecessary to the game play itself, its importance comes from the promotional benefits

As a promotion, short documentary style clips were released for some of the classes, however some still have yet to be brought out. These are known as the “meet the…” videos  and are short animations that further explain the character behind the class. Knowing more about the characters brought further story elements into the game without forcing the player to have to understand it in order to enjoy playing it. Telling the story outside the game generated interest in something that couldn’t be found entirely from playing and didn’t clutter or interfere with the game play. If you wanted to know the story you’d have to go to the website to find out and what you couldn’t find you’d speculate about with other players. Of course, the community and their desire to know the depth of game didn’t go unnoticed and even more vehicles of knowledge were delivered.
Amusingly enough, the physically playable characters were not the only elements of the game to become characterised, there is also the sentry gun and the “sandvich” which were both presented in an industrial 1950-60s style. The sentry gun and its promotional medium appeared in the download only instruction booklet that was designed to parody the style of a 1960s operating manual  and was released with the game. It characterised the concept of the sentry gun which was designed to look friendly and almost pet like in its appearance. This characterisation was achieved with inspiration from both 1960s house hold appliances and the mechanism of machine guns from World War II making the Sentry gun became a deadly companion (JENISCH 2008).
The Sandvich was released in august 2008 and even got its own “meet the…” video as part of its promotion. It also appeared on a blue print style document that creatively and amusingly explained the dynamics of the new weapon. The Sandvich is one of the many aspects of the game that stand as a cult reference within the community and this is probably because of its characterisation. In my own opinion, the inclusion of a sandwich into the game holds a possible reference to Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter, who I earlier compared to the design of the heavy.

Probably the most important piece of promotional material to the story and characterisation of Team Fortress 2 was the “jarate” weapon update, released in the “Sniper vs. Spy” update in May 2009. The promotional flyer itself  is a parody of an old Promotional comic. This was the first appearance of the character Saxton Hale shown here as a burly sales mascot in order to parody the original concept.

The general mentality of the original advertisement is aggressively persuasive and has a very “I’m better than you” attitude in hope that it may inspire a naive reader to ascend to the figures apparent level of greatness. Obviously, in order to do so, the character would have to look like the kind of guy their potential audience would want to be and the large muscular build has typically been that desired look men are promised from such products, even today. The Saxton Hale depiction satires this idea by not only adorning him with a chiselled figure but other icons of manliness such as his moustache and big rugged boots, taking the idea over the top in order to make a mockery of itself. He became the new figure head of weapons delivery in Team Fortress 2 and replaced the previously used company name “TF industries” with the manlier sounding “Mann Co”.

With his new fictitious weapon supplying company, Saxton Hale was later used to interact with one particular fan who decided to cut out and send off the coupon provided on the update page for the scouts “force-a-nature”, the design of which could be compared to a 1950’s gun catalogue or children’s toy advert in a 1950s comic. The out come was an amusing impersonal letter from Mann Co signed by Saxton Hale (KEANE 2009). In a later update, Hale also appeared as a foot note to the “dapper rapscallion” fictitious mail order catalogue featured later in the sniper vs spy update and so many people sent off the coupon from this update, they were rewarded with Mann Co postcards featuring the brazen Saxton Hale in his amusing but fake comic adventure series. It was clear to see the same over the top imagery and it gave a better sense of how over the top Saxton Hales hilarious manliness really is. There was also a small printed story on each postcard talking about Mann Co comics and how they were used to market weaponry.

In December 2009 the latest update came in the form of a war between Soldiers and Demomen, bringing with it more game based story than in any other update. By this point valve had established its creative means for delivering information exponentially and the entire war was documented in the form of news papers using similar language and captioning as in the 1940s. However, the inside story of the war from the characters perspectives was released in the form of an online comic and finally brought the advert based story telling into a more direct medium. Although this was an evolution into the story of team fortress, I admired the creativity of having stories hidden within the graphics even though it could be argued that this cryptic way of presenting the games narrative was too ambiguous. Personally I feel the challenge of finding the story was a game in itself and although One of the biggest and most revealing plot point was found by clicking a hidden link within the comic it still didn’t have that challenging charm. On a promotional stand point, releasing a comic has continued what the “meet the…” videos started and shed new light on the world of Team Fortress 2, so in that respect it was beneficial.

The 3rd and final part of this essay is about the full blown culture of the game.

Disclaimer: this essay is an original piece of written information by Adele Waldrom for her final university dissertation. Copying this and claiming it as your own would be a great act of stupidity, even more so if it is copied with the intent of replacing genuine hard work. all references, however, have been posted for anyone interested in writing their own essay on video game art.

the references i have used can be found here in the Bibliography

Tags: Article: Gaming Culture, Game: Team Fortress 2, Soul Grafitti