Social Gaming: How Papo & Yo Redefined the Concept for Me

Expanding the definition of coop

I have established before that I don't really play games with people. Whether that means actually playing a cooperative mode with a friend or fighting against anonymous players online, generally my gameplay experience only involves myself. There are some exceptions for games that make it seem worthwhile to foray into multiplayer, but I only buy a game for its single-player offerings. Everything else is just icing or filler. Thus, it came as a huge surprise to me that my fondest memory of playing a game this year with another human being actually involved a completely single-player game, Papo & Yo.

I had read enough about Papo & Yo to be enthralled with the idea before the first trailer appeared. At that point, I was pre-enamored with it. Although I've only thus written about what a departure the soundtrack is, the game as a whole is remarkably different in tone and experience from the majority of games out there. It is certainly rare to play what amounts to a single writer's autobiography, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. However, it is possible that my review of the game was disingenuous – I didn't tell you readers what really happened.

Twitter is kind of a new beast to me. My job was sending me on a trip to Berkeley, CA in February of 2010, and I decided to try the bandwagon out, tweeting about my trip. I did not consider the ample opportunities it possessed, but one thing that began to stick out was how accessible people and companies became. Celebrities and journalists tweet daily and sometimes actually respond to people who follow them. Companies, on the other hand, hire community managers to handle their official accounts and respond to tweets either praising them for excellent service or deriding them for subpar pizza. What they offer is essentially a free but invaluable product by turning companies into humans replete with feelings and fluids. A bad corporation is a bad corporation, but community managers at least entertain the idea that your complaint reaches actual people who care that you had a poor experience. You and I know your complaint probably won't reach the top dogs of the company unless he or she has a Twitter account.

Alright, this was about Papo & Yo. I decided that I would take this review really seriously. This would be the first new game I'd be reviewing within a reasonable window of its release, and I sat with a notebook by my side to make sure I wrote down everything, good or bad, worth writing about. Despite the damage it can do to the experience, I also did a bit of live tweeting, i.e., posting to Twitter while I played the game. This caught the attention of Minority Media's community manager, Deborah Chantson, who heartily replied to me to wish me enjoyment. (Sadly, I did not log any of our tweets, and I cannot yet access my archive, so there'll be paraphrasing from here on.) Because I had only just started the game, there were a number of events in the first few chapters that made me wonder if they were better explained later on, something that is rather important to me. So I responded to Deb, as she calls herself, stating, "I have so many questions."

Thus, the game began to change for me. Deb, out of a sincere desire to assist all the fans, insisted on Direct Messaging me to answer my questions, thinking I was stuck on a puzzle or something. At the time, I thought it was hilarious, but I didn't take into account that the developer had posted a day-one patch to the game to fix issues, which hampered the game's scores with Polygon and IGN. (I don't suggest bringing those up to her.) She was a woman on a mission, and given the timing, I'm inclined to believe she'd pop out of my PS3 with a screwdriver if it would help. Of course, I didn't have any problems navigating the puzzles, which I found to be fairly straight-forward and easy. But Deb was nice, and sincerely wanted to talk about the game. I've never really done that before, that is, talk deeply about a game I was playing while I was playing it for the first time.*

The conversation didn't take long to devolve into other topics, but Deb always maintained a focus on making sure I was having fun. She even tried to excuse herself to let me play, but that didn't work out. I was truly enthralled to be communicating with someone who was passionate about the game I was playing and who also worked for the developer. That is something that doesn't happen often to anyone that isn't a hired tester. And this unique experience has stayed with me. There is playing the same game with someone, plowing through levels with a digital companion at your side. There is playing against someone, killing each other over and over again, or simply getting more points at sports. But this was like playing with a little Papo & Yo guardian angel, someone who has no direct impact on the game but makes the experience special nonetheless.

I understand that I can't really encourage anyone to ask their favorite developers' community managers to babysit them while they play.** However, I will encourage you to feel at liberty try to communicate with those developers somehow, whether it is a reference on Twitter or just an email discussing your experience. There are real people who read these things and pass it on to the ones you want to hear it most. Gaming isn't the same landscape it was 20 years ago. We no longer play in our individual bubbles anymore, and social networking is pervading the lifestyle in remarkable ways. It is easier to access those who care that you are playing something they worked very hard on, and I'm willing to bet they appreciate your effort as much as you do theirs.

Are you a player who had a unique gaming experience with a community manager? Are you a community manager that had a unique gaming experience with a player? I would love to hear about it!

* I'd like to note that Deb and I didn't discuss any specific features of the game nor its bugs, which I do talk about in my review. We mostly discussed the concept and the company, none of which was relevant to a review or my opinion of the game. She found out my final thoughts on the game at the same time as everyone else on the internet.

** I pity the community manager who would chat through someone's experience playing a sandbox game. "I just sold my 20th box of crumpled cigarettes! (Far Cry 3)" "Oh, that's nice."

Play with My Father

Just once would be nice.

I think it would be fair to say I could attribute my love of video games to my father. Well, sort of. My father was always into new technology, and he always wanted to show me the latest gizmo he bought. His interest in electronics and the like was the polar opposite of my mother, who continually resisted anything that came around. Naturally, I became attracted to the digital image and its interactive manipulation. Despite how he always exposed me to and bought me new electronics and toys, it saddens me that he never really joined me in playing them. Even worse, until recently, he always expressed a constant derision towards my life's passion.

Before there was color, there was green.

For my seventh birthday, I asked for the original Nintendo Game Boy. To this day, it is the only handheld system I ever owned, and I poured a lot of hours into it. In fact, I still have it, though I haven't tested its operational faculty in a number of years. Not that I was big into sharing, but I was surprised when my father wanted to play Tetris on occasion. I didn't appreciate it then, but looking back, it was cool that he wanted to play a game at all. That was the only one, though, and he never expressed any interest in the other games I had. Eventually, he also stopped playing Tetris, though he never played it enough for it to be considered sudden. That was it. I never saw him play another game since.

That isn't to say that was the last game he showed interest in. One day, when our home computer was still the Macintosh Performa, he came home with Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands, a graphic adventure game in the same vein as Myst. I was definitely excited since I loved Myst and really looked forward to playing another puzzle game, and I was excited that he wanted to play it with me. The excitement was over almost as quickly as it began because we ignored the hardware specifications that called for at least double the RAM we had on board, and the game would not even launch. As unfortunate as this was, it was more disappointing when he never came back around to play even after we bought and installed the upgrade. I don't know why, and I didn't ask. I just played and enjoyed the game alone and thought nothing of it.

So that was the last game he ever told me he wanted to play, and he never played it. This actually never began to bother me until the last few years. My parents and I did a lot of things separately. Sometimes, we'd all watch the same TV program in our own rooms. Thus, playing video games by myself didn't phase me one bit, and I never grew a desire to play with them either. Nothing about that seemed wrong to me. The time I would spend with friends was sporadic (I was not popular), so I found myself gravitating towards more single-player experiences. Sure, there were games like Street Fighter II and Eternal Champions that were more fun to play with friends, but you wouldn't believe how much time I'd spend playing against myself or screwing with Game Genie codes.

So began my own personal adventure.

Coasting a large number of years into the future, my true love of video games was ignited when I played Final Fantasy VII on PC in 1999, the first half of the last year of high school. Although I played Myst, most of the games I played offered shallower stories; I never encountered something so layered nor with optional story content to discover. After that, I became more insistent that I continually needed something to play. I needed another story. My first "real" relationship, which took place during most of my time in college, was with a guy who would play with me. We even bought a Nintendo GameCube together. Although we had multiplayer games to play with friends, such as Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Monkey Ball, our definition of playing with each other and friends often meant one person playing a single-player adventure while others observed. Even today, this is how I typically enjoy experiencing new games – watching friends demonstrate what they have to offer. It may sound silly, but to me, any game was as exciting to watch as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

Years after dropping that human waste of time, I held out until I met another guy who shared a passion for video games with me. At the time, it was more challenging than it probably is now, what with Gaymercon starting next year. But I met the love of my life, and we have spent six awesome years now playing and loving. I definitely play significantly more than he does, but he has always shown interest, and there are games he loves and have elicited strong emotional responses from him. (He handled a certain scene in Final Fantasy VII a lot worse than I ever did.) However, it was also during the time we've spent together that my father became rather adversarial towards my hobby. My parents naturally ask what I've been up to since the last time I've seen them, and usually I answer with a game I'm playing. My father's natural response has always been dismissive, instantly losing interest in me talking about it further. But there eventually came snide comments, too. I remember speaking at dinner about the Overlord DLC for Mass Effect 2, and I specifically wanted to talk about it because of how it involves autism. My only brother is autistic, so it is definitely a relevant topic of discussion in their house. However, when I began to explain that Mass Effect is a science fiction game, my dad quipped, "all [video games] are science fiction." No, it doesn't make any sense, but I could tell there was no point in continuing to talk about it.

The majority of the Myst games were about a father's relationship with his sons.

Things came to a head a few weeks ago as my boyfriend and I were leaving my parents' house to go home. My father asked what we'd be doing with the rest of the night, and I stated that I'd be playing, and my boyfriend stated he'd be watching a movie and maybe playing. His response was something to the effect of "Tell me how it is. The movie, not the video games. I don't care about that shit." So the conversation went.

"They're not shit."
"I think they're shit."
"How can you continue to put down the thing I love to do most like that?"
"It's shit to me. What do you want me to say?"
"I would never put down something you're passionate about. And it's shit that you would say something like that to me."

He just shrugged, but I was rather angry as I drove off. I always got annoyed when he'd dismiss me, but this just took the cake. It was the first time he really just said it plainly, and he managed to make it as offensive as possible. The last thing I said was true, though. I may not have interest in many things my friends love, such as sports, – I may not even care the slightest bit about them – but I would never tell someone that this thing he or she is so excited about is shit. I'd just say I don't like it myself.

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions allows the player to proceed through the whole game without killing (almost) anyone.

From this negative experience came a positive.  It took two weeks, but shortly after my birthday, in response to something completely unrelated, he apologized. He expressed a sincere regret for putting down what I love to do. My father also finally articulated one of his issues with video games, that being the violence in them. It is kind of funny, actually, since he watches and likes some violent movies, and he even owns some firearms. However, I think the issue for him is actually participating in the violence, something movies don't require of the viewer. He actually expressed that he loved Myst, which I don't remember him playing but was once the buzz of the house. This was a significant step forward, and I felt very touched to finally learn more about him.

My response to him was that not every game is violent, of course. Without a doubt, I own some games like Mortal Kombat where the violence is gratuitous, but I wanted to tell him that I'm not always a death dealer. Aside from sharing the artfulness of games like Journey and Papo & Yo, I also went on to talk about games like Grand Theft Auto IV, which match exciting and well-written plots with the violence. I even expressed that some of the best games make you question whether you want to commit violence like Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Most importantly, I told him that I regret never playing Zork Nemesis with him. It only took 16 years to realize that it would have been nice.

Zork Nemesis, the bonding experience that never was.

Sadly, I think that's the end of the positive result. I told him that I own all the games from the Myst series, the sequel, Riven, being incredible, and how I could easily install them and Zork Nemesis on his laptop. However, he said he's too old to play them and doesn't have the attention span for them. I feel like I lost something there. I don't know what exactly. I don't know that if I attempted to include him on what I was playing when I was younger that he would've joined me. Still, I feel much better knowing that my father understands what it means when someone puts down something you care about and that we're past that era of our relationship. I hope one day he'll play by my side, though.

What about you? How involved are your parents with what you're passionate about? Do you play games with either of them? Please share your experience.

Papo & Yo Review

A treatise on the concept of fun.

I have played sentimental games, and I have played games with true genius behind them, but rarely have I witnessed the two intertwined successfully. Often, games with raw emotional experiences sacrifice gameplay for storytelling, and some games with clever mechanics have lackluster stories. Depending on how you judge common gameplay devices, you might consider Papo & Yo, a new PSN exclusive from Minority Media, to be the perfect blend.

Papo & Yo acts as an allegory about a boy and his alcohol abusing father. Creative director, Vander Cabellero, is not simply content with letting the metaphor run by itself, so the game will wear its origin on its sleeve multiple times until it becomes readily apparent during the final few acts. Unlike Braid, this creator's vision will not remain hidden or argued about over internet forums. Caballero sought to share his own experience growing up with an alcoholic father through Papo & Yo, but while the purpose is clear, he is not pandering towards a specific population. This is a game one can easily enjoy, metaphor be damned, but the hope is the player will come away with something new to think about by the end. Without being didactic, Papo & Yo's story leaves the player to make his or her own conclusions about how to feel towards the characters.

The father in this game is represented by Monster, a large aptly-named creature that follows the main protagonist, Quico, a preteen boy, through a fantastical version of the favelas of Brazil. These shanty towns, built by arbitrarily stacking box-like houses on top of and around each other, serve as the perfect backdrop to this well-imagined tale. In contrast to an action game's typical tour through South America, often involving gangs and drugs, the favela is a colorful and benevolent landscape rife with puzzles to solve. The game largely appears to be imagined, and many of the puzzles Quico encounters take this real-life environment and show the player how a child might think it came to be. The mechanics behind solving them typically involve chalk drawings of levers, gears, and keys that Quico must use to literally move the homes of the favela around in order to proceed. Quicio, himself, acts as a serviceable platform navigator, being able run at a useful speed, withstand long jumps to the ground, and eventually cross larger gaps with the aid of his toy robot, Lula. Monster may be the primary antagonist, but like any human being, he isn't pure evil, and the game never paints him as such. The majority of the time, Quico can seek his aid with stepping on large switches or by using his tummy as a trampoline while he falls asleep against some propped-up boards. It is obvious that Quico and Monster are or should be friends, but Monster's weakness for frogs steps in the way of building that friendship to a fruitful level. When consumed, these frogs send Monster in a fiery rage, and the only target is the boy, who must run away and find a way to calm him in order to proceed. However, this is not a giant escort mission, and unlike Ico, neither character is helpless; theirs is a sad tale of codependence, but the wedge between them grows ever stronger.

A larger than life puzzle being solved with cardboard boxes.

The game is very linear and playable in 4-5 hours, but these qualities work to its credit. Every part of the environment the player can access is a room where a puzzle or land traversal will occur, and there are no notable forks in your path. There is one way to proceed, and if you enter an area initially of no use, you'll be back there in five minutes once you do some work elsewhere. Normally, when you play a game enough, these characteristics can become negatives, but in Papo & Yo, I would argue that they contribute to the genius I mentioned previously. Quico is not wandering the favela with Monster by coincidence. Unlike Mario's sisyphean trials and tribulations, which put him in an arguably confusing and unexplained land with each iteration, there is nothing random about this world. It is what Quico knows, and though it is not immediately apparent when starting a new game, he makes his way to each new section with purpose. Sidequests would only serve as distractions from the primary focus, and the game doesn't grant any trophy-rewarding collectibles until the second playthrough. Many of the questions the player may have during the beginning will be answered during play save for those most philosophical. The game is short because it has to be, and in a world where players increasingly demand bang for their buck, they need to accept the esoteric immediacy of the story's larger concept as the treasured bang.

The favela, both real and impossible.

All the puzzles Quico solves are organically incorporated into the favela environment. While the keys and levers that move the puzzle pieces may be inorganic, and the player doesn't see what put them there, their necessity becomes understandable. The world isn't telling Quico what he needs to advance so much as Quico imagined it himself. They start small, but eventually you will enter large areas with large machinations to use. These room-filling puzzles made up my favorite moments in the game, involving stacking homes to build a bridge or using the land as a large trap for a raging Monster. It is not long before the recognizable objects give way to abstractions protruding from the landscape, and the journey reveals larger instabilities in the environment, which beautifully reinforce both the reality and the fantasy behind the main character's trials.

Despite taking place within the imagination of a young boy, Quico is limited. He cannot fly, and, Lula notwithstanding, he cannot perform any grand feats. It begs the question of why a child would imagine himself in a world with limits, but self-sabotage is not a new concept to a victim of abuse. It is worth considering here. That said, pondering why Quico can't pick up a simple flower pot will only reveal design flaws. If it's not related to the quest at hand, Quico will not be interacting with it, and even in AAA games, frivolous accessible objects are becoming harder to explain. Additionally, although it only becomes obvious in a few scenes, characters' mouths don't move when they speak. Despite the fact that many gamers built emotional bonds with characters who often lacked fully-developed mouths entirely, when the camera zooms in on the face of a speaking person, it is rather unsettling to look at a frozen face. Unfortunately, there are real technical flaws to be witnessed, as well, the most common of which is collision detection. Monster's hulking frame and other objects in the environment intersect each other in unnatural ways that do not fit the fantasy. Though largely benign, these issues become offensive when Monster becomes frozen and unresponsive because of them, thus prohibiting the player's ability to proceed through the game. I finished the game twice, and this happened three times, only during my first playthrough. Thankfully, the third instance happened while Monster was already where I needed him, and activating the next puzzle mechanism set him straight again. Luckily, Papo & Yo's short chapters lead to relatively frequent checkpoints, and quitting and reloading takes under thirty seconds. It is worth noting that I played only after the Day 1 patch was released, which resolved some often cited clipping errors; I am happy not to somber this review with any further bugs.

Quico using Monster's belly to get to higher places.

Faults aside, the presentation is commendable. The bright colors of the homes jut out of cobblestone roads and lush greenery. Many objects and textures are repeated, but each chapter rearranges, manipulates, and abstracts them in imaginative ways, and the confined spaces of the residential areas are often interrupted by huge environments containing water bodies and pitfalls. Visuals in Papo & Yo are both done before and completely original, creating a juxtaposition that keeps the player interested and motivated. Almost every chapter also features gorgeous graffiti, drawn with stark lines and bold colors. Some seem random, but advancing past them frequently reveals the relation to a story or gameplay element. There is no HUD, and on-screen cues are usually reasonably sized and clear, such as a tree with a word bubble containing a square to indicate how to interact with it. Dialogue is presented in black word bubbles with white type, but the spoken language is indiscernible and made up, increasing the global accessibility. Filling the aural void further is refreshing music with a heavy South American flair. Composed by La Hacienda, the songs you hear build drama behind the puzzle solving, and it all culminates in a beautiful track before the credits, featuring an angelic choir of children. The studio also recorded all the voice work and sound effects, which are all executed gracefully.

I am burdened with the fact that I cannot further discuss the concepts and metaphors that make this game such a work of art without revealing too much. I have already made too many conclusions here, but there are so many more to make. Suffice it to say that this game is very fun, with each drawn device building the fantasy and activating previously unseen ways to manipulate the environment, but fun comes at a price. Vander Cabellero and his Minority Media team make the player think about why we do fun things, what we ultimately stand to gain from having fun, and why fun isn't permanent. This is not a hero story. The plot twist is both completely unexpected and right in front of your nose. Before the game reveals it to you, it forces the player to sit through a truly heartbreaking moment of pause. This is a story about a very real boy and a very real situation. Via the element of play, you are drawn into his reality without your permission. Play it. Play it again. The final genius stroke may be that replaying the game makes sense within the context of the story.

Well played, Vander.

All images taken from GameInformer.com.