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I first played Cibele at the Moscone Convention Centre's foyer at the Game Developer's Conference earlier this year. The game's writer and designer, Nina Freeman, passed her laptop and a pair of headphones to me as we sat cross-legged on the squeaky floor, while thousands of other game makers hurried off to the next seminar on 'user research Destiny' or, 'monetising children'. Playing video games while their creators look on is always a little awkward. It's difficult to shake the feeling that they're wincing behind you at your ineptitude - almost every designer is, after all, an expert in their own work. You assume they're always fighting the urge to wrest the controller to show you how it should be done. With Cibele, the source of my awkwardness was a little different. Freeman's game is unlike any other. You play as a 19-year-old girl, who starts a relationship with a boy via an online game, Valtameri, a simplistic top-down action RPG. Cibele's canvas is Nina's own, period PC desktop, from which you can launch Valtameri or search through her folders, which are stuffed with the usual digital detritus that we struggle to zip into the recycle bin. Valtameri is not a particularly interesting game - you wander its painterly terrain, swiping at monsters. A much more interesting story unfurls, as, via chat boxes, the 19-year-old Nina and the boy exchange messages, sometimes about what you're doing in the game, but more often than not, the lunges and parries of teenage flirting. The to-ing and fro-ing of the nascent relationship slowly heats up. At one point, the boy asks Nina to send him some photos. The action switches away from the virtual desktop, to filmed footage of Nina posing, in a t-shirt and underwear for the camera. For the player it's unthinkably voyeuristic - a feeling intensified when, y'know, the woman on screen is also sat next to you watching your reaction.
Davey Wredan's The Beginner's Guide, also launched in 2015, plays a similar trick. There's no partial nudity, but this nevertheless is a love story of sorts, told via the lens of a clutch of far less interesting games. As in Cibele, the game's creator provides the narration. Wredan speaks in the languid tones of Ira Glass, presenter of The American Life, whose style has been borrowed by so many podcast presenters in recent years. Wredan tells you about a game developer friend of his known only as 'Coda'. You explore a series of half-finished games made by Coda between 2008 and 2011. The games are, in many cases, little more than chaotic, half-finished 3D environments, albeit ones that have the kernel of a cute design idea at their core. As you explore, Wredan talks about what you're seeing. He wants you to share in his appreciation of Coda's talent and, as The Beginner's Guide unfolds, Wredan begins to use the narration to create interesting effects by juxtaposing the dialogue with the on-screen action.
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