Hello everyone, I'm Eduardo and welcome to a new case study in Game Studies Compact. Game Studies is seeing video games from an academic point of view, a scientific point of view. Game Studies is an academic branch that deals with observing video games from a sociocultural point of view and, for example, in their effects on different people, in different societies, in different groups. And for this, Game Studies uses other academic branches, for example sociology, psychology, engineering or even
theology to address different phenomena in the field of video games and their research. So, in this channel we see different topics of video games from an academic, scientific point of view. And if you are studying Game Design, or Level Design, or you study ludology, Game Studies, or any other branch of communications, or social sciences, and you want to complement them with a focus on videogames, these contents are going to help you a lot. In the last video we had the opportunity to see a bit
of Game Studies, the horror and the concept of prison, the mysterious, the sinister, and punishment in them. And for this, we saw three different articles that, for this case study, I will apply in The Callisto Protocol. Our first source is based on the concept of the uncanny, and how this concept can be applied in different video games to generate in the player a kind of irritability, a kind of confusion, a kind of discomfort. With the sinister we understand that it is what, from a robotics poi
nt of view, or of the avatars, the NPCs, are these figures that want to resemble human beings, but are not. And there are these nuances, these very soft differences that make us realize that what we might have in front of us is not necessarily a human being, it is possibly a monster or simply an artificial intelligence that masquerades as a human being. And we find this in different video games, where we have robots, we have zombies, we have beings from the other world. Sometimes we even have sp
irits that come to life in this world through different machines or people or bodies, and there are those differences when they speak, when they they move; they make us realize that we are not dealing with a normal person, but with some kind of something sinister, something weird. And this is very important in order to understand The Callisto Protocol later, because there are many characters, many places, many movements of NPCs, for example, that make us think that they are not really human, or
are no longer human. They have these rather rare elements that can cause us a kind of irritability, confusion, and in a context of terror and survival horror, it can give us even more tension, more fear, more uncertainty about what is going to happen in the game later on. Our second source is based on the applied agency mechanics in Survival Horror video games. We were able to see this in the previous chapter, in the context of Dead Space. Now, these agency mechanics mean these features in the g
ame, these affordances, these possibilities that make us feel like agents, make us feel capable of making a change in the game, capable of manipulating things, talking to characters, being in places. ... that is, the more the game allows us to change the environment, the more the game allows us to perform actions in the game such as shooting, jumping, moving, flying, hitting enemies, using melee weapons, or firearms in long range, the more agents we feel we are, the more agency we feel. And I a
lso use this source because let's remember that it was used to address Dead Space. Dead Space is a cult game, one of the references of what Survival Horror is. Dead Space and The Calisto Protocol have quite a few similarities in both story and Game Design. Let's remember that in Dead Space we have the Ishimura, the ship that Isaac Clarke enters to solve a mystery. And in The Calisto Protocol we have this analogy with the SHU, the spaceship where Jacob Lee is located. We also have this almost 1:1
similarity between Dead Space and its Level Design, its corridors, its dark lights, its presence of enemies, its uncertainty, just like The Callisto Protocol. There are also the concepts of Game Design, inspired almost entirely, such as the use of weapons, resources, how many resources we find during gameplay. And this article is very important because it shows us that Level Design elements, that is, corridors without lights, dark corridors, narrow corridors, enemies that can appear behind boxe
s, behind beds, long corridors where at the end we can glimpse a light that it makes us understand that this is the path to follow; or also levels where we have to go like in a maze grabbing keys, then returning to another place... all these elements can cause us confusion, generate terror, generate impatience and also generate a lot of tension and uncertainty, because this element of the dark, this element of the sinister, the mysterious in Level Design generates this horror. And also the agenc
y mechanics in Dead Space are very important because in both Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol the character is a non-superhuman character, he doesn't have superhuman abilities. He has to use weapons, he has to use resources in a very measured, very wise way, he has to use melee weapons, he has to sometimes crouch to get through certain places. He is a character who, in his composition and his abilities, in his avatar actions, is limited a lot. This limitation can also generate tension, uncer
tainty, it can also generate concern in the player because he does not know how to advance, he does not know how to advance with the resources he would have. Then, it generates even more terror, more survival, more this "having to survive". And the third source that I use is based on horror and prison and how this was applied in the context of Silent Hill. Let's remember that Silent Hill is a Survival Horror game, in which it is about using keys, advancing levels, using a lot of ingenuity and so
lving puzzles to be able to advance and decipher these items, interpret them, see where they can be used in the game, to advance, like in other Survival Horror games where we have an ordinary avatar, a civilian who has to use the weapons, the places, their abilities, in a very normal way. And this having to survive, also generates this tension to us, because we don't have a character like in Call of Duty who has a lot of ammunition, moves fast, jumps, but in Silent Hill, as well as in Dead Space
and The Callisto Protocol, we have a character with very human, very normal abilities and this also creates a challenge for us. This challenge, in a context of terror, also generates even more tension, more uncertainty, less clarity on how to advance in this Survival Horror, also manifested through the Game Design in the avatar. And the prison is present not only in cages, but also in concepts of entire jails, prisons, also in corridors that are sometimes closed, where we cannot move forward. T
his prison thing also means for us a little "closing" ourselves, creating a kind of limitation for ourselves. We feel like we are in a prison when we are in a Survival Horror game. Not necessarily because we always see cages and cells, but because the levels, the Game Design is done in a way that compacts us to go in very specific directions. That also cancels a bit, limits, creates this feeling of prison. And the prison is also manifested through a punishment of the game towards the avatar or t
owards the player. What do I mean by this? That the game, by giving us few resources, by giving us dark environments, by giving us enemies that we may not be ready for, and also by offering us situations in which, if we lose, we have to start from a much earlier checkpoint -that is, there is not this usual autosave like in other games- it is a punishment, it is also a retribution from the game towards the player for his bad actions. This is also important to rescue from the Game Design, because
it generates these elements of survival, these elements also of horror, of feeling one in despair, in hopelessness. Let's say I go forward 20 minutes, I collect items, i.e. these collectibles, and I lose and I have to go back half an hour in the game and I have to do it all over again. This can also be interpreted as a bug, it can be interpreted as a Game Design error, but it can also be interpreted as a punishment from the game towards the player. And this punishment would have a lot to do in t
he context of Survival Horror and this type of game, where when we do something wrong, it punishes us and responds to all this collective despair of having few resources, uncertainty of not knowing where to go, uncertainty from dark environments. So, a general sense is created in this aspect of Game Design's punishment toward the player. Now, with these three sources noted, let's apply them to The Callisto Protocol. The Callisto Protocol is about Jacob Lee, who is a cargo pilot who goes to a spa
ce station to deliver a cargo with a virus which is very sensible and valuable. He thinks that once he delivers this load, it is his last job and he never has to work again. Now, a terrorist group enters into the ship and wants to take over this cargo, infiltrates his ship, and this causes the ship to crash. So both Jacob Lee and the terrorists who infiltrated the ship are taken to a prison (Black Iron). In this prison, Jacob Lee tries to escape, while he wonders why they put him in the prison i
f he hasn't done anything. And little by little, we try to get out of prison, we try to free ourselves and we are realizing that much more happens in prison than just grabbing inmates. They are being used as guinea pigs to test a virus, in order to create a higher human, a new level of human beings. And we are also learning through gameplay that we ourselves, as Jacob Lee, already knew about the virus we were carrying, its consequences, and we cannot escape from the prison. We decided that Dani
Nakamura, our support (co-op NPC from mid-game onwards), is the one who gets saved because she hasn't done anything wrong. We are the ones who made the mistake from the beginning by carrying these viruses in our cargo transportation. I already summarized the game a bit, now let's find these horror elements. The first very clear horror element is in Level Design: we have a prison that also reminds us of this element from Foucault's panopticon, which we also saw in the case of Silent Hill, and we
have to get out of this prison, we have this element of cloistering ourselves, we have this prison element that, throughout the game, reminds us that we are in a prison, we have cells. We are also dressed, at the beginning, as an inmate, as a prisoner, we see other prisoners and we have to do puzzles to get past the security elements. We have robots that also want to attack us and during the game they also return us to jail. This is a first element of horror that we constantly have in The Callis
to Protocol. Also in the Level Design is the use of corridors and the use of low light. This is important because we have corridors where we don't know if an enemy is going to appear. The little light forces us to also be constantly alert everywhere. Sometimes we can play and an enemy attacks us from behind, we have surprise attacks throughout the game, for which we have to calculate that they are going to happen at some point. This is from the Level Design, because we, when we see that we are c
rawling through a place where we see enemies or where we see these cobwebs, we also feel that these enemies can come from anywhere, it invites us to think that this is going to happen, it prepares us for this situation. But if we don't have the resources and we're not ready for this, we can lose. But here, in the Level Design, there is this element of expectation, of terror, that something bad is going to happen, that we can die. This is also in both the Level Design and Sound Design, in these s
ounds like in horror movies. In other words, these sounds of tension, these sounds of action, of surprise, like in a movie such as Alien or The Thing, where we have the camera that goes with the character and, when an enemy attacks us, we have that sound of "boom!", let's say tension, the camera changes and we have Jacob being attacked by enemies from another point of view. In the Sound Design and in the Level Design, The Callisto Protocol also draws inspiration from different movies to create t
his element of horror and also reinforce it in us as players and as spectators. Another horror element is the same agency mechanics. In a very similar way, as in Dead Space, in The Callisto Protocol we have to move very slowly to be able to pass through different places, to be able to attack enemies from behind. If we do it very quickly, they attack us and when there are several enemies it is very likely that we will always lose in that place. We are forced to play in a much stealthier and much
slower way. Now this crouching also forces us to play more slowly and can also be a punishment, a lesson in the game for us as players. That is to say, it generates terror not being able to play in a way that is also more fluid, faster, with more action. Survival Horror forces us, from its Game Design, also to change a little our patterns of this type of game in which we have weapons, firearms, melee weapons, we have to go slow, find the perfect timing. There is also the scarcity of resources. I
n The Callisto Protocol, we have to cleverly manage the ammo we have if we want to have some later, or we have to find it in different places, or we have to craft it. And to make ammunition we need the credits. That is, if we do not invest credits in improving our weapons, these credits will remain for the ammunition, but we generally do not have credits to do everything at the same time. We have to be selective. Do I need ammunition or do I need to upgrade my equipment? This also creates a need
for survival, a need to manage resources. There's also the concept of dismemberment, much like in Dead Space. In The Callisto Protocol, we have to see where we shoot at enemies or where we hit enemies with our melee weapon to dismember them. When dismembered, the enemies can give us fewer hits at a time. If I have an enemy with two arms, he can hit me twice, one hit after the other. Or it can also be three hits. If I dismember an enemy and the enemy only has one arm, it can only give me one att
ack from one arm, that is, it can only attack me once at a time. From there, I have the option to counterattack. That is to say, dismemberment, also similar to Dead Space, is mandatory to be able to advance efficiently in The Callisto Protocol, but it also has a lot to do with managing our resources, with knowing that I prefer to use the melee weapon because ammo wouldn't suffice I just shot around while gaming. This element of saving, and of Survival managing the resources, is also what gives t
his horror add-on applied to The Callisto Protocol. Also something that could be overlooked a bit is the concept of auto-saves and checkpoints. The Callisto Protocol forces us to reload -it can be 20 or 30 minutes - if we lose during the game, and we have to redo the whole process until we get to that part. But not only the enemies again, but also the Collectibles need to be gathered again. That is, if I want to collect, if I want to collect the Audiologs during the game and I die and return to
a previous checkpoint, I have to get these Collectibles again. That's very different to many other games, where Collectibles are sometimes already saved in the database; I start from a previous save point, but my Collectibles are already registered. Not in The Callisto Protocol: I have to do it one more time. Here, it can be seen, first, as a Game Design error, but it can also be seen as a measure of retribution, as a measure of punishment from the game towards the player or towards the avatar f
or doing things wrong. In a survival horror context, as I said before, this can make a lot of sense. And this also happens when we go to bosses that we can only defeat using firearms, but we have no ammo. Here is the example of the Two-Head in The Callisto Protocol, that if I go without ammunition, I am condemned to stay there and not advance because I do not have the necessary ammunition to beat it. I have to reload a save game from half an hour, an hour earlier and go with the necessary ammuni
tion to beat this boss, but I lose this hour of play. Why this? Because I wasn't wise enough to always have ammunition with me for anything that might happen. It can be understood as a Game Design error, there could be this critic. But if I read from a horror point of view, from the Survival Horror, and from the Game Studies, and from what the Academy offers about Survival Horror and the different elements that make a survival game with horror, and with tension and with uncertainty, this topic o
f ammo management makes a lot of sense. It wouldn't be a mistake, it would be a reason, a consequence of our lack of wisdom and a retribution of the game towards the player. And let's not forget the aspect of the narrative. Here, we return to the element of the uncanny. Why? Because we are finding characters and stories of characters that seem human, but are not. For example, we find Ferris, who is human but becomes less and less human, but still maintains his features, his movements, a bit of h
is humanity, but he's already like "infected". We have the same with Dani Nakamura, with our cooperative "partner" from the middle of the game onwards, who is becoming less and less human. And we see it through his face, through his veins; She maintains her humanity, but there is this sinister thing, this thing that scares us during the game, that at any moment Dani Nakamura will go against us because the infection has already taken over her completely. There is this uncertainty, this tension th
rough this concept of the sinister, of what seems human, but is no longer so. And there is also this element of despair and doom in the narrative when we realize at the end of the game that there is only an escape pod and we give it to Dani Nakamura. This ending of the game, which could be overlooked, represents despair, it also represents uncertainty, doom and hopelessness of The Callisto Protocol, which is included in this whole concept of Survival Horror: everything we have done throughout of
the game, in the end it doesn't matter much because we can't escape. We seek to escape from the planet that is infected, use the escape pod, but we cannot use it because there is only one left. To that, let's add that Jacob Lee, during the game, admits - that is, we as an avatar admit - that we knew about the virus load we were carrying in the transport. We knew we were carrying this virus that was going to cause this whole problem, this whole crisis that we're in in the game, and for the first
few parts we thought, we told ourselves, we didn't know. But already at the end of the game, Jacob Lee admits, proves it, that he did know. So, this condemnation, this element of doom, of punishment, of retribution, is not only through Game Design, it is also through narratives, and this is something very important and very interesting also for Game Studies, because sometimes we focus a lot on the Level Design, on the Game Design, how they punish the player. But the stories, the narratives enco
mpassed by Game Design and Level Design of terror, also punish, they also generate more Survival Horror, more horror, more eviction, more hopelessness when in the end, whatever we do, we are doomed. And this is something that the narrative of The Callisto Protocol also gives us. Now, you've seen that The Callisto Protocol can be seen in many ways in survival horror, and in Game Studies. There are many other perspectives besides these that I have offered you, to see The Callisto Protocol, also co
mpared to Dead Space, with Silent Hill, with Survival Horror games, and how we can also understand The Callisto Protocol with different academic sources in the Games. studies. That is, if you want to write an essay, you want to do research, you want to do an analysis of Survival Horror in The Callisto Protocol, Dead Space, Silent Hill, Resident Evil... these sources, this video can help you a lot and also the academic sources that I could use. If you have more ideas, you have more opinions, more
theories, of course, leave them in the comments and let's continue to make this Game Studies Compact channel bigger to learn more about video games and academic research on them. I wish you all a good day, take care and and see you next time.
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