Before the Law

After reading Kafka's Before the Law and playing its game incarnation I had some trouble with deciding on what impression the two pieces left on me. The best idea I brainstormed revolved around the two versions working as metaphor for passive and active media consumption. Kafka's piece represented literature and film to me, we're given a basic message, can create dialogue with it and about it, but ultimately can't change the outcome.

In Brizzi's game, the player can either wait at the gate, or can bypass the gatekeeper (I pressed ahead when told to stop, and felt a bit rude, the gatekeeper is just doing his job and I blow past him like he's not there) and pass through the gate. The reward for this is a blank book, and an open-ended ending like Kafka's piece. If we wait like the gatekeeper says, we're told that we could have passed at any time, and that our choice to not pass was our own.

I felt that this talk of choice illustrates the consumption of video games. Players are given options that can change their experience in a game. Be they good or evil alignments, or doing actions in a certain order to reach a specific outcome ( Dead Rising, for example) games can provide more than one outcome for interpretation. The waiting ending in Brizzi's game conveys vague hopelessness, the character finds that their choice rested upon their shoulders the entire time; now that feebleness has taken hold however, the option of choice is taken from them. When passing the gate, the blank book of law can be seen in a few ways. It can be seen as a lack of definitive answers, it can be seen as an opportunity to create one's own laws and ideas, or it can be seen as a really crappy quest reward.

Kafka's piece is open ended, and vaguely despairing. Brizzi's game is more hopeful, thanks in part to the choice players are given. Brizzi's game definitely strays from Kafka's ending, but keeps the ending ambiguous enough that it can be considered on its own.