The Impact Factor

Love Is A Journey

Review

Cibele, Star Maid Games (Mac)

Abstract: Cibele is honest story about first love and the internet. The game’s three acts are divided into three distinct gameplay sections. Cibele is emotionally evocative, one of the few games that’s made me feel a simultaneous mixture of hope, sadness, voyeurism and intrigue. Frustrating MMO segments and some pacing issues harm the storytelling, but Cibele remains a unique & fascinating title whose themes have been missing in the gaming industry. It’s one well worth checking out.

Love is many things. Easy is generally not one of them. It’s complex, multifaceted. It’s also exceedingly rare to see realistically portrayed in a video game. Games do violence well, nuanced human emotion not so much. At least, not until very recently. As the medium matures, we’re starting to see more and more titles that touch on the subtlety of the human experience, and Cibele is one of them. Cibele is about something we’ve never really seen in games: a personal story about love, sex and romance in the internet era.

Cibele is the (semi?-)autobiographical story of the game’s creator, Nina Freeman. You play as the college freshman Freeman as she navigates the cloudy waters of trying to build a real, substantive relationship with someone. It tells the story of her first love, her first internet-era relationship, and first serious sexual encounter. The story is divided into a three act structure: the flirtation, the profession of feelings, and the commitment to meet up in person. Why is meeting up in person so important? Because Freeman’s relationship is not some school friend or someone she met at a bar—it’s someone Freeman met in an MMORPG. It is a romance that’s built via voice chat, in-game messages, killing monsters together, and the e-mail exchange of risqué pictures. The two play the fictitious game Valtameri, modeled after the niche real-world MMO Final Fantasy Online. Freeman’s avatar, Cibele, builds her relationship with ichi (real world name Blake). It’s a slow burn, but one that felt genuine. Over the course of the game, you learn more about Freeman, Blake, and the evolution of their flirtation. The characters drip with an age-appropriate emotional immaturity, which is only further enhanced by the (at the time) unusual nature of their courtship.

Love is not like the fantasy of an MMORPG. Far from it.

I’ll spare you the specifics, but I quite enjoyed the concise story experience contained within Cibele. The game’s story is strong, bolstered not by dramatic flair or unpredictable twists and turns, but by its groundedness. It’s honest. The story of Freeman’s romance isn’t perfect, but no love is. The pace undulates, sometimes taking too long to get where it is going. But its destination is worth the journey. Your closeness to the subject is strongly determinate of what you get from the game, however. If you never had an internet, long-distance, anonymous-at-first and/or troubled relationship, Cibele’s grip on you may be weak. Though I did not personally have an MMO lover, I saw this kind of love story happening with many of my friends. I knew several people who made close friends in World of Warcraft and several others who had that one anonymous-turned-real chat room boyfriend / girlfriend. My generation, or perhaps the social niche that I existed within, all had that person they knew who was trying to make a romance work with someone they met anonymously online.  If you didn’t, you probably were that person. It was a new frontier of love, of building human connections. Freeman’s story in Cibele was transportative—it brought me back to high school. It hit on a simple, quiet truth I hadn’t experienced in games.

Each of the three acts is divided into three subsections, from a gameplay perspective. They are investigating the computer, playing the MMO, and video cutscenes. Let’s talk about the first, and strongest, gameplay element: interacting with Freeman’s desktop. When each act starts you’re placed directly on a facsimile of a computer desktop. Here, you are Freeman. At the same time, however, you feel like a detective. Every file is there for your investigation and each provides a new piece of evidence that elucidates Freeman’s character. From old pictures to poems to chat logs to html dumps from her personal website, every single piece of content on her computer is yours to consume. And all of it is worthwhile. Whether they shed light on relationship with her close girl friends or current emotional distress, I found myself completely captivated in my investigation. At the same time, exploring Freeman’s character in this way felt uncomfortable. Voyeuristic. As Freeman’s relationship with Blake escalates, you can find scantily clad photos on the desktop. Seeing these made me anxious. Not only were these sent in private and now I’m viewing them, but they were pictures of the game’s creator herself.  Freeman is sharing something deeply personal with her audience. I’m not only impressed with her bravery in doing so, but I also respect the emotional impact they left on me. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so voyeuristic before while playing a game. Interacting with the desktop was compelling from start to finish, and something I wouldn’t mind seeing explored by Freeman more in future releases.

I opened and read every single file. I couldn't be stopped.

After you’re done exploring the desktop, it’s time to jump into the Valtameri client. You log into the Cibele avatar, meet up with ichi, and go off to kill some monsters. The gameplay here is pretty simple. You control the avatar by clicking the mouse, allowing you to both move around and kill enemies. The objective here is to join together with ichi to kill monsters until a boss shows up…and then kill that. Really, though, the time you spend in the MMO is more about fleshing out Freeman’s interactions with Blake. While you’re killing mobs, Freeman and Blake voice chat with each other, voice acted by Freeman herself. They talk about life, people and, as the story progress, about their feelings for each other. Unfortunately, experiencing these conversations is painful due to the poor MMO gameplay. Simply put: it’s not fun. Clicking around is awkward. Your character never really moves in the way you want her to. Invisible walls cause weird stuttering and frustrate as you try to follow ichi around (who is unaffected by these barriers). Killing enemies is mindless and tedious. Everything takes too long to accomplish. Perhaps the length of these sections is in place to facilitate the lengthy and gripping conversations between Freeman and Blake, but often my irritation with playing the MMO dampened my enthusiasm to hear the next piece of the story. The MMO section isn’t a complete miss, however. The best part is the multitasking. While playing you can respond to in-game messages from other players, check your (newly received) e-mails, your instagram analog, etc. Juggling all these digital responsibilities built immersion, supported the reality Freeman built, and was a great replication of how we all spend our time on the computer. I just wish playing the MMO was a little more enjoyable.

Gameplay here was a let down. I just wanted to get more of that narrative goodness.

The final part of each act is a video cutscene. These short segments are acted out by Freeman herself. And like everything else in the game, they provide a small view into Freeman’s life at the time. Unlike the desktop and MMO client, however, these come at the cost of immersion. For the other 2/3rds of the game, you are Freeman. Here, though, you’re watching her. I’m sure this was done intentionally: because though they were immersion breaking, the video segments added tangibility to the story that could not have been accomplished in any other way. Cibele isn’t an invented story with fictional characters: it happened to real people in the real world.

Welcome to Freeman's world.

This brings me to Cibele’s most impactful element: its honesty. Cibele is immensely personal and honest. The game tells you without embellishment who Nina Freeman is, who she was, how people found love online, and the power (and destructiveness) of relationships between two emotionally insecure individuals. Cibele is unambitious in the best way. So much of the video game industry is about being big, bold, bombastic, and never-before-seen. Cibele is happy to keep things simple. Keep them true to life. It’s a weighty experience that is unburdened by the story expectations of the medium it exists within. Nothing about the game is groundbreaking, except for the fact that games haven’t really ever told a story like this before. Freeman, and Cibele, seemingly want games to be more. Be different. And I love that.

Stories like Cibele’s are more frequently seen in writing, television and film. For my money, though, none of those have left that same impact as Cibele. The hour and a half I spent playing Cibele hit me harder than the same 1.5 hours I would spend watching a romantic drama. It took me a while to figure out exactly why, but then I realized the answer was quite simple: interactiveness. Games have long had the power to tell new stories because of their interactive nature, or tell old stories in new ways. Learning about Freeman via reading her chat logs, clicking on her photos, listening to her talk to Blake in Valtameri, was powerful because I had full agency in how much, or little, I wanted to know. I wasn’t being told. I was discovering for myself. Cibele shows the power of games to do narrative differently.

I learned what I wanted to, how I wanted to, about Freeman and Blake.
It was a power narrative experience only possible in games.

Cibele isn’t a perfect game, but it is an honest one. While playing I was uncomfortable, intrigued, and transported to a place in time that’s all but vanished. I came away impressed by Freeman’s archival nature and willingness to share her life with her audience. Cibele is a game I never knew I wanted. It’s a game the industry needs more of. Give Cibele a chance and discover what it means to you. I think you’ll like it.

Cibele
4/5