Postgrad. Chapter one (beta)

What does a work of realist fiction owe its readers? Or to put the question another way, once a game has tipped its hand that it’s working in a realist mode, what exactly is being promised, and what can shake that promise? See, despite all the text coming in screenplay format and some biopunk sci-fi elements around the margins, Postgrad is very clearly trying to be a slice of life story; we follow the protagonist, Bel’s, experiences in close detail, with verisimilitudinous signifiers of clothes and music, and while her struggles aren’t exactly grounded – she’s juggling a PhD program, two business startups, and repaying favors to her grand-dad, who’s moonlighting as a veterinary pathologist and needs a place to set up shop – it’s all pitched pretty relatable, from the annoyances of dealing with governmental and academic authority, to going along with the hijinks of a friend you know is bad for you, to asides lingering on the goofy stuff you get up to when you’ve been working too hard and need a break.

I’m a big fan of literary fiction and realism, so go figure, I like all this! But then an occasional weird detail intrudes and it takes me more out of the game than if I was playing something more explicitly coded as genre fiction. To be clear, of course the world here isn’t the real one – those aforementioned sci-fi notes involve a pandemic caused by an arcane interaction of viruses with pre-existing parasite infections, and which has led to intensive study of the significant impacts it’s had on some patients’ brain function – but the game largely sticks to the rules it sets out for itself. No, it’s stuff like this two-person startup run by kids barely out of undergrad, and which is located in New Zealand, working directly with the U.S. FDA to get some kind of approval to manufacture and eventually bring to market an experimental drug they’ve developed by growing mushrooms in clean-rooms they’ve set up in the seat-rows of a long-shuttered cinema. Or the way that Bel hears rumors of a video game with psychotropic effects via a peer-reviewed academic paper, not fearmongering journalism or word on the street.

The biggest issue, though, is the game’s approach to time. See, the player’s main interaction with the game is that each day, you’re presented with a map of Wellington, NZ boasting one or more icons, representing the four storylines that make up the plot, and you pick which vignette you want to read (there’s no further interactivity in these sequences). Then after that concludes and time advances to the next decision point – usually the next day – you go through the process again. But this segregation and spacing-out of story beats leads to decidedly un-realist results: at first, I tried to juggle each of the story threads, but that meant that flunking a building code inspection had no immediate effects as the consequences were paused while I helped a friend with her theses, or that after getting some frozen cat-corpses from a storage container (don’t ask, this plot thread is a bit odd) it took like a week for them to defrost enough to be able to start examining them. It doesn’t make for great plotting, sure, but to go back to the point about realism, this cavalier approach to temporality and causation really threw me for a loop even though I don’t blink twice at the way that when I’m playing an RPG, quest-relevant events are always just about to happen whenever I arrive.

When I type all this out, perhaps I am focusing too much on what’s a minor element of a large game – just suspend belief and get over it! But I think I partially keep worrying away at these questions because Postgrad is up-front about the fact that it’s an incomplete beta, with each of the storylines petering out at more or less satisfying cliffhangers. So critiquing the narrative progression or characterization feels like it would be premature, since there’s clearly a lot more to come, and some of the more minor issues are things that would likely get worked out as the game approaches its final form.

(Just to note some of those down, though, in the interests of helping the author get to that point: the map should really let you click on the icons, not just the titles, to select a storylet. Kicking off the narrative with the Pop strand isn’t a great choice, since his provides the least immediate context on what Bel’s deal is and the cat stuff, in addition to being potentially off-putting for some players, is a slow burn. There are a fair number of typos that could be tightened up, and having the two engineers named Gavin and Giles meant I kept confusing one for the other. And the stand-up comedy bits are a fun idea in theory but in practice I found them twee and unfunny).

Oh, but there is one more thing that’s maybe worth talking about at this stage: the real-time mode! See, when you start the game, you’ve got a choice of two ways of playing it, either being able to advance the in-game clock by clicking, or by imposing a real-time timer. I think for a time-limited event like the Comp, pretty much everybody, myself included, would choose the former, but the game really seems excited about the latter option. Obviously, I haven’t seen it in action, but I admit I’m pretty dubious. While there have been some successful games using this approach, like the Lifeline series, I think those tend to be more built around narrative roller-coasters, with much of the draw involving the player waiting to see how their choices will play out. This seems like an awkward fit for Postgrad’s already-deliberate plot progression and the way it loves to through you into situations without explaining them, trusting you to remember key details or pick them up from context. It also could make the screwy timeline feel even screwier – imagine waiting a literal real-life fortnight to hear back from Giles (or Gavin?) on the inspection! It might be worth playing with, but I’d be tempted to lard this option up with a lot more warnings, as I suspect most players will take a little bit of time to build up the momentum needed to keep progressing in Postgrad.

I did eventually get to that point, though, and I’m curious to see how all the balls chapter one throws into the air eventually get caught (or don’t). There are definitely some rough edges to sand down on this early slice, but Postgrad I think will be worth the effort, even if its commitment to realism is sometimes shaky.