Okay, let’s have a little talk about video games. Chances are high that at this point you’ve heard of Fortnite, played a bit of Candy Crush on your phone and made up your mind that they’re almost entirely a massive waste of time. There’s certainly a case to be made to that effect and anyone who’s spent time watching another human sit passively, mouth agape as they periodically pound out a thudding beat with their fingers on a plastic controller, will have witnessed a certain brain melting effect. Gaming is also rarely ever discussed meaningfully outside of its inner circles, except for the occasional shocking news story about violence obsessed teens or documentaries about clinics for kids overdosed on Call of Duty.
All that said, at the age of 33 I’ve yet to outgrow gaming’s fascinating blend of interaction and entertainment. There really is SO much potential for meaningful experiences. Therefore, I’d like to make a brief case, not just for the positives of video games, but in a shocking twist, its potential relevance to Jewish education. To do this, I’m focusing on one of my favourite games in recent years.
Celeste is a single player platformer, much like Super Mario Bros. You play as Madeline, a girl who is attempting to climb a vast mountain, which mostly involves trying to jump across the screen and avoid obstacles. The gameplay is deceptively simple but refined to within an inch of its life, challenging but fair, inventive yet familiar.
But what makes Celeste truly shine, in a trend that is becoming more and more popular in modern gaming, is how it uses the format to tell a compelling story about mental illness. Through dialogue with other characters, we learn that Madeline is plagued with depression and self-doubt. The climb up the mountain represents a deeper attempt to triumph over her own perceived shortcomings, which takes on an even more literal meaning when a magical mirror manifests Madeline’s doppelgänger, a darker version of herself that attempts to sabotage the climb.
Even on my first playthrough, it struck me how powerfully Celeste managed to capture some of the core underlying dynamics we associate with the Yetzer Hara, our so called evil inclination. While the primary concern of the game is Madeline’s illness, it ultimately becomes a story about how we cope with the negative forces of our spiritual makeup.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto wrote of the Yetzer Hara in Derech Hashem that “Man is placed between perfection and deficiency, with the power to earn perfection. He is not compelled to either of them. He has the power of choice and is able to choose either side knowingly and willingly.”
Madeline spends a good amount of the game running away from her doppelgänger. She believes that only when she is able to “let go” of her dark side, will she be free to accomplish her goals. However, this attitude only drives her dark self to be more antagonistic and pushes Madeline deeper and deeper towards despair. At one point, she suffers a panic attack and falls to the bottom of the mountain. Finally, Madeline concludes that her dark self is just as scared of her and the two might have better luck trying to climb the mountain together.
The game makes a case that Madeline’s illness is not an external force of destruction, but rather a part of her that needs to be acknowledged and supported. This mirrors our understanding of the Yetzer Hara not as an evil inclination, but part of a careful balancing act of positive and negative forces that makes our soul whole. As Rabbi Luzzatto states, “Man must earn this perfection through his own free will.” By making peace with her negativity, Madeline releases herself from its power over her. The dark self eventually takes on the new name “Part of Madeline.”
Now, here is where I make my strongest case yet for video games as a meaningful device for delivering powerful lessons to players. On a story level alone, Celeste is incredibly charming. Madeline timidly apologises to her dark self for not taking her share of the responsibility and the two form a shaky bridge of emotional support, which grows stronger as they climb higher.
What’s most impressive however, is how this new friendship completely changes the way you play the game. With the two parts of Madeline working together, the player is able to access new moves, a double dash that allows you to literally jump higher and further. The gameplay itself is a metaphor for forming healthier psychological paths and you can feel a sense of accomplishment that was unavailable before; reach places that were previously unreachable. By the end of the game, Madeline makes it to the summit, but more importantly, we understand why she made it.
If the game makes a strong case for how to manage one’s psychological wellbeing, I believe it represents an equally compelling argument for how to manage our Yetzer Hara. Not by ignoring it or blaming it for our shortcomings, but by acknowledging it, accepting the important role it plays and finally, choosing the correct path forward.
Celeste is a highly acclaimed game and for good reason, but it is also just a drop in an ocean. There are many hundreds of games out there that aren’t just about shooting guns, but are using the format of interactive entertainment to convey ideas in ways that books and movies can’t. It can’t be understated just how powerful a tool it is to hand control of a story over to the player and let them discover its secrets for themselves.
It might take another generation or two before gaming is fully accepted by the mainstream as a bone fide art form, but it is a massive milestone on a list of technological advancements that’s taken us from carving and sculpture, to paintings, to photography, to the moving image, which in just a short century itself leapt from silent film cinemas to mini TVs in the palms of our hands. Make no mistake, gaming is part of that glorious lineage and has considerably more scope for growth in this day and age.
From primary school to high school, yeshivah and beyond, Jewish values have been conveyed to me through storytelling. So I ask, instead of dismissing gaming as a medium outright, how long before we start developing video games for Jewish kids based around the Ten Commandments? What kind of video game characters would you want to see your son or daughter play as? What would their special powers be and where will their journey take them? How long before we harness the full power of modern interactive storytelling and put gamers of all ages back in control of their own Jewish destiny?
