Too Much Freedom at Camp Crystal Lake: Narrative Architecture and Friday the 13th: The Game (2017)

Caitlin Duffy

In his article “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” Henry Jenkins offers “a middle ground position between the ludologists and the narratologists… examining games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility.” In studying games this way, scholars and critics explore the methods and opportunities for narrative play and experimentation rather than attempt to fit video games into the same narrative box as traditional mediums of storytelling, such as novels or films. Friday the 13th: The Game (2017) uses generic images and characters to create a horrifying experience for its players familiar to any fans of the franchise or slasher genre, however, its most powerful narrative impact results from its semi-open setting. Friday the 13th: The Game provides an excellent space through which we can explore Jenkins’s “middle ground” and consider the storytelling potential of such a game.

Friday the 13th allows for up to seven players to play as the teenage counselors, all of whom must try to survive the murderous rampage of Jason Voorhees, controlled by an eighth player. Unlike many other horror video games, Friday the 13th does not employ any sort of directed navigational direction and instead allows characters to roam freely throughout the virtual world for either twenty minutes or until they’ve been butchered by Jason. Although the players can move when and where they’d like, there are certain tasks that each player must fulfill to win the game: Jason must kill all of the counselors, and each counselor must survive by lasting for the full twenty minutes, killing Jason, or escaping the campgrounds. Friday the 13th has a soundtrack similar to one that might be used in a horror film and when Jason comes close to a counselor, loud aggressive music plays, serving both to warn the players of his proximity and to heighten the players’ fear.

Described as “a gory game of hide-and-go-seek,” there is not much narrative within Friday the 13th: The Game;^[1] however, it uses its filmic original to its advantage by infusing the story of Jason Voorhees into the virtual space of the game and evoking the atmosphere of the original narrative. Players bring their own memories of the film with them into the game’s space and the game’s designers “play on those memories and expectations.”^[2] As a fan of the film, I knew that I should fear Jason and that Camp Crystal Lake was not a safe location for me, a teenage camp counselor. I find that playing Friday the 13th: The Game as a counselor is often a far more frightening experience for me than watching any of the films. I’m a jumpy video game player to begin with, however, knowing that there are real people out there playing as the other counselors and Jason Voorhees adds to this fear. I feel more responsible for the lives of the counselors, and I doubly fear Jason knowing that there is a real person somewhere out there focused on hunting down and slaughtering my counselor avatar. Additionally, an increased sense of empathy and responsibility is common in horror video game experience due to the fact that players are immediately in control of what the protagonists do on screen.^[3] This directly opposes the experience of watching a horror film, where viewers have no control over these choices, and can easily judge the characters for the foolish decisions that they most certainly would never make. Horror video games make it clear that you would, in fact, make all the wrong choices.

As Jason, killing can be accomplished in numerous fun and grisly ways: depending on which Jason you select as your avatar, you might kill any counselors that cross your path with a spear, pickaxe, or a machete. Jason also gets to play with various “grab kills” (options include “head punch” and “choke”), other “non-weapon kills” (my favorites include “eye gouge,” “bear hug,” and the “heart punch”), and “environmental kills” which rely on the area in which the kills take place (favorites within this category include “marshmallow stick,” “toilet drown,” and the “tree arm ripoff”).^[4] Jason also has some special abilities that perfectly fit the slasher genre. For example, he can use “shift,” which allows him to quickly move across short distances. This mimics the supernatural ability of the filmic version of Jason, as well as his fellow slashers, to suddenly catch up to running victims even though he is constantly walking. For me, playing as the Jason character felt much more similar to my experience watching the Friday the 13th film franchise. As Jason, I can celebrate each kill I successfully commit without the fear of being killed myself, just as slasher audiences cheerfully enjoy the gory and often bizarre murders portrayed on screen.

There are also fourteen camp counselor avatars from which players can choose, most of which are based on characters from Friday the 13th films, though four of these avatars were designed and named after Kickstarter backers of the game who donated over $10,000 towards the project. Each counselor has a different set of skills and weaknesses. Counselors aren’t armed prior to gameplay, but once the twenty-minute timer begins, they are encouraged to locate a weapon on the campgrounds and arm themselves. If you are playing as a counselor, your goal is to escape death-by-masked-killer. This can be accomplished in one of three ways: by killing Jason (a feat which can only be done if multiple counselors work together, and even then is a nearly impossible task), by waiting out the twenty minute timer, or by escaping the campgrounds by car, boat, or through a police rescue. To help with these three methods of winning the game, counselors can call upon Tommy Jarvis, a favorite character of the film franchise who made his first appearance in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). Once Jarvis has been called, the first player to die or escape will be able to return to gameplay using the Tommy Jarvis avatar. He is one of the strongest counselor avatars due to the fact that his stats are incredible; Tommy basically has no weaknesses and he comes pre-equipped with a number of helpful items, including a shotgun, pocket knife, medspray, map, and walkie-talkie.

While Friday the 13th is most obviously categorized as a slasher game, it also contains some key elements of the “game horror” sub-genre, which is at least partly defined by its interest in questions of ethics and morality.^[5] Although morality has always played a major role in the slasher genre, game horror tends to portray these questions in a messier way. Traditionally, the slasher film presents its moral code through its victims: the morally correct tend to survive, while the characters who drink, do drugs, or have pre-marital sex get butchered by the slasher film’s killer.

Rather than remain “pure,” characters within game horror sub-genre are typically encouraged to make whatever choice best supports their own survival and allows them to “win” the game. While this choice may sometimes overlap with a moral or ethical code (for example, characters in the Saw franchise often discover that they need to work together to ensure survival), it often goes against the character’s and viewer’s morality (for example, at the end of David Guy Levy’s Would You Rather (2012), final girl Iris chooses to shoot an innocent man in order to win the money prize which she plans to use to pay off her brother’s considerable medical costs). When a slasher film franchise like Friday the 13th is turned into a video game, it’s not surprising that it takes on some of the characteristics of game horror. Suddenly, Friday the 13th can be enjoyed by fans in such a way where their choices determine the outcome of the narrative. Since it is a game, Friday the 13th: The Game takes on some of the characteristics of game horror; most importantly, players of this game survive by making the correct decisions and actions to support their own survival. Suddenly, the concept of sin doesn’t really matter.

The interactive nature of video games like Friday the 13th: The Game allows users to not only enter the game’s narrative architecture, but also to dramatically alter the story or genre. Soon after the game’s release, a major flaw became apparent due to the game’s lack of depth and the considerable freedom offered to players in their movements and choices. Legions of self-proclaimed “team-killers” complained about the repetitiveness of the game and, instead of focusing on escaping or killing Jason, began to purposefully kill the other counselors.^[6] In August 2017, the game’s developers removed team-killing capabilities from public matches, making it so that counselors could not kill other counselors except by hitting them with a car or placing a surreptitious bear-trap.^[7] This, however, didn’t stop players from finding more ways to transform the narrative. The newest trend reviled by the Friday the 13th: The Game fandom is called teaming, which is when a group of people playing on the counselors team up with Jason and help him to track down and kill other counselors.

Team-killing and teaming not only drastically transform the game’s narrative, but they also push Friday the 13th further into the game horror sub-genre.^[8] In order to increase their chances of winning, anyone playing as a counselor cannot trust the other counselors due to the existence of teaming, as well as the fact that counselors win by surviving and they don’t have to help others survive in the process. In Friday the 13th, then, there is no comradery amongst the counselors as there is in the film franchise, and everyone must look out only for themselves. This style of gaming naturally raises questions of in-game morality. While most players wouldn’t dream of becoming a teamer or team-killer, many also wouldn’t consider protecting a fellow counselor from Jason’s attacks.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I accidentally once took part in teaming. Prior to researching for this article, I had no idea that teaming was as common as it is, nor did I know that it ruined the game for many players. So when I saw three counselors casually standing around Jason Voorhees, I decided to join them. One of the counselors hanging out with Jason asked the group to form a circle dance around our favorite killer. We then roamed through the campgrounds with Jason, not really doing anything except breaking for random bouts of dancing. This lasted for about ten minutes until, suddenly, the counselor who previously instructed us all to dance told Jason to start killing us. It was my bad luck to be the one standing closest, so within a matter of seconds, I went from being one of Jason’s best friends to being choked to death. This experience represents a major narrative shift. No longer was Friday the 13th about a group of teenaged counselors trying to escape a masked killer, but it instead told a comedic story of friendship and betrayal.

To be fair, however, most of my Friday the 13th: The Game adventures demonstrate the fact that the majority of its players commit to the franchise’s intended narrative. The most common frustration I encounter while playing this game online results from players who get so frightened that they spend the entire game hiding rather than working towards accomplishing the various tasks needed for counselors to escape, making it incredibly difficult for those of us actively trying to escape Jason’s clutches. Otherwise, it seems like most players-as-Jason will commit to playing the slasher and players-as-counselors will support the other counselors as much as possible while avoiding Jason and working towards a means of escape. There have been multiple times when I’ve been surprised and even a bit touched at the kindness of these strangers. For example, once a fellow counselor was driving away in a car and actually paused their escape to rescue me. They drove up to where I was fleeing from Jason and started honking the car’s horn as a means to get my attention. Although this also caught Jason’s attention, I managed to get into the car and we drove far away from Camp Crystal Lake. To whoever that was: thank you for risking death-by-Jason-Voorhees just to save me!

The semi-open setting of Friday the 13th: The Game allows players a considerable amount of freedom. It is in this narrative space that fans can dramatically alter the narrative, genre, and affective experience expected of media within the Friday the 13th franchise. Based on my time spent playing this game, I’d argue that the freedom permitted is, for the most part, a good thing.

Notes:

^[1] Valle

^[2] Jenkins

^[3] Madigan

^[4] For full details on the various types of kills Jason can execute, see Friday the 13th: The Game: The Wiki.

^[5] For more on game horror, see Dawn Keetley’s “Game Horror, Circle (2015), and Lifeboat Ethics.”

^[6] For more information on team-killing in Friday the 13th: The Game, see Stacie Ponder’s article “In Friday the 13th, the Real Killer isn’t Jason – It’s Your Teammates.”

^[7] See Jordan Sirani’s “Friday the 13th: The Game to Remove Team Killing.”

^[8] Interested in watching team-killing and teaming in action? See “FRIDAY THE 13TH TEAM KILLING COMPILATION” for team-killing and “Jason’s Slave- Friday the 13th Funny Moments” for teaming.

 

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Works Cited

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” MIT Blog, n.d., www.pcgamer.com/friday-the-13th-review/.

Madigan, Jamie. “The Psychology of Horror Games.” The Psychology of Games, 29 Oct. 2015, www.psychologyofgames.com/2015/10/the-psychology-of-horror-games/.

Wilde, Tyler. “Friday the 13^th Review.” PC Gamer, 31 May 2017, www.pcgamer.com/friday-the-13th-review/.