作者：Allegra Frank

我很少在玩游戏的时候真正付出情感，除了在玩Nina Freeman的作品。

Freeman(from polygon)

她在Star Maid Games与团队一起开发的游戏，如较短的免费游戏《Freshman Year》和《Cibele》（刚于不久前发行于PC和Mac上，售价8.99美元）都是非常个人化的游戏。这些游戏都会突出一些较开放的内容，有时候还会表现出青少年较直率的情感。因为它们都非常诚实，所以这些游戏都很难玩，但我们却可以从中更清楚地看到自己。

《Freshman Year》便表现出了大学时期比较常出现的性骚扰。基于文本的《Mangia》重新呈现出了Freeman与体像和疾病的抗争。《Cibele》更是在过场动画中使用了她自己的声音和肖像。所有的这些游戏都将她自己作为了游戏内部的玩家角色。

对于我们来说看到一款游戏以如此的方式去暴露它的创造者真的是一件很不寻常的事，这种情况比较常出现在音乐和文学中。而看着Freeman在这些游戏中的遭遇有时候会让我们感到不舒服，但我们也能从中感受到她的真实。她就是一个将自己当成对象的艺术家，同时她也需要处理那些对于伴随着网络和游戏长大的一代人非常熟悉的主题。

Freeman正在创造少数开发者愿意创造的内容

对于玩家来说，这种能力能够有效区分作为开发者的Freeman的作品与许多其他独立开发者的作品。特别是《Mangia》便一直困扰着我。尽管我一直作为“Nina”在游戏，但是除了偶尔出现的抽象涂鸦外，游戏中几乎没有任何图像，这也迫使我需要独自去勾勒出游戏中的行动。

就像许多青少年或成年女性一样，我一直在努力解决《Mangia》中的首要问题。我知道认为自己毫无价值或讨厌自己的身体是怎样的感觉。而在媒体中与这些想法进行互动时我经常会被一种非常强大的逃离方法所吸引。有许多游戏让我们向前看，并想象一些看似不可思议的东西。而Freeman的作品却要求玩家向内看。在她的游戏中，我们将跟随着Freeman前进，当她看着镜子时，我们也将看到自己。

再一次地，这具有特别的启示作用且让人非常熟悉，特别是作为像Freeman那样伴随着网络成长的人来说。我和Freeman一样，在大学的时候我们也会在寝室里贴着美少女战士的海报。她的声音（游戏邦注：不管是实景中还是画外音）有时候也会让我觉得就像是自己的声音，通常都是缺乏感情的。

这是“网上一代”在经历90分钟的游戏后突然遭遇游戏结束的整个过程的主旋律。我的生活中很大一部分都是发生在网上，我会在那里与那些我从未在现实中见过的人建立关系。像MMO（即Nina和她的初恋Blake确立了彼此间的关系的地方）这样的网络社区对于那些在现实中找不到一个舒适空间的人群来说就像是天堂般的存在。在游戏中有关性的内容是偏题的，这是一款有关在许多人认为是孤立的空间中找到一种联系的游戏。

我从未觉得自己适合任何地方，但我却发现网络和游戏是例外。而《Cibele》便同时代表了这两个世界。在进入网络游戏“Valtameri”之前，游戏是关于《最终幻想》，你可以浏览Nina之前的博客，电子邮件和自拍照。阅读她在高中和大学时写的诗歌仿佛将我自己带回了青少年时期。而翻看她的自拍照（展示出她不断变得更成熟）也让我想起了自己的成长过程，而在现实生活中这有时候会让我觉得很尴尬并且很难回想起来。

虽然这有点混乱且较为私密，但这就是我们所谓的成长呀。我们很难判断有多少游戏内容是骗人的，又有多少内容是源自Freeman本身的生活以及当时的时代。这是一种与众不同的感受，虽然有时候也会让人觉得不舒服。而这种方式也是其它游戏从未尝试过的。

《Cibele》中的关系分解是很难看出来的，但是我所感受到的痛苦也绝不是我对于Nina的感受。尽管我对她的遭遇表示同情与理解，但是我之所以流泪是因为想到自己在青少年时期的经历。而正这些被埋藏起来的故事与感受才具有真正强大的影响力。

关于我对这些游戏的最突出感受是，我正在控制着一个与我自己的年纪非常相似的游戏角色。在这些游戏中并不缺乏坚强的女性—-如果你知道目标是什么以及自己真正想做什么的话。但是在游戏中扮演一个不比我年长多少，且同时还存在于现实世界中并与我拥有许多相似经历的女性角色是一种非常特别的体验。不过可以肯定的是，比起相似点，我和Nina拥有更多区别。因为从一开始，我在玩像《Cibele》这样的游戏时都是作为一个非白人的主角。但即使如此，对于我来说能够玩这些由和我同代的女性设计的游戏是非常有意义的。

你不一定非得是一个青春期的女生才能真正欣赏这些游戏。对于那些成功离开那一阶段的人来说，这都具有一种特别的意义。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Indie games are better because of Nina Freeman’s personal stories

by Allegra Frank

I have rarely felt more confronted emotionally by my gaming experiences than while playing the work of Nina Freeman.

Her games, like the short, free-to-play Freshman Year and Cibele, which she developed with the team at Star Maid Games, which just launched on PC and Mac this Monday for $8.99, are immediately personal and function as playable accounts of her own. They’re games that feature the sort of open, sometimes sloppy emotion of a teenager’s poetry journal. They can be hard to play not because they’re so honest, but because it’s so easy to see ourselves in them.

Freshman Year tackles the all-too-common experience of collegiate sexual harassment. The text-based Mangia recounts Freeman’s struggles with body image and chronic illness. Cibele goes so far as to use her voice and likeness in the video cutscenes, and all of these games feature her as the player character.

It feels unusual to see a game expose its creator in such a way; this level of vulnerability is seen almost exclusively in things like music and literature. To watch Freeman suffer in these games — and even moreso, to be the one playing through it — is at times painful, but the sincerity comes through. This is an artist using herself as the subject, while dealing with complicated topics that are universal for a certain generation growing up with the Internet and gaming.

FREEMAN IS CREATING ON A LEVEL FEW DEVELOPERS ARE WILLING TO GO

This ability to speak so directly to the player is what sets Freeman’s work as a developer apart from so many other indies. Mangia in particular continues to haunt me. While I might have been playing as “Nina,” the lack of any graphics beyond the occasional abstract pen scrawl forced me to visualize the game’s events for myself.

I’ve long struggled with the issues at the forefront of Mangia, just like many adolescent or adult women. I know the feelings of worthlessness and hatred of your own body. Interacting with these thoughts in a medium that I usually am attracted to as a method of escape was unbelievably powerful. So many games ask us to look outward, to imagine things that seem unbelievable. Freeman’s body of work, which so often involves her own body, forces the player to look inward, something she’s written about for Polygon in the past. In her games, we follow Freeman as she looks in the mirror, and we see ourselves.

Again, it’s at once specifically revealing and utterly familiar, especially as someone who, like Freeman, grew up on the Internet. Freeman and I had the same Sailor Moon poster in our college dorm rooms. Her voice — she performs the role of herself both in live-action and voice-over — sounded at times exactly like my own, often affectless and sort of low.

It’s that central theme of the online generation exploring love that left me with tears in my eyes at the game’s abrupt conclusion, 90 minutes later. I’ve lived a lot of my life online, building relationships, platonic and otherwise, with people I have never known outside of the virtual space. Internet communities, like the MMO in which “Nina” and her first love, Blake, build their relationship, are safe havens for those who have trouble finding a suitable space in reality. The sex shown in the game is beside the point; the game is about finding a connection in a space so many people see as isolating.

I’ve never really felt like I’ve fit anywhere, but I’ve found a home online, and in games. Cibele represents both of those worlds. Before heading into Valtameri, the game’s take on Final Fantasy Online, you can dig through Nina’s old blog posts, emails and selfies. Reading her high school and college poetry took me back to my own very similar teenage pieces. Exploring her selfies, which became increasingly provocative, a gesture toward her notion of maturity, reminded me of my own evolution, at times embarrassing and consistently hard to reflect upon.

It’s all messy and intimate, but so is growing up. It’s hard to tell how much of the content of the game is artifice and how much is taking from Freeman’s own life and writing from that era. It feels completely unique, and at times is uncomfortable. It’s intimate in a way that’s rare, if not non-existent, in other games.

The dissolution of the relationship at Cibele’s core — and it can’t be a surprise that it ends as quickly as it begins to anyone who has had these intimate online experiences — is hard to watch, but the pain I felt, those tears that welled up, weren’t because of how I felt for Nina. While she had my sympathy and understanding, it was for my own teenage years that I was crying. Trudging up those locked-up stories, those buried feelings, was overwhelming.

Probably the most salient takeaway from my reactions to all of these games is that, for what feels like the first time, I was playing as someone so close to my own age. There’s no dearth of strong women in games, if you know where to look and actually want to do so. But to play as a woman not much older than me, who lives in the same world that I do and has had so many of the same experiences is an uncommon and powerful thing. Nina and I are more different than we are the same, to be sure; what I would give to play through a Cibele-like experience as a non-white protagonist, for starters. Even so, it means so much to me to get to play and replay these games designed by and starring a woman from my generation.

You don’t have to have been a teenage girl to appreciate these games. They’re especially affirming to anyone who has successfully made it out of that stage alive.（source：polygon）