ChatChat and the power of cat naps

Hello. I'm a cat.
/meow.

Here's a thing. I'm gonna write some words about it, just you wait and see, and briefly touch on a few interesting things it made me think about.

ChatChat is a new little piece of fun from Terry Cavanagh who you may know from games such as VVVVVV and At A Distance. Here's the game information:


I played it for a while yesterday in a room with two or maybe three other people. I ran around a bit, got tagged and turned into a dog - tagged someone else to turn them into a dog and me back into a cat. I caught a mouse and found the music room and napped - napped my butt off - and it was fine, fun, a cute Sunday afternoon distraction from the internimable agony of existence.

Then, a few hours later, the Twitter chimes went up and a bunch of people decided to have a go at once. I dutifully joined in. And with eight, nine, ten players - a dozen - everything just blossoms and comes to life. Because of course it's not really about the game, it's about everyone milling about inside of it. A critical cat-mass.

My first instinct, jumping in with loads of others, was to run to the music room. Not to play there myself, but to show everyone that they could. I napped one block in to the secret entrance, just to highlight the path's existence to anyone who happened to wonder past - just to show them that, hey, listen, there's something cool over here. Come and see. And they trotted over and found the room - or maybe they knew it was there already - but I like to feel useful, even if I'm lying to myself. Everyone's having fun with the floor piano.

This plan backfired almost immediately.
People didn't file through politely to have a play on the piano. They milled around and snuggled up together in a big nap pile until the entrance was blocked up. Precisely like cats - lying in the way, making a nuisance of themselves in the cutest way possible. People (definitely people here, not cats) started getting annoyed - get out the way you assholes! Is there something through there? Move, move, I want to see!

Noo, noo - I was only trying to help! :{
But it was hilarious so I stuck around for a little while before running off on my own again. I ran straight to the other secret entrance and did the same thing - went to sleep there, but now not to help but to simply wait. Wait, and see what might happen. We'll call it The Nap Trap.

I clicked away from the game for a bit to look at some other stuff on the internet (there's plenty to look at, you know), and when I came back, sure enough, the exact same thing had happened again. Four cats all in a row, snoozing away, cats and dogs either side of us all trying to get through. Social group dynamics, you guys? Everyone is drawn together, drawn to interact with each other. Not in a negative way, void of their own free will - but in a positive way, happy to be together, playing. There's nothing happening, exactly, but at the same time ... this is it. This is the best thing that is ever going to happen and it's great to be a part of it. The cat-to-dog tag mechanic is interesting in its own right - almost entirely because it carries no weight. If you get tagged by a dog, that is all and exactly what happens. You turn into a dog yourself and you're frozen in place for a few seconds, but then everything carries on as normal. With no real punishment or reward, doing this doesn't lose all meaning as one may expect, it simply becomes a social action rather than a mechanical one. An action based on emotions. Chasing someone because it's fun rather than because there's a reward, or tagging someone simply because you might prefer being a cat, might prefer being able to meow over being able to howl.

Personally, I liked to tag someone and then take a few steps back, go to sleep and see what they did next ... far more interesting than running away in fear of 'losing' again. A mechanic which could easily have pushed everyone apart - sent them running to opposite corners of the world to keep ahead in the game - ends up bringing everyone together.
Those actions are key, too. There's a good reason why emotes have persisted through online games. We're used to text-based communication online - it's pretty efficient and makes sense to use, but it is certainly lacking in a lot of ways. Watching your character actually do something in the world - say, waving to someone - is so much better than just typing 'hello'. Because it is actually in the game, not the one-step-removed reality of the chat box. Because it is explicitly your character - a mystical creature in a fantasy land - doing the communication, not just boring old you - sat on your arse in your pants. It grows the reality of the world in your own mind. It provides personality, and it provides a connection.

I could write a whole ... I don't know, at least a whole paragraph ... about how much I love the inclusion of gestures in Dark Souls. Watch me now. How they can instantly set the tone - set the emotional scene - for a confrontation with another player or a little jolly co-operation with a friend. Provide a brief moment of levity after a thankless, dirty struggle in the reeking heart of the world.

You might suppose ChatChat is a chat room where, incidentally, there's some kind of simple game going on at the top of the screen. But it isn't - well, it wasn't for me anyway. In fact, while playing as a cat, acting as a cat - being a cat - any written communication started to seem a little out of place. A little brash, almost vulgar. Why are you typing? Stop typing. You can't talk, you're a cat. And so, the emotes become the most important, the only, form of interaction.

As the tag system frees the mechanic from the mechanical, so the emote system (and, well, mainly the whole setting) frees your expression from the expected. It's curious. Is there any other online game where you play as a living creature that isn't human or humanoid? Or a creature that lacks the intellect to communicate as we do - in words and sentences? I can't think of one myself. Even accepting that typing in the chat box is a step removed from the game world, it still makes sense. Rationally it's not out of place - all the characters could just be having this communication in-game, could be having these conversations. A bunch of dumb cats could not, and so actually chatting in ChatChat becomes this awkward source of dissonance.

I suppose on that note I do role-play more than I assumed I did - take on my character's identity more readily on a subconscious level than I had realised - but every other online identity I have taken is typically, simply, a human in a fancy dress costume. I rarely act differently because of who I am on-screen, because who I am on-screen can talk and communicate and function socially exactly how I can in real life.

It's just really rather liberating to be a cat for an afternoon.
So, yeah - have a go if you like, certainly if you can get together with enough people for it. Seems pretty much every article now I talk about how much I just like pissing about, and here's exactly how you do it on a small scale. Give options, give an environment, and let me make my own fun with some new friends.

I'm not going to pretend this is a hugely important thing, because it's not. But ChatChat is definitely two things. One - a game that lets you be a cat with all the meows and naps and being adorable which goes along with that - so for that reason is obviously amazing. Two - a game which neatly throws into contrast a bunch of odd design quirks we have come to take for granted, and also allows for all these bizarre social behaviours to bloom in front of your eyes - so for that reason is just really fucking interesting to experience and play. Get into a six-way dog-howl-off, you'll see ... how it shifts, how you'll laugh. No-one's in charge and everyone's having fun. Hey look I did an article which didn't spiral out into thousands upon thousands of wasted, unread words. Maybe this is progress ... maybe it's simply the beginning of the end. Don't ask me, man. How should I know? I'm a cat.

/nap