Loved: Questioning Obedience Through Art

Loved, a minimalist 2D platformer from Alexander Ocias, tells a complex story about obedience and love.  Released as freeware in 2010, this game exploded into the public consciousness through sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds.  Reviewers hailed Loved as "thought-provoking,"  "high-brow," and "a fantastic case of video games pushing the margins of human emotion."  Despite Loved's large following, however, the developer remains cryptic with his personal analysis: in an interview with Gamasutra, Ocias' said "Loved deals with dominance and power.  To provide a full overriding answer would defy the point of the game."

Although Ocias is reluctant to discuss his game, I do not share his qualms.  That said, I recommend you play the game before reading my personal interpretation of Loved.

One of the reasons for the incredible success of Loved arises in the way its gameplay and art combine to tell a dark and ambiguous story about a lopsided power dynamic.  Throughout the game, a mysterious voice orders the player to do increasingly questionable things—to take the more dangerous path, to avoid a checkpoint, to remain still, and to throw himself onto a pit of spikes.  While Loved initially seems to function as a poorly-controlled platformer, the true gameplay lies in whether or not the player chooses to obey the commands of the omnipresent voice.

Because the player's actions cause the environment to change, gameplay blends seamlessly with art. Obedience sharpens the world, adding definition to falling stones and cracked brick walls, while simultaneously removing all color save for black and white.  Disobedience, conversely, introduces color.  Hazards transform into bright squares of red, with other colors flickering about in the background.  After deliberate and persistent rebellion, a particularly unruly player may find himself wandering through a disorienting landscape composed of blue, green, yellow, purple and brown.  Gameplay, therefore, is connected to art in that the player deliberately affects the color scheme of Loved. 

Wait, you're actually talking to me instead of giving me orders?  Weird.

Gameplay is also connected to the game's conclusion—depending on the player's level of obedience, he receives a different ending.   If the player has acted contrary to the voice's wishes, then the voice asks "Why do you hate me?  I loved you" before giving the player a choice to leave or stay. A compliant player, on the other hand, is told "I am so happy that you are mine.  I loved you always."  Unlike many games that offer moral choices via dialogue, Loved presents choices as real time actions.  In this sense, Ocias both imitates real life and connects gameplay to story: the player's actions represent his way of navigating a complex relationship.  Gameplay affects both the art and the outcome of Loved; as such, the player-induced art changes possess significance.

Seriously, what is happening?

The introduction of color into a black and white world indicates a deliberate sabotage of the rule system set up by the voice.  By disobeying, the player enters a new space in which the world is strange and confusing.  The colors add difficulty to navigation, symbolizing the player's uncertainty about life without the voice.  Contrast this with the opposite: obedience prevents the appearance of a chaotic rainbow by pushing the world into clarity. Images possess more detail, and the color scheme remains simple. Obedience represents the familiar relationship—a flawed one, certainly, but one that the player understands.  He knows the rules of his current situation with the voice, knows how to act.  In this sense, the colors represent uncertainty and the black and white scheme represents familiarity.




The relationship between the player and the hostile voice that guides him is deliberately left vague. The player could be serving the voice as a believer serves a capricious god or, as Killscreen Daily suggested, as a submissive serves a dominatrix.  Personally, I view the relationship in Loved as an abusive romance.  In the game's opening, the voice intentionally misgenders the player before denigrating him to child status.  By changing the player's sex and age, the voice succeeds in compelling the player into unlovability.  In one of the endings, however, the player is granted both adulthood and his correct gender, thus returning him to a state in which he can be loved.

The ambiguity of the relationship, along with the way the player's actions affect both the art and the story, help establish Loved as an excellent example of an art game.  

Too many spikey things.

Side note: on my first playthrough of Loved, I tried to follow every single one of the voice's commands.  I succeeded until the final section, in which I failed after she told me "Do not fail." I slammed my hands against my thighs, clenched my teeth.  She told me she hated me, but I chose to stay with her anyway.