By Anna Burns
Author’s note: Content warning for suicide and game spoilers.
I tend to play video games that are escapist—ones that let me play at being stronger, faster, or smarter. They let me be the hero but rarely do they hold up a mirror to my own life. The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories is a platform puzzle game about a 19-year-old trans girl’s pain—something that I myself remember all too well. The game takes a magic realist approach to how JJ (our protagonist) deals with this pain: clues are spread throughout the game, but by the end, it becomes clear to the player that JJ has tried to kill herself in a school classroom, and what we are playing in is a dream. It’s a lotTM.
Though the game never says the word “transgender,” it makes it textually clear that JJ is trans. The game also takes care to ensure that the players know that this is fine—the opening of the game, in fact, starts off with a black screen with the comforting words, “This game was made with the belief that nobody is wrong for being what they are.”
The game centers around the pain that JJ endures. The puzzles will often require that JJ lose a limb or two in order to complete the puzzle. While the visual gore is limited, the audio makes it clear that every time this happens, she suffers. A common concern in depictions of queers in media is the ever-present genre of tragedy porn. However, because of the tight ludonarrative cohesion, the suffering that is inflicted on JJ never seems like cheap drama or an edgy gameplay mechanic.
The story unfolds mostly over text messaging. As JJ gets further along, it’s clear that she has a secret, all the way up until the ending scene when she is revived in the classroom and has a different character model—one that appears to be assigned male at birth. The story then becomes how she got here and, more importantly, how can she move past the trauma she has experienced. Ultimately, this is what makes The Missing stand out. There have been a lot of games that have addressed suicide, what leads up to it, and how people cope afterward; yet here, we see the topic tackled directly from the point of view of the person grappling with suicide.
Trans people both attempt and commit suicide at significantly higher rates than cisgender people. I gave it my best go around three years ago. JJ’s motivations were, in part, quite similar to my own. Though the narrative does not touch on dysphoria, the social aspects are something that I get. Being trans, especially in the early stages of transitioning or if you have trouble passing, can be exhausting. And, at least for me, there’s a nagging voice in the small hours of the night that you are a burden to your friends. That they are just humoring you. That they would be better off without you. This can be even more damaging if you have friends or family who say they care for you but don’t support you. Because then, in the back of your mind, it seems like you are a burden to them. In the game, JJ’s mom finds out that JJ is trans and texts her to tell her that she has found a psychiatrist to help her get back to “normal.” JJ’s girlfriend, Emily, is supportive, but that feeling of being a burden still extends into their relationship.
Only at the end of the game does JJ get to hold an in-person conversation with someone—Emily. For the rest of the game, she only texts. The only other people in the present dream world are a moose doctor that represents one of the medics working on her, and the nearest thing to an enemy the game has—a ghostly figure with a box cutter. Neither hold anything that resembles a conversation. All other characters are simply represented as texts from the past that are slowly unlocked as she progresses. This helps the game create an atmosphere of being utterly alone, showing just how JJ feels at her college, especially after one of her classmates outs her to a few friends (which turns into the whole school knowing). This is very effective in establishing the mood.
One of the things that The Missing does very well is that it resists the urge to romanticize suicide. That’s one of the reasons why it can get away with using violence, even in the near absence of any true enemies, in the gameplay: it reinforces that suicide is an ugly thing. Once you’ve finished the game and collected all of the texts and pictures that there are to unlock, there is an ending card that shows JJ outside of the dream going shopping for feminine clothes and trying on the outfit that her character model wore in the dream world. This upbeat ending is critical to the game as it turns the narrative from one more sad queer story to a story about the pain we suffer on the way to being who we are. The line between those two narratives may be slight, but the differences are vast. The Missing manages to avoid misstepping into the trap of thinking that suffering is important because it builds character or enlightens us somehow. Rather like in my own case, JJ’s suicide attempt motivates her to transition. Her suffering brought her to this personal low, but her own strength, with the help of Emily, brought her out. That is what this game gets so very right.
It’s obvious by this point that I found this game to be relatable on a deeply personal level. Although everyone experiences being transgender differently, I felt like this was a good-faith attempt to explore suicide and what it means to a person both before and after. For a decently large game studio, this was a very good representation of a trans woman. It took me about six hours to complete the game and around 11 total when I went back and got all of the collectibles throughout. I highly recommend it, with the caveat that it is not always a pleasant game. But if it was, it would be missing the point.
The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories
Developer: White Owl
Publisher: Arc System Works
Release Date: October 11, 2018
Anna Burns is a graduate student in psychology at Alabama A&M University. Her clinical interest lies in sex & gender. She also likes otters, reading, talking about psychology, and has more knowledge of Star Trek than may, strictly speaking, be wise.
