Thread by @Delafina777

So last night I played The Shivah on Steam. And I have feelings. store.steampowered.com/app/252370/The…

Was talking to a gay friend about it who was like, "Yeah, sounds like being gay in the 80s: 'Yay! We got representation! ...I hate it.'"

I didn't hate it, but I dunno, my feelings are complicated.

So, first, a bit of context: there is barely any Jewish representation in video games, despite there being a TON of Jewish game designers in studio head and creative director roles. And there's even less representation of Jewish *practice.*

In some ways, that's like TV. Despite the stereotype of TV writers being nebbishy Jews, there's been very little Jewish practice or culture represented onscreen. There are a lot of Jewish *characters,* but they tend to serve as snarky foils for the leads.

When we see any sort of Jewish practice on TV, it tends to fall into one of three buckets:
--seders
--Hanukkah
--sermons

This is Judaism mediated for non-Jewish viewers. Passover's one of the best-known Jewish holidays, and seders are one of the elements of Jewish practice to which non-Jews are mostly likely to be invited. Hanukkah is, in popular imagination, Jewish Christmas.

Oh, I forgot one:
--bar/bat mitzvah celebrations

When TV shows go inside a synagogue, either it's not during services (detective shows love doing that), or, if it is, the rabbi's giving a sermon (e.g. the West Wing). Because that's something familiar from church services.

Here's the thing, though:

Sermons aren't really a central part of shabbat services. Sometimes the rabbi gives a d'var Torah (a "word of Torah" or a thought on Torah), but sometimes they don't. My rabbi sometimes gives commentary throughout the service, but no distinct dvar.

Sometimes we skip it entirely.

There's also Jewish practice on display on TV in b'nei mitzvah and weddings, but again, you usually see the aftermath, the celebration, rather than the event itself. Dancing, a glass smashed, the bar mitvah boy getting gifts.

So, despite so many TV writers being Jewish, the Jewish practice shown on TV is usually mediated for familiarity to non-Jews: it's the corners of Jewish practice most likely to be experienced by outsiders.

That's always both intrigued and frustrated me. On one hand, Judaism isn't a proselytizing religion--quite the opposite--so there's a bit of a sense of privacy there, like a lot of this stuff isn't intended for outside consumption, so why put it on TV?

At the same time, though, the way it's shown in pop culture contributes to the popular American perception that Judaism is just a denomination of Christianity without Jesus and with some dietary rules.

Plus it would just, I dunno, be nice to see something familiar on TV.

On the other hand, a lot of TV writers got into the biz when assimilation was the highest good in non-Orthodox Judaism. Showing a bit of Judaism that didn't look that different from Christianity was a way of pleading for acceptance.

(Contrast depictions of Orthodox Judaism, which is usually used on TV to provide an "exotic" culture--like the Amish, or first-generation immigrant communities--for fish-out-of-water episodes for the main character.)

Mrs. Maisel was refreshing, in that it actually took the camera inside a synagogue multiple times. There was singing of L'cha Dodi! There was everyone rushing out to get food at the close of Yom Kippur!

Anyway, so that's the TV context. Games have considerably less Jewish representation than TV, even. And when they do...

It's been... not great.

Like, in this list of Jewish characters in video games, there's mostly Marvel characters, South Park characters and... Jesus. (Points for acknowledging that Jesus is Jewish, but.) giantbomb.com/profile/bloody…

As far as Jewish characters actually original to video games, this (really good!) article was able to come up with... three games. rockpapershotgun.com/2018/05/16/b-j…

So, all of that is context about the landscape, because 95% of talking about anything Jewish is context-setting, so this thread is already longer than a Twitter thread should be and it was all prologue.

So, now some personal context: I didn't grow up practicing, and I was lucky enough as an adult, upon my first "I want to join a synagogue" whim, to walk into a welcoming, female-led congregation shackled with neither rigidity nor an undercurrent of assimilationist self-loathing.

We're a Reform congregation with a Reconstructionist Moroccan-American rabbi who grew up in a LGBT-affirming, neo-Hasidic (focus on joy without all the ultraorthodoxy), PNW-hippie congregation.

On my first visit, she explained that whatever you think the purpose of Jews is (to serve the Eternal, to heal the world, just to BE), the purpose of *Judaism* is to serve the needs of the Jewish people, not the other way around.

(Or, put another way, the purpose of Jewish practice is to sustain and support the Jewish people so we can do what we're here to do.) There's also a strong current of joy and celebration as both a form of defiance and as the recharging we need to go back out & fight for justice.

And I've been fortunate in that I haven't encountered much of the arid, restrictive Judaism some people grew up with. There are synagogues in my area I tried and Don't Go To, definitely.

But my problem with one was that it was just too disorganized for me, and the other was that it was TOO hippie. (As I was walking in, the rabbi informed me that instead of a dvar there was going to be an art project. It was SO SEATTLE and I just couldn't.)

So that's my personal context for Jewish practice, and probably is 95% of the reason for my reaction to The Shivah, which was:

I found its sourness jarring.

Wait, one more bit of context:

In college I started reading the Rabbi Small mystery novels. They're Agatha-Christie-like novels from the 60s starring a rabbi who makes friends with a local police detective and the two of them solve mysteries together. detecs.org/small.html

They haven't always aged well (see, Rabbi Small's amused exasperation with the "women's lib" movement) but they're cozy and humanistic and a pleasant way to pass a rainy day.

They're also clearly an inspiration for The Shivah (in fact, a character even has an email in his inbox from Rabbi Small). Unlike the cozy Massachusetts crime-solving of the Rabbi Small books, however, the Shivah is a noir.

So anyway, having done a thousand pages of context-setting, let's get into the game itself.

I want to say first off that the production values are great. The voice acting is more grounded than is usual for video games, the pixel art is super-solid, and it nicely captures the feel of 80s adventure games. Music is also excellent.

It leans hard into noir atmosphere, which is also cool.

And the writing is super-solid and sometimes excellent (was playing it while hanging out with (non-Jewish) friends on vacation and a scene where two rabbis face off and there's not a single declarative sentence for like 5 minutes had them laughing out loud.

But right from the start, there were elements I found jarring. Like, this feels very Christian to me, and it's before you even get to the main menu. Not sure how much of that is noirishness, though.

(Points for the chai cursor.)

So, we open on a near-empty synagogue, with a single snoring congregant, a shiny-eyed fresh-faced cantor (who my group immediately head-canon-ed as the rabbi's boyfriend, because of course we did), and a world-weary rabbi. The cantor's singing "Adon Olam" (!!!).

(I was singing along until he pronounced "cheftzo" with a CH like in "chewy" which threw me for a loop.) The rabbi starts to give a talk on why bad things happen to good people, gives up in the middle, walks out, much to the dismay of Cantor Boyfriend.

I can't really handle Cantor Boyfriend being sad. He's adorbs.

The scene's written, I think, very realistically.

The thing is, speaking as a game writer, you want to write scenes that *feel* realistic, but aren't actually, because in reality, people aren't particularly articulate. It goes on a little long, is what I'm saying.

So, the rabbi goes into his office to have his mid-life crisis in peace, but Cantor Boyfriend persistently knocks on the door until you answer it, to let you know that a cop wants to talk to the rabbi.

The detective, hilariously, stops to smoke a cigarette every 2 minutes, including as he leaves. Just turns, faces the camera, smokes a cigarette, then leaves. Anyway, a former congregant the rabbi hasn't spoken to in 8 years was murdered and left the rabbi $10000 in his will.

You usually have 3 dialogue options. One of them is always "rabbinical response," which is, of course, a question.

Dead guy and the rabbi did not part on good terms 8 years ago.

The temple's in bad financial shape. Half the emails on the rabbi's computer are unpaid bills. You can log onto his computer and choose from Jewish jokes (the most dad jokes ever), email, and searching.

(Lots of emails from congregants about how dour the rabbi's sermons have been lately.)

The bulk of the game is searching for various names and locations to get addresses to go to and new characters to talk to.

(Friends want to go down to beach--will pick this up later.)

Okay, done with the beach and also done with the pool--so where was I?

Right, we're in Rabbi Stone's office, he's talking to the cop.

So, this is where the game already began to lose me a little bit. Even though his sermon was theology that didn't really speak to me, I had sympathy for him being world-weary and just Done. But.

His interaction with the cop is weirdly hostile even before the cop tells him he's a suspect in the murder. He's just sort of yelling for no discernable reason. But we figure out that he and Lauder, the deceased, didn't part on good terms.

Oh, I forgot something else that's off-putting. The game frequently refers to non-Jews as "goys." Which, I dunno, in my community at least, that term is seen as derogatory/hostile (as opposed to "gentile" or just "not Jewish" if you absolutely have to draw a distinction).

To be clear, not sure it’s pluralized. It’s things like “a goy asked Rabbi Moishe.”

So, after the cop leaves, Stone stands and stares out the window and voiceover monologues in classic noir style. He's haunted by the name "Lauder" because it's a link to a time when "things were simpler. When ethics and morals meant something." Let's put a pin in that thought.

So you go back out into the sanctuary, where Cantor Boyfriend admits he's been eavesdropping, and asks you if you're going to pay a shivah call to the Lauder household. Stone says no, because shivah calls are for Jewish families.

Oh dear.

Stone ponders a bit more about how the $10k solves all the synagogue's financial problems--

really? in THIS economy?

in Manhattan?

--but it's blood money, so he doesn't like it.

Also, Chekov's crawlspace in his office never gets used, and I am disappoint. I really like his office.

So, you can search on Lauder's name, and get his home address. Stone decides to investigate under the guise of making a shivah call, which is kind of gross given that 2 minutes ago he was telling Cantor Boyfriend he wouldn't do it because Lauder's family didn't count as Jewish.

So, off you go to the Lauder residence, where you meet Lauder's widow, who is a nice lady with an Indian accent.

So right away, I'm pretty uneasy, because it's hard to parse where the strength of the rabbi's reaction is coming from (you find out in this scene that he threw the Lauders out of his congregation). Like, it's unclear how much of it might be racism.

So, Mrs. Lauder is understandably not all that happy to see Stone once she remembers who he is. You have dialogue choices here, and you can actually lose the game at this point by pissing her off enough that she calls the police.

But even your conciliatory answers are dickish. You have a choice of "apologetic" at one point, which comes out as "I'll let that slide." FFS.

You can ask her why she's covered the mirrors. Her answer is super sweet--that it felt right. She asks if she did it right. (Every rabbi I know in real life would be trying to support the non-Jewish widow trying to respect her husband's traditions in death, but Stone, bleh.)

You can tell her it's perfect, at least. On your way out, she stops Stone to ask him why he threw them out of the congregation 8 years ago. He asks if she and Jack were happy. She says yes. He says his reasons don't matter, then. Which seems like some self-awareness.

So, you get the address of the Lauder's business (Sharming Fashion, named for Mrs. Lauder's family name, Sharma), and go to the office. You can log into Jack's computer using "Sharma" as the password.

You learn:
-he's been making payments to a Joe deMarco
-his accountant is Ethan Goldberg
-he's joined Beth Tikvah synagogue

That last detail is super-sad, too. It seems he found a synagogue that wasn't going to kick him out for having married a gentile, but then why the hell is Mrs. Lauder sitting at home alone instead of with his community around her?

(And given that she didn't know if she was doing shiva "correctly," it's not just that they've gone home for the evening.) All of the possibilities this suggests are sad.

Either his new shul was willing to accept him but not her, or she didn't want anything to do with them because Stone fucking ruined Judaism for her, ffs. Either way, she's trying to sit shiva alone now, and that's heartbreaking.

(One of the weirdest things in this, the only explicitly Jewish video game I'm aware of, is how empty of people it is. You can't do anything Jewish, really, without ten people minimum, but everyone in this is so alone.)

On Jack's computer is an email he tried to send Stone, but it was undeliverable because he spelled Stone's name wrong.

Unclear from anything so far as to why he'd turn to Stone for moral guidance, since there's zero evidence that Stone's a good person, but.

So, anyway, Lauder's been writing checks to a guy named Joe deMarco, and has a bunch of upset emails from his accountant, Ethan Goldberg. He was supposed to meet with deMarco.

You can go back and talk to Mrs. Lauder. She says DeMarco was one of their first investors. She thinks Lauder met him at temple.

Cue Stone: Whhhaaaa? but "DeMarco" isn't a Jewish name!!!

Like Stone IS? I mean, there's email in this game, so it's not like it's medieval era.

Anyway, there's a note that you can combine clues by dragging and dropping them on top of one another, but as far as I can tell, it never actually results in useful information (e.g. it will tell you that the initials JDM = Joe deMarco). It's barely used.

So off you go to Beth Tikvah. It's lovely.

You can examine the rabbi's podium there.

Beth Tikvah's rabbi, Amos Zelig, is an old man with a gentle Yiddish accent. You can have a rabbi duel with him, which is basically the question game. He enjoys it very much.

Turns out Mrs. Lauder requested that Zelig perform Lauder's funeral service. He's aware Ethan Goldberg was murdered (oh yeah, you found that out while searching on the computer).

You can ask him about Joe deMarco WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH THESE PEOPLE. THEY'RE IN MANHATTAN IN 2013. PRETTY SURE THEY HAVE ALL KINDS OF NAMES IN THEIR CONGREGATIONS.

You can choose to comment on "various oddities" like the fact that the only connection between the two dead men and DeMarco is this synagogue. If so, Zelig politely kicks you out of the synagogue and gives you his card, telling you to email him if you want further contact.

And bam, Beth Tikvah vanishes off your map. You are apparently not welcome back.

So, being the sneaky investigator you are, you can head back to your synagogue and log in to RavNet using Zelig's credentials, which you can work out from his bio on the web.

There are a lot of emails from congregants about how great Zelig's sermons are, requests for interviews from JWeekly about his philanthropic activities, and so on. All the stuff Stone presumably wants in his life. There's even a shoutout to the Rabbi Small novels.

But as you scroll down, things get a bit darker. There's an email from Ethan Goldberg expressing concern about the investor Zelig set Lauder up with, and one from Lauder being like, "are you SURE about this guy, Rabbi?" And one from "Roy" saying Goldberg's making waves.

And "you know what to do." Then one from Joe DeMarco, saying he'll take care of Goldberg.

And then one from Goldberg's wife, thanking Zelig for the lovely funeral he performed for Goldberg.

And Lauder, panicked because the police are asking about Goldberg.

Lauder's not shy about expressing his opinion, either.

Poor Lauder. He keeps posing the essential question, here, to rabbis who keep betraying him, in the face of their ethical failures: "And you call yourself a Jew?"

We don't learn much about him, even though we've got quite a bit of correspondence from him.

But a few things are clear: he loves his wife. And he expects better from his rabbi.

There's another email from DeMarco, implying he'll take care of Lauder, and then an email from Mrs. Lauder, thanking Zelig for Lauder's funeral service and letting him know she's going to try to sit shiva for him.

So, the mystery got solved... very fast. There was definitely some puzzle-solving in figuring out what to search for, and figuring out Zelig's log in, but it feels like it's over before you really get started.

You can head over to the bar where Goldberg was killed.

Neither the bartender nor a lone female patron will talk to you, but the guy who just happened to follow you in just happens to be Joe DeMarco. Joe claims not to know any of the other characters, and asks what a rabbi is when you confront him about knowing Zelig.

Like, dude, you live in New York.

He agrees to talk to you outside, and then tells you to follow him down into the subway, which you do because you have zero self-preservation instinct.

You can rabbi him into being upset enough to duke it out with fists rather than a knife. He asks you if you think your God is going to save you. You admit that's probably not going to happen, but...

You threaten to throw him in front of the train unless he answers your questions. He tells you Zelig finds people in his congregation trying to start businesses and hooks them up with Mafia investors. DeMarco is called in if they can't pay or get troublesome.

You can throw him in front of the train or knock him out. I chose the latter.

At this point the game takes you straight to Mrs. Lauder's apartment. She's been kidnapped.

There's a note from Zelig telling you that if you want her to live, you'll come to his place.

You have a conversation with yourself about how maybe you're sorry you kicked Lauder out and it led him to this, but then decide it wasn't your fault.

So of course he's got Mrs. Lauder tied up. He tells you he won't shoot her if you jump off the balcony.

Zelig's about to shoot her even if you agree, when DeMarco (if you spared him) shows up to demand his money, and Zelig shoots him. You note that DeMarco "served his purpose."

What the actual FUCK, game.

So then you go out on the balcony, and eventually maneuver him into where you can grab his gun (you get shot a few times).

And then we get what we have always wanted from a video game:

A rabbi fistfight on a Manhattan balcony.

And this meme:

You're welcome.

You can echo Lauder's question.

So, basically, you have this fist-fight (ah yes, the most Jewish method of resolving disputes), in which you weaken Zelig by asking him the questions you are basically asking yourself.

Is this how a rabbi acts?
How can he live with himself?
Does he think God will understand?

Each time you ask him one of those questions, his guard drops a bit and you can land a punch.

At the end, he unleashes on you, and boy oh boy. This character is gross as fuck.

Like, as far as I can tell, where the character has gotten to is that he was right to refuse to perform an interfaith marriage because the Jewish people are becoming extinct. Gross.

Anyway, so having knocked out Zelig, you head back inside.

Mrs. Lauder moms you into going to the emergency room to have your two gunshot wounds treated.

So, stuff largely goes back to normal.

In THIS economy!?

You navel-gaze some more.

Mrs. Lauder shows up.

This is a thing that feels very Jewish, which was nice.

More philosophizing, very noir.

And that's it.

Have some closing thoughts but need to contribute my computer for communal YouTube right now, so back later.

Okay, so ended up watching Into The Spider-Verse with friends at the beach house last night and then going to bed, so closing thoughts had to wait until today.

Ultimately, a lot of what left a bad taste in my mouth about this game isn't the fault of the game itself--it's the problem of being the only representation out there and having to bear the weight of being The Representation.

Wes was, I think, completely on target when he compared my reaction to that of queer people in the 80s--finding oneself hungry to see an important aspect of oneself represented in a medium one loves, and then getting something that feels very negative.

This is a small game, and a lot of the criticism I have that has nothing to do with its Jewishness pretty much turns on a conflict between its genre and its size--the mystery being solved almost as soon as you do any investigation, etc.

But as Jewish representation, its sourness really gets to me. In this game, your choice of rabbis is between an emotional abuser and racist who can't even find basic pastoral skills to comfort a widow and a con artist and murderer who preys on his own congregation.

All the rest of the Jews in this game? Are dead. They might be decent people, but they're dead.

And there's zero indication of why Lauder would continue to practice Judaism, or why ANYONE would, except for Zelig, who's using it as a financial scam.

I sort of wish, if the game had wanted Stone to have any good qualities, that Mrs. Lauder weren't Southeast Asian. I'm normally all in favor of diverse casts, but it's hard to tell if the vehemence of Stone's reaction--the hate in his eyes that Lauder's email describes--is...

...simply because she's not Jewish. It's hard not to read it as racism.

There isn't the context that would help us understand where his vehemence was coming from--did they discuss conversion? Were the Lauders planning to have kids? I'd expect sadness and resolve from a rabbi who wasn't cool with it, but that visceral anger and disgust is different.

I'm also not sure that Stone really has a character arc. (Mrs. Lauder showing up at his shul at the end suggests that SHE has one, but.) He says at the beginning that his break with Lauder happened during a simpler time, when ethics and morals meant something.

And when we first meet him, he has doubts, but is also being a jerk to everyone. Then during the climax, as he's beating back Zelig, he's affirming that he did the right thing by kicking out the Lauders.

So his character arc, as far as I can tell, is:
-Certainty about his ethics in kicking out the Lauders for intermarrying
-Doubt and jerkiness
-Certainty about his ethics in kicking out the Lauders for intermarrying, but maybe being slightly more polite this time, bc connection?

Like, I dunno, it's hard to know how to read his final monologue.

But I don't get an actual crisis of faith from him, even though it seems like that's supposed to be the arc?

So I dunno, ultimately, as I said, a lot of my issues with this game are more about it being the only explicitly Jewish video game out there, and being pretty sour on Jews and Judaism.

But that's a legitimate personal expression of someone's feelings and relationship to Judaism, certainly. So the bigger question is, how much responsibility do we have to take the overall genre landscape into account when representing marginalized groups?

Because the problem I have with this game isn't really with the game itself. It's that it's the ONLY representation out there, and it's pretty negative. Just like the discussion around gay-coded villains, the problem is when they're the ONLY representation.

And it's one thing when you more or less control the landscape. Working on Pathfinder, where we were producing hundreds of pages of content (and hundreds of characters) per month, it was easy to say, ok, 3-5 positive trans characters before we do a trans villain.

But it's a lot harder when the landscape you're looking at is indie games. Or even video games as a whole. And I don't want to be saying, nah, don't tell the story you want to tell.

But ironically, I think that the one clear moral the game articulates actually speaks to this.

In conclusion: beautifully-produced retro indie game. I very much want to see more games like this made.

I just personally finished it feeling kind of bleak about the whole thing.

And bonus: response from the writer!

https://twitter.com/WadjetEyeGames/status/1149194768678871040