A Videogame’s Cube Teachings About Love & Attachment
Combining Companion Cube in Portal Saga with psychological experiments of motherhood
Portal is a 2007’s puzzle-platform video game developed by Valve Corporation, in which we play as Chell, a laboratory female subject manipulated by GLaDOS (an artificial intelligence). This robot promises to let us eat cake if we manage to pass all her test chambers. The game uses teleportation mechanics activated with a special gun capable of opening portals, connecting two different points. A plot as hilarious as good to play.
GLaDOS is very remembered by all fans, as she has a very special sense of humor, despite her cruelty and lack of empathy with us. But the real star, and the one most adored by those of us who have played Portal, it’s the Companion Cube.
There are other cubes in Portal, but the Companion Cube differs in one precise detail: it has a pink heart in each center of its faces.
Although his appearance in the game is relatively short (one level!), we quickly become fond of our cube. At first, GLaDOS tells us to take care of the Companion Cube, but she asks us to incinerate “him” at a certain point. At this point, the player tries to avoid this fate by all means, until realizing there is no other way to advance to the next test chamber. Every player remembers that part because it feels like a loss of a friend. It’s a stronger reason to love even more the Cube.
A lot of players made videos trying to save their Companion Cube from incineration with impossible cheats. Discussion around Companion Cube is endless. But one thing is sure: psychology may have a part in all of this.
Why is so hard to let go of the Companion Cube
When I was gathering information to write about this, I discovered the creators of the game relied on two psychological theories. On the one hand, the endowment effect (Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler, 1990) is the hypothesis by which people attribute more value to things solely for the fact of owning them: as my mug, my Companion Cube. On the other hand, loss aversion theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) explains how losses hurt more than gains. Gains make us happy and losses make us miserable, so, magnitude isn’t proportional at all.
The combination of the two theories had an impact on the player’s memories, and hence, we remember the loss of the Companion Cube as grief. However, there’s much more, as we’ll see below.
But hey, can you explain to me why I love a CUBE?
Our feelings about the Companion Cube have always reminded me of Harry Harlow’s attachment theory. This psychologist did experiments on monkeys to explain maternal bonds, in the middle of a paradigm where both Sigmund Freud (psychodynamic) and Skinner and Watson (behaviorists) believed that affection between a mother and her baby relied simply on feeding or by the conditioned response.
First experiment
Harlow (1958) took away from their mothers a bunch of baby rhesus monkeys, and put them in cages with two types of artificial “mothers”. One was made of hard wire but had food inside. The other had a cloth around it and a friendly face on top, instead of food. So, would baby monkeys choose affection over food needs? If choosing the wire mother, love would be conditional and could be explained from an economizing point of view. Of course, if they wanted food, they went to the wire mother, but surprisingly, monkeys spent more time with the stuffed mother.
Second experiment
Monkeys were also frightened by a diabolical robot that made flashy lights, loud noises, and disturbing mechanic movements. While the robot was in the scene, the babies didn’t go to the wire mother. They clung to the soft mother because they were afraid and showed signs of despair if they were separated from “her”. This way, the mother provided security for the babies. While they had contact with the mother, they even dared to threaten the diabolical robot.
You must be thinking… that’s like Castaway’s film when Tom Hanks starts to talk with a volleyball ball named Wilson, isn’t it? In extreme isolation and solitude, we may search for objects that can help us, there’s no love in here, just survival. Bowlby's theory from the ethological perspective explains just this. Then, should you be attached to any object? That was the last question investigators did to themselves.
Third experiment
Then, they made a tiny room for baby monkeys only with unknown objects, just because when babies enter a new room without their mother, they feel overwhelmed and insecure. A baby monkey in the new environment went immediately to a simple cloth. Even so, the monkey still felt disturbed and didn’t move away from the cloth.
When the iron mother enters the scene, the baby also went to the cloth, even though the iron mother nursed the monkey. Finally, when psychologists put the stuffed mother in the room, the monkey ran to her. Only with her, the baby was able to calm down and begin to explore the environment alone.
The conclusion? Sensitive response from the caregiver is far more important than food, and vital in the correct development of the infant.
We need more than a little cloth to understand attachment and love. Harlow continued his experiments by showing that the monkeys raised by the stuffed mother later weren’t good mothers. They didn’t want to mate and if they were artificially inseminated, they didn’t take care of their young.
As you may have noted, Harlow’s experiments changed the idea of attachment, however, they were cruel and an example of animal torture. Nowadays, his experiments would be prohibited for ethical reasons.
Connecting Harlow’s theory with Portal
For me here we have the wire mother — GlaDOS, and the stuffed mother — Companion Cube. GLaDOS offers us food (hello, Freud!) but instead, Companion Cube offers us nothing less than its pink heart and silent friendship. But it’s enough because we feel protected and also loved by the cube. No joke, Companion Cube helps us to prevent the lasers in the experiment chambers from passing through us. As players, this unbreakable bond with the Cube lasts until the last scene in the sequel of the saga.
It’s also very interesting to note how motherhood is a fairly recurring theme in Portal since GlaDOS manipulates Chell on numerous occasions by reminding her (or inventing, most likely) that she’s an orphan and her parents didn’t love her.
In Portal 2, the relationship between Chell and GlaDOS changes, and where there was destruction before, now both must cooperate for the common good. Until the end of the game, it’s not clear to us if GlaDOS only wanted to play with a test subject, or had a pending role regarding her motherhood. You will know what I mean if you have played. And if not, I won’t spoil you more, go and play, please!
What is clear is that love — real love — it’s not a game of gains and losses nor a survival choice, but a genuine feeling. It’s caring for each other, no matter if we obtain something in return or not.
Attachment and motherly bonds may not seem a great revelation to us, but historically, this wasn’t always so easy to think. And also, maybe it helps you understand why that lovely Companion Cube plush toy has a place of honor in your room. Or not. You Monster.
References:
- Harlow, H. F. & Zimmermann, R. R. (1958). The development of affective responsiveness in infant monkeys. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 102,501 -509.
- Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–291.
- Kahneman, D.; Knetsch, J. L. & Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem. Journal of Political Economy. 98 (6): 1325–1348.
Want to read more? Consider subscribing for $5/month. Using my affiliate link I will receive a small fee with no extra cost for you.
