With the advent of
games such as Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable and Gone Home amongst others the
discussion of the medium of ‘video games’ has gone onto have some great (not so
great) debates to whether these fringe cases can be considered games and to
what extent do they portray an experience.
Although the term ‘Walking Simulator’ has negative connotations, I am in
the school of thought that does believe that the term does have use and it
should be used until we can come up with
better one. I see it similar to
the term ‘Moba’ that I personally don’t feel fits the genre of games such as
Dota and LoL but do see that nothing suitable has come up yet.
I have written a couple
versions of this outlaying my thoughts on the subject and it’s been a difficult
task to finish due to the nature of the above term creating some heated
debates, but I feel that after a couple attempts I’ve got as close to my thoughts
on the matter as I can. Overall, I’m
looking for it to be expanded upon greatly, but here’s some detail regarding
this hypothesis.
When I first
experienced this genre it was one of intrigue; seeing an alternative means of
engaging the audience in an experience that avoids the traditional method of
creating conflict (whether that be with a direct battle or a task to
accomplish). I strolled through their
environments, listened to their stories and felt a great deal of overlap with
the essays on architectural theory I was reading at the time that focused on
the fluidity of architectural form (something that if you’ve read this blog
before will understand that’s one of my fundamentals from the medium). Reading about the Heidegger Lodge or the re-purposed
version of the Lake District made a game like Dear Esther play the theory out
on my screen while theorists like Leech and his critical analysis of the above
theory presented a nice counter point.
Finding ways to interact with a space in a virtual world is a key point
for many people who play games because of the exploration factor (more on that here) and having something which focuses on that has the potential to open
games up to lots of new people who may be put off by the traditional image of
games being a competition or similarly ranked challenge. The thing is thou, this original feeling was
5 or so years ago and I feel some significant things have happened in that time
that caused me to develop my thoughts on the genre.
Over the past couple years,
I’ve played three games that I believe are brilliant in presenting a narrative
while marrying it with a number of other factors of game design to further
improve the experience. These titles
(Thomas was Alone, The Stanley Parable and Transistor) present story through
the actions of the player which has become a sticking point for many of the ‘walking
simulator’ games that today look to grab my attention. As I have experienced others say it was a new
way of thinking 5 years ago but now it’s established and needs its next step.
Thomas
was Alone gives character to squares and rectangles by their dimensions
making the regular red square (Thomas) an everyman to the smaller minded orange
block or welcoming, larger blue block against the backdrop of a simple, but
enjoyable puzzle-platformer.
The Stanley Parable puts the player at
the forefront of decisions as the narrative flex’s and bends to your will
whether the narrator agrees with you or not.
Its ability to recognise the exploring player’s desire to search every
cranny with a section like ‘the broom cupboard’ is brilliant by design and hilarious
upon discovery.
Transistor creates a world where everything adds to the narrative
with the player’s use of the mechanics only reinforcing this feeling. Learning more about characters through
playing with different ability setups as the world changes throughout the
playtime subtly but inevitably means a lot even if I don’t personally feel
fully knowledgeable on the finer details of the story.
Stanley is of course a game that would fit
the ‘walking’ genre, but it’s so much more than where we started; not even
taking into consideration how traditional games have found ways to tell a story. They all take that earlier theory of the ‘map’
and ‘path’ which I originally felt with the genre and makes it all the more
relevant as a player plots their path and takes note of personal experiences
they had along the way. The earlier
titles have a certain feeling of the vernacular to them which is where we bring
us to the newest title from the Chinese Room called ‘Everybody’s Gone to the
Rapture’.
Last week I got to play
some of Rapture and over a couple hours I would say that my time on this game
was somewhat lacking. Yes, the title
look great and it had snippets of an interesting story, but with my above
experiences in games I just felt like it was missing something to give it
character. For those of you unaware of
the game, Rapture takes place in a quiet English village where the aforementioned
rapture has happened and we as the player are tasked with exploring the
landscape and piecing the story together.
Although this game has received positive praise, others have commented
on the ‘dead-ends’ and movement mechanics (a run function wasn’t fully
discovered until after the game was released) alongside a story with not
particularly likeable characters who take part in the story. All that being said however, I feel that the
subject of ‘paths and maps’ in theory could have given it more character to
enhance the story and potentially make the overall package a greater
experience.
So what do I mean by
this? Well, the game’s environment of a quaint
English village is lovingly crafted that is understandable, but when I look at
the finer details it has a certain feeling of the everyday / vernacular. If they were going for a rather typical
village outline then yeah sure the game has accomplished its goal of that look,
but I feel that it could of played with the interiors a bit more, akin to a
modern day village with its planning permissions. With this concept, I refer to the means of
which places like villages tend to have a designated look to make sure
dwellings fit into the overall aesthetic of the place, but this doesn’t stop
augmentation of interior features and personal touches which allows home owners
the ability to make their home special. To
take this back to my earlier point of ‘paths and maps’ this practice is there
in Rapture but only in a simple format in that I’m taking a path that doesn’t
feel mine. I may be asking too much from
this game to look to consider this idea of player mapping through architecture,
but I hope it’s something they may consider in future titles they work on.
As I said at the start
of this piece, I have generally positive thoughts for the ‘walking simulator’
genre of game but it has shown that from its humble beginnings the way in which
we present a narrative has evolved over time to where you can’t just move
through a space and tell a story. Through
playing with the environment, diverting the player’s impression of what will
happen and making them an integral part of the story rather than a camera; all
games have the potential to create an interesting narrative however they
classify themselves. Whether you like
walking simulators or dismiss their nature, we’re all getting better ways to
tell stories that I hope continue into the future.
