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i feel like there's some bad semantics afoot when it comes to the term 'game', almost entirely because 'game' has vague but notable connotations-- such as self-contained existence, objective goals, and, to a certain degree, competition (even if the competition is with yourself or with the rules of the game to achieve a goal while obeying rules that make it more difficult to achieve said goal)-- connotations that are unhelpful when describing something meant primarily as an artistic experience that uses interactivity to some degree that does not and/or does not want to have any of the connotations of being a 'game'. obviously if one such interactive experience markets itself as a 'game' or calls itself a 'game' verifiably (which raises a few other questions like "is putting something on steam implying that it is a video game") it's a different question but i do think people have tried to shoehorn interactive and digital artistic experiences into being 'games' just out of a lack of their common existence prior to video games as a movement (for an array of reasons) when there's absolutely no need for every interactive product to be a 'video game' not every piece of uninteractive audiovisual content is a "movie", and some just fall into the cumbersome category of "video" or "uninteractive audiovisual content", y'know?
If memory serves me well, Gone Home become an infamous release because several reviewers who had nothing but glowing praises for it were revealed to be close friends with the main developer (it's rumored that one one also her lover at the time). This could had also been the spark which started the whole Gamergate thing, but to this very day I kept myself ignorant about that clusterfuck on purpose, and I'd like to continue doing so. The game's detractors also insist that many favorable reviews are positive only because the main plot of Gone Home is about a troubled gay couple, so the whole thing was showered with praise mainly on that account. They also claim that the couple's plights get increasingly ham-fisted as you progress and the game's final message isn't exactly the most positive for a younger audience ("If you are gay but your family won't accept your orientation is ok to flee with your lover after robbing your own parents of anything valuable around the house"). I can't give my two cents about Gone Home proper, because, after entertaining myself with several walking simulators and "environmental storytelling games" around Steam, I became quite fed up with the whole genre, with Firewatch and Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture being the two games that started my scepticism in the first place. That said, yes, at the time of release Gone Home wasn't exactly ground-breaking in any regard whatsoever, so I can't possibly explain all the reviews picturing it as basically the second coming of Gaming Jesus Christ
Tbh really any studio that is confirmed to lie and deal in false reviews deserves all the hate they get. Any studio that does this should be regarded as scammers. Really everything about the game screamed "Yeah its maybe sorta ok I guess" but its discussed so much as if it's anything more than mediocre. Merely because of fake controversy.
Never got stung by a bee. Wasps are cunts and can fuck off though. Got attacked by a wasp nest when I was a kid. The neighbour came and smoked them, then we grilled and ate their larvae. The salty yet so sweet taste of revenge.
What about visual novels? Would you count those as games? Especially kinetic novels which don't even include choices (or include choices which don't actually impact the story overall) and are basically just books in a visual format. In many ways Gone Home can be considered more of a game than many of those, especially the kintetic novels. Even if there's not many mechanics you're still actively interacting with a game world based upon the user's input after all. A weird amount of the people who like to shit all over Gone Home also praise that one Source-based walking simulator as great. I can't remember its name off the top of my head though.
Visual novels are not games, they're visual novels. It's a medium of its own. Trying to lump every form of media under the banner of games, regardless of the media's intent is far more stifling than the 'gatekeeping' of having actual definitions of what things are. In fact lumping everything under one banner makes it more difficult to set up people's expectations correctly and directly leads to negative reactions. If you tell someone a product is a visual novel they have certain expectations, ones which may even run counter to their expectations of a game. The same can be said for walking simulators. Describing a walking simulator as a game sets up unfair expectations. You can say "Oh well people shouldn't label shit." all you want but the fact is they do, so we need accurate, concise labels for things, not to lump everything under one banner.
the fucking mv for the middle by jimmy eat world does this. during the solo someone jumps in a pool and the camera follows it and the music gets dampened like if you were listening to it under water. the best part of that song fucking ruined for your stupid music video that doesn't even fit the theme of the lyrics.
Also, Dear Esther isn't a game. It's trash. Seriously, Gone Home is one of the best walking simulators out there because it's not a pretentious piece of garbage which has nothing to say. The Graveyard, Dear Esther, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture are all pseudo-intellectual garbage, wastes of time. The god ones are: Gone Home Firewatch Ether One What Remains of Edith Finch The Vanishing of Ethan Carter The Stanley Parable (the best one)
I have never seen anyone praise Dear Eshter outside of journalism sites. I think you might have meant Stanley parable.
No, there's a lot of praise for that too for whatever reason but I definitely meant Dear Esther. There was quite a bit of praise on Facepunch for it at the very least and quite a lot of the people I saw praise it shat all over Gone Home for some reason. Well we'll probably have to disagree on that one. In my opinion visual novels, and walking simulators, are still games. They're just different genres of games. It's no different in my opinion than puzzle games and first person shooters and racing games being entirely different beasts but still all being games. With such widely varied genres under the umbrella of "games" it's already difficult to adequately setup expectations. It's even a difficult enough task within the same genre at times. Just because it sets up differing expectations from another genre though shouldn't disqualify something as being a game. Otherwise we may as well just quit calling anything a game. A puzzle game is just a puzzle, a first-person shooter is just a fps, and so on.
As I noted above, the main plot point of Gone Home, the thread the player must uncover as he/she explores the house and listen to the various pieces of information scattered about, is that a teenager got infatuated with a person of the same sex in what's clearly, well, a sudden teenager love story everyone of us heard of or experienced in his/her life. Said teenager, knowing full well that the family doesn't approve said relationship and it's even looking to "correct" her somehow, decides to renounce the prestigious college career of her dreams to flee with said lover and, in order to finance her new life of true love, robbs her house of every piece of tech and everything valuable. I honestly fail to grasp what greater, symbolic meaning I should get from this thing, let alone how the game should supposedly help me better understand the plight of an homosexual couple in an hostile environment. As I said before, Firewatch is arguably the game which made me doubt the genre in the first place, as it is a boring slog filled with backtracking left and right and counpounded by a story which, supposedly, should teach you about expectactions and reality, but in true goes fucking nowhere and feels like a huge loss of one's time. Ether One is fine I guess, but I found it boring because you are basically thrown into a map with no direction whatsoever and tasked to reach very specific points and solve puzzles all over the place in order to go forward, and if you can't figure out what you need to do quickly then you'll get stuck and annoyed. It's the same problem I had with Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture. I can't speak about Dear Esther's because, while some kind of landmark in the genre, I appreciated its locales and environments and pretty much nothing else
also said love story in Gone Home would actually constitute statutory rape if the two had sex so theres that as well
There's also the fact that what is presumably supposed to be a happy ending is going to end awful for everyone involved.
if you want to make sweeping generalizations about is and isn't a game, it would help if you actually said anything substantive about what makes something 'a game' or 'not a game' in your eyes. so far all i'm getting from you is that if you don't like it it must be bad.
Literally not what I said, but okay.
i just want to know what you think the lines should be, if any
Personally i think the term "walking simulator" is dumb and pretentious
Clovis eats snails
According to game developers I've spoken to, those don't even meet the qualifications of being a game. They're just interactive story. According to these people, to be a game, it needs to have two of the following. 1: A game end/over/restart state. This is something that forces you to either start over or reload (like dying, as things like sandbox don't have an end) or because youve completed the level(s). 2: Scaling difficulty. Such as having a hard/easy mode, or modifiers that can change how things are. 3: Random variable or variance. This means some factor that changes beyond your control that doesn't play out the same every time. I'd also argue choices in there, with choices such as alternate dialogue, paths, weapons, or game play, things that mix up how it does. Those rules also come out of sports and board games, not just video games. I don't wholy agree with them, but they're a good indicator of what really is and isn't a game. Walking around and listening to someone talk or picking up the same note doesn't make much of a game.
but what is the value of creating these delineations? I can't see them making the job of creating a game any easier, they only seem to limit what a creator can create. I don't see them making the role of consumer easier, either. People only seem to talk about what a game is, but I haven't seen anyone talk about why. Why is it important that this gets called the five letter word, and that gets called the 6 letter one? Clearly techniques get shared between 'games' and 'walking simulators', ideas like using the mouse to control the camera and other very basic level creative choices are used, the language of creation (techniques like map design, tools like hardware and software) are nearly identical; not to mention that using 'audio logs' or narration as a unit of storytelling are hardly pioneered in Stanley Parable or Gone Home, off the top of my head the first game to use 'audio logs' was System Shock 2. So if 'games' and 'not games' share basic level consumer experience, designer level creation experience, and storytelling devices, I really don't see any meaningful difference. Aside from that, arbitrary definitions like the ones you laid out tend to be either shifty and nonspecific to the point of uselessness, or so overly specific they rule out things like Dark Souls or other games that have no fail state. They also tend to rule in things that the rule's designers didn't want, for instance I've seen several 'rulesets' that would judge choose your own adventure books as video games. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to know the why behind the what, if you see what I mean.
you guys need to read wittgenstein. arguing about what is and isn't a game is a pointless endeavor.
Am I the cause of everything crit related?
The term walking simulator fucking blows. It just reeks of gatekeep-y "not actually a game" bullshit and I wish there was a more appropriate term people actually agreed on.
why
yeah ok
it's not my fault you won't state your opinion with simple critical language. i made a big post up there and everything for you to work off of. the only thing your post says it that some games are bad because you don't like them.
The Beginners Guide sure would have worked better as a book. not. walking simulators are fine games, they may not be action or puzzle oriented, but they're still games.
can you try actually stating what you think defines games as a medium? you've made a lot of posts and you haven't said anything yet, here's your chance
define medium. you still haven't said what you think defines games as a medium, yet you use the unstated ideal as an imaginary qualifier of quality. you have literally said nothing so far. describe what makes a good game. describe what makes a bad game. describe why you feel this way. then i respond! it's called a conversation, you have them a lot when you're an adult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI
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