![]() It's not a game about your choices, it's still just about watching theirs. It would lose little in translation, most of the gags would still work. You could feasibly make a 100% Let's Play of Stanley Parable, covering all the branching paths, and turn it into a sort of Dragon's Lair on Laserdisc. The game is an admission of defeat.Ĭhoice is of course a tricky concept, that was the whole point, so let me be more specific. It doesn't actually offer you any choice. I'm pretty sure The Stanley Parable is Art. It garnered critical praise from gamers and journalists alike, playing like a love-hate letter to its audience: at times cooperative and happy, other times sardonic and sadistic. There's recursive gags, self-parodying achievements, 'victory' conditions that require you to quit the game, and other surgical strikes at typical gaming habits. It's a game about playing a game, constantly breaking the fourth wall. This existential crisis was perfectly embodied in indie gem The Stanley Parable, a post-modern tale of choice. Somehow though we've forgotten how to do it, and I don't think I'm alone in thinking this. It's non-sense of course, plenty of games have done so before. ![]() It's tacitly saying that real storytelling, real human comedy or tragedy, can't happen while a player is in control. It generally involves taking away choice, using scripts instead of simulations, with mini-games and quick-time events thrown in to amuse your hindbrain. To make a game more like a movie or a book, whether blockbuster or arthouse. The popular alternative is to simply adopt the current forms of Serious Media. Trying to add gamified elements for the heck of it, to make a gamier game, rings hollow and does not get us any closer to credibility. Yup, that awkward pause is where the "gaming as a serious medium" debate usually hangs, and it leaves the conversation severely deadlocked. It does have a secret passage but the only achievement you get for finding it is sadness. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam does not require puzzles. If it fails, it's not because there aren't any puzzles. It's whether it's anywhere near as engaging as walking around a real place, like a park or a museum. The question isn't whether Dear Esther is just a walking simulator. This seems obvious in film, yet not in gaming.Įven "artistic games" like Dear Esther are often criticized for superficial mechanics (or lack thereof), not for what they set out to do. In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's Joker should look the part, but he'll be 10x scarier and more interesting once you understand how he operates and thinks. However when we treat games just as mechanical live pictures, we're missing the point entirely. Well because production values are important for immersion. If games are art, if it's a grown up medium, why do we fuss about trivialities so much? You don't debate high literature by critiquing the paper stock or chapter length. There is a reason the Glorious PC Master Race and the Console Wars are memes. Gamers like to talk-or argue-about graphics, frame rates, physics, hours of play time, item variety, models, textures, downloadable content and microtransactions, and so on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |