Electric Turnip
  • Blog
  • Stories
    • Story 000
    • Story 001
    • Story 002
    • Story 004
    • Story 007 - Unfinished
    • Story 008
    • Story 010 - BattleWagon
    • Story 012
  • Images
    • Adventure Caddie concept gallery
    • Page Design Gallery
    • Older Work
  • 5FEAT Video
  • Videos
  • Game Experiments
    • Climb
    • Super Shapetoy
    • TurboGarbageTruck
    • 031 - Best Games - Enchanter
    • 033 - Shader Test
  • Contact

157

11/2/2015

0 Comments

 
Much has been made of the walking simulators. Games like Gone Home, Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture, or Sunset. These are games where the players primary goal is to exist in a different place for a while, and maybe, as an aside, read, watch, or listen to a story. For such inherently gentle experiences they have proven to be polarizing, often in angry ways. There is an entire factions of people who wring hands about whether these experiences can be allowed to call themselves games. It’s an argument that I find so profoundly dumb I don’t really feel like addressing it head on. Since I’m the one writing, I won’t. We demolished the border between what is and is not a game sometime in the mid 90s when the band Primus put Macromedia director content on their “interactive” CDs. Game is a catch all term for interactive experiences. Sometimes words are hard folks. We don’t always use the right ones, and whatever the argument against using the term “game” is, that ship has sailed far past the horizon by now.
So game it is then.
I think I might know where the anger comes from though. There is an either/or mentality among some folks that manifests itself as fear. Sure games are a very trivial things, but they are also a lot of peoples main hobby. If they aren’t working, sleeping, or otherwise dealing with life they are playing games. The amount of time and energy sunk makes gaming important, regardless of any objective value. Now here is where the either/or mentality kicks in. If a game like Gone Home starts to receive a lot of praise, and it’s not the type of game that the person who puts a heavy value on games enjoys, there is a fear that developers will create more games like Gone Home, and less of everything else. Which is false of course. Except it’s not. That fear is at least half right. There will be a lot more walking simulators in our near future.
The reason is VR. There are at least three actual consumer products coming in the next year or so that a decent number of self identified gamers will be buying. The will buy these headsets with millimeter accurate positional tracking and positional sound systems and they will want to use them to play a game. The VR headsets ability to make you feel like you are existing in a different place weaves together so tightly with the walking simulators aims of telling story through environment, the result is inevitable. There will be a lot of games created where you move slowly and have a story told to you. There will be lots of elements for a player to interact with, to be sure games are still a medium of interaction, but the walking simulators are coming. They are coming, and they will just keep getting better.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Evil Dead, and On Golden Pond all came out in 1981. These are all very different movies, that seem on the surface to target different audiences. They are all amazing and intensely enjoyable movies. While I could imagine the person that wouldn’t seek out each of these movies individually, there is also an audience that watched them all. More importantly, the success of one didn’t come at the cost of the other. There is no either/or when it comes to what people enjoy. There is only ‘and’.
The walking simulators are coming, but maybe, just maybe, what we learn about creating interactive experiences will make all games better.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    June 2012
    October 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010

    Categories

    All
    Adventure Caddie
    Best Games

    RSS Feed

Owen McManus
  • Blog
  • Stories
    • Story 000
    • Story 001
    • Story 002
    • Story 004
    • Story 007 - Unfinished
    • Story 008
    • Story 010 - BattleWagon
    • Story 012
  • Images
    • Adventure Caddie concept gallery
    • Page Design Gallery
    • Older Work
  • 5FEAT Video
  • Videos
  • Game Experiments
    • Climb
    • Super Shapetoy
    • TurboGarbageTruck
    • 031 - Best Games - Enchanter
    • 033 - Shader Test
  • Contact