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[Wanoah]

I liked Gone Home. It was interesting and it innovated in its storytelling. Its characters were entirely absent, yet had more life than just about any character I have ever come across in a videogame to date. Still, its developers had worked on the Bioshock series, which is quite well regarded I hear, so I guess they had picked up a trick or two along the way.

Still, in terms of meeting some fuzzy definition of what constitutes a game, it is certainly on the margins somewhere. I tended to see it more as a demonstration of what might be possible. It illustrates the extent we are being sold short by developers elsewhere who are playing it safe in their games and sticking to the formula.

[Kala]

@BloodBird on Gone Home:

Not the first time I've encountered someone arguing the plaudits Gone Home received is an example of corruption in game journalism, so I can just copy pasta the response I made to someone else.

I can't explain to you what was amazing about Gone Home if you can't see it; but shoe-horning any puzzle elements or anything like that into it would've destroyed it.

The reason I would rate it so highly is because of how well developed the characters are, the clever way it weaves details in and you slowly build up a picture of who they are, you slowly build up a relationship with people who are absent.

How you get an idea of who you are, and who your sister is, from comparing your old school work, for example. Your mothers affair. Your fathers frustrations with his career. The reason why your father was given the house in the first place being the 'dark secret'.

The characters feel like real people. This is a massive accomplishment. Especially as none of them are physically present to interact with.

I said in the last post I played 2 hours of Gone Home vs 291 hours in Skyrim. So I'll continue with that comparison.

I love Skyrim, as I said, and I won't fault it for this, because it's trying to tell a different type of story entirely (it wants you to create your own story, which I enjoy) - but the NPCs do not feel like real people. They are bland, forgettable and could be anyone.

Ultimately, I enjoyed playing Skyrim more than I enjoyed playing Gone Home. Skyrim was a more enjoyable game.

But I would give the award to Gone Home because it's a more important game. It's more of a creative step forward.

Near the end of the game I didn't actually want to go up into the attic. I felt a sense of dread. I had to push myself to do it and finish the game because I was convinced I was going to get up there and find my sister had hanged herself. And I really didn't want to see that. Because I'd formed a connection with that character.

That isn't something I've felt in a game before. Not that deeply.

It's all down to preference, of course.

It's not your thing, that's fine. You obviously didn't have the same experience I did. But there's no reason to suggest that just because you didn't get anything out of it, others didn't. Or that any praise or accolades the game received is due to corruption, nepotism, ideology or conspiracy.

Which is not to say I don't agree with the price tag point, mind. Given there isn't much replay ability if you found everything first time round, and only around 2 hours of gameplay in there. 

That said, it depends on what the price reflects in terms of value. 

In terms of the players time? No.  Its not worth the money. (I still paid it, but I think it should be less).

In terms of the amount of thought and creativity that has gone into this game, how well the story is executed and how I can point to it as a serious example of gaming as a narrative media?

Well, that's priceless, and if I had the money to do so, I would've given them more.

[Lyn Farel]

Bloodbird, am I reading that because you (and your shop seller friend) found the game meaningless and stupid, then it systematically implied that the journalists that liked it or made positive reviews about have to be corrupt and the product of a joke ?

I can agree on the fact that journalism these days is rather poor, but your reasoning just makes me go

[Lyn Farel]

I really liked Alec Meer's piece on Gone Home:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/16/gone-home-a-tale-of-two-dads/

where he uses it to talk about his relationship with his own Dad. and I can understand an immediate reaction of "but I don't care about Alec Meer and his Dad, I just want to know about the game!"  But it is telling you about the game as well.  It's just telling you about the game in an unusual way.

Honestly (and I don't want to be extreme, or anything) the idea that he shouldn't have written that at all, he should just stick with describing and grading the various features, makes me want to rip peoples faces off with my teeth (in my head, ofc). Because I enjoy reading thoughtful responses and engagement to games like this that much.  

(though no, he his not strictly speaking reviewing it, just talking about it, but that discussion is valid and should be a part of games journalism and writing, if for no other reason than I want to see it  ).

That's a good way to present it yes.

Anyway completely separating a critical and technical review of a more empiric review (about fun and other factors) makes absolutely zero sense exactly because both need each other, and go together.

One of the main issues with game journalism to my eyes is that they completely forget to talk about what makes the game the game it is. They just talk about the end result as mere consumers would do. Your own analysis on Gone Home quote above is ten times better because it describes what makes the story compelling and what makes it work like it seems to do (haven't myself played that game yet).

Most game journalism is only about "That story is amazing". Yay. Glad to hear you liked it. Mind to tell why ? So that I can figure if I will like it or not to begin with... ?

Anyway.



If Daggerfall worked that well and pleases you to no end, then to me it's precisely because its technical aspects are very good. Maybe as you say there are facets that could be lacking (especially to nowadays standards, but we often forget to put ourselves back in the context of the past with the tools we had at our disposal back then), but if the gameplay, the concept of the game, the art, etc, was so good as to make so many fans happy, it points to a good technical execution behind, even if not perfect.

What I mean exactly by technical is just how devs will do their jobs right. And doing your job right as a dev is, truly yes, to erase bugs and make it an experience as smooth as it can get, but also to make it enjoyable so that your game will be played by people to begin with !

What makes a game to my eyes are two main things : the technical execution, and the fun you get out of it.

Heh    I think it's fascinating what games are to different people; what we get out of them, where the emphasis is on a personal level.

Because it's pretty different for me. Not saying those two aren't important to me, mind! They sound like perfectly reasonable suppositions for what makes a game. But for me the most important things are probably...immersion/escapism and scope/depth.

One of my favourite games of all time is Daggerfall.  I think the technical execution in some places could be described as lacking in that one...

and fun, hrm, sounds like it should be an obvious one.  But I'm quite willing for a game to emotionally abuse me horribly if I'm involved enough with it.  I'm thinking the original UFO, with the insanely hard aliens shooting far further than you can reach them, from the black fog where you can't see them, while your rookies panic and start shooting at eachother, because they are idiots. I'm not entirely sure the experience was enjoyable, in a traditional sense, from the amount of swearing and raging I was doing at those rookies.  It was very, very frustrating.  But ultimately, also, deeply compelling.

and in a way that, the remake, as much as I admired what they did and genuinely think they did the right thing in doing a modern take, didn't make me feel as tense, frustrated and...well, in danger, as the original.  (I could not possibly explain why those are things I appear to value in a gaming experience.  I perhaps need therapy).  But no, actually, I can - it adds an excitement, a feeling that the threat is real.  Which in a round about way, is fun...Just perhaps not in a traditional sense.


Was talking the other day with someone about what games were 'revelation moments' for us personally and why.  Or what games we think moved the medium onwards, progressed it's development as a whole.  I find it really interesting as everyone has a different take on what has value and where the emphasis is.

Actually to me immersion/escapism and scope/depth can be part of the fun factor. I'm just including all of what creates incentives for the player to play a game, and that's what I include in the reward they get : fun. And how the game as a piece of art / realization / technical achievement / whatever crates that fun, and thus immersion, scope, whatever.

My first focus on games are actually similar. I play for immersion and depth as well as some artistic value, especially in the case of story driven games (RPGs, adventure games, etc), and will play for immersion and/or scope in strategy games and the likes, for example.

[Shiori]

As an example, I was in town the other day, visiting game stop.

I found Gone Home in the shelf for new-ish PC games and the retailers ask for 'new game' price for it, 400 NOK.

Pick it up from Steam for less than half that, at the most expensive it's ever been, or half that again if there's a sale. I'm not quite sure how extortionate pricing by GameSpot Norge is a failure of game journalism.

[Arista Shahni]

Gome Home is certainly not a game I paid tripleA prices for, and I didnt buy it on sale.

I even bought it *after watching a playthrough*.

But that was based on pricepoint and wanting to see it myself.  And that procepoint wasn' exatcly Dragonn Age Origins when-it-first-came-out.

Steam.  Steam all the things.

I nearly want to beat to death anyone who walks into Any GameStop, in any country, especially for PC games you're asking for then to take your entire wallet and hand you back one bill out of it.

[Kala]

Your own analysis on Gone Home quote above is ten times better because it describes what makes the story compelling and what makes it work like it seems to do (haven't myself played that game yet).

Why thank you. I'm a mere consumer though. 
It's a divisive thing and not everyone's cup of tea...as you can probably tell. There isn't really 'gameplay' as such, or at least, not game play beyond kind of classic point-and-click adventure games.  I definitely think it's worth checking out if interesting well told stories are your bag, though.

Someone said to me "if you take out the story, it's just a walking simulator."  Well yes.  But it's a story driven game.
Take out shooting from Call of Duty and that's just a walking simulator as well 

edit: shitfuck.  just realised in giving my analysis there I've spoilered some fairly major things for you.  oops.
I guess that might be a slight flaw in going into detail about what you liked about the story or how you reacted emotionally 

If Daggerfall worked that well and pleases you to no end, then to me it's precisely because its technical aspects are very good. Maybe as you say there are facets that could be lacking (especially to nowadays standards, but we often forget to put ourselves back in the context of the past with the tools we had at our disposal back then), but if the gameplay, the concept of the game, the art, etc, was so good as to make so many fans happy, it points to a good technical execution behind, even if not perfect.

Daggerfall pleases me to no end because of it's scope and ambition, and the way how actually?  somehow, even though a lot of the things were procedurally generated (the map/terrain and the cities weren't, but most of the dungeons, side-quests and all the non-essential/unimportant npcs were) it seemed like a more believable 'real' world than the later ones with hand crafted NPCs.  I guess because going into a city in Daggerfall, and there's a a crowd of faceless (well, they do have faces technically) milling around.  That actually mirrors real life, and the feeling I get in a crowded space, a lot better for me than in Skyrim when the NPCs are all the same people, doing the same stuff, in the same place, repeating the same lines anyway.  (but then, scale.  even with the bigger areas like Solitude, it's all basically little villages with few inhabitants).

A lot of what I love about Daggerfall is a more esoteric 'how it made me feel', all tied up with nostalgia of course, but also the ethos to give me as much freedom as possible and, again, to mirror real life by making a lot of things feel like random chance rather than go here > do this > do this.  The main quest kind of happens passively and can pass you by.  I feel like that about life sometimes.

What I meant with technical aspects, though, is the game didn't work a lot of the time.  Which does seem like it should be a prerequisite. I think it went a bit beyond 'not perfect' for Daggerfall there...Even if you got it to run fairly stable and without CTDs, getting stuck in doors and on ladders, or falling through the entire world, is a fairly regular game-breaking occurrence.  'Oblivion' in Daggerfall, was falling through the map. So that's what I meant about them perhaps not nailing some of the technical aspects.

(I still think it was the best in the series, just wish it wasn't so buggy).

I feel like a bit of a pretentious wanker when I'm defining things like 'fun' and 'play', but I guess it's not things I think about particularly often.  An exchange I had with a friend on this:

Me: "Why do you play games?"
Him: "To have fun"
Me: "Did you have fun playing EVE?"
Him: "...sometimes"
Me: "Is EVE a fun game?"
Him: "...not really, no."

 

And I mean that as no criticism of EVE.  I wouldn't be in this forum if I didn't think EVE was amazeballs. Was arguing with someone (I argue a lot) about EVE and how awesome it was that you could die and someone could take your stuff, and you'd be back to square one and he said "That sounds awful.  How is that fun?"

And it isn't.  But it is.
Because the danger gives your interactions more meaning.
(and especially fun when you do it to someone else >.>)

[Lyn Farel]

Why thank you. I'm a mere consumer though. 
It's a divisive thing and not everyone's cup of tea...as you can probably tell. There isn't really 'gameplay' as such, or at least, not game play beyond kind of classic point-and-click adventure games.  I definitely think it's worth checking out if interesting well told stories are your bag, though.

Someone said to me "if you take out the story, it's just a walking simulator."  Well yes.  But it's a story driven game.
Take out shooting from Call of Duty and that's just a walking simulator as well 

edit: shitfuck.  just realised in giving my analysis there I've spoilered some fairly major things for you.  oops.
I guess that might be a slight flaw in going into detail about what you liked about the story or how you reacted emotionally 

Oh don't worry too much about spoilers. And of course I'll check it out. After all i'm of the ones that consider games like the Longest Journey to be the part of the best among all story driven games. And those do not offer that much in terms of gameplay besides. That's just pure awesomesauce story telling at the center of the play all along.

I have most of the time played RPGs (and MMOs) first of all for their story (and thus RP) than anything else. I was even ready to play that Game of Thrones awful game just to enjoy the story, that was very good and probably the only decent thing in that game. Only the game never launched itself properly on my computer so I had to watch a walkthrough instead. Probably the best choice so that it was not upon me to do all the tedious play. 

Well then, a RPG or story driven game with a good gameplay to support it is even better of course.

Maybe fun is too restrictive and do not actually convey properly what I had in mind. Maybe enjoyment is better and offers more scope.

[Shiori]

Rock Paper Shotgun has come up with a lengthy article on their view of all the fur that's been flying over the last couple of weeks.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Read it, saw a site covering their ass spectacularly. "Here's X thing people said about us, and why we say it's wrong."

Utterly failed to address the core concerns people brought up initially and reiterated the idea that "gamers" are somehow collectively responsible for abuse which is entirely based around the idea we have a "sexist agenda" (I wish I made that phrase up). Color me unimpressed.

In the meantime, an entirely new wave of this mess has burst open with revelations that the Independent Games Festival judges were rubbing shoulders very heavily with promotion firm Silverstring Media, whose promoted games just happened to win glowing awards at the festival. Naturally people are trying to spin this as "evil sexist gamers intrude on personal lives of people again".

[Silas Vitalia]

SNIP

just saw the RPS article was already linked

[Jace]

I cannot, nor want, to defend the oxymoron that is 'gaming journalism.' But replacing it with YouTubers that gain popularity through humor or constructed personalities is not much better. The former is false advertising, the latter is bandwagoning or banality to try to get more viewers. As always, I will rely on the opinions of trusted friends.

[Kala]

I like RPS.

And a lot of the stuff that's happened has been interesting, and asked some questions about identity and the future of gaming - who we are, what we want etc.

I felt they were very fair and moderate about it, but I don't feel especially tolerant after all the shit I've read recently, so my stance has (gradually) shifted to being far more hardline.  Is this constructive?  Probably not.  RPS's response is probably a lot more helpful than getting angry about it and hitting back.   

But maybe it deserves a bit of anger, so I'd admit my stance is far more aligned with this fellow http://atomicovermind.tumblr.com/post/96903894299/greg-costikyan-gamersgate-stfu with regards to Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn and the feminist conspiracy to censor games. 

(as an aside, Mary Beard is probably the most amazing person in the world for providing job references and taking her twitter abusers out to lunch, having realised that attacking perpetuates a cycle of abuse and tackling it another way is more constructive: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/27/mary-beard-befriends-twitter-trolls-online-abuse  However, she is a better person than me).

edit: this actually seems like a fairly constructive exchange on an utterly toxic topic. https://storify.com/brett_douville/extending-the-branch.  rare.


Still, re: the #gamergate stuff, apparently 4chan will try again next year to stir it up again for the lulz. 

Something to look forward to.

Utterly failed to address the core concerns people brought up initially and reiterated the idea that "gamers" are somehow collectively responsible for abuse which is entirely based around the idea we have a "sexist agenda" (I wish I made that phrase up). Color me unimpressed.

Funnily enough, that was one of the accusations oft repeated in the comments in Jenn's Frank article in the Guardian (that she was reiterating gamers were collectively responsible for the hate). The one where they later went on to (wrongfully) accuse her of corruption.  (It took an official statement from the Guardian to put that one to bed, and she still received harassment for it afterwards).

...Despite the fact that she actually wrote 'vocal minority' of gamers in the very first sentence.  (and 'vocal minority' is a very pertinent and useful phrase in this discussion, given it means a small amount of people who make a lot of noise, therefore seeming like more people who have stronger support than they actually do.  A bit like all those sock-puppet twitter accounts).


Anyway, curious how RPS are reiterating the idea that "gamers" are somehow collectively responsible for the abuse?
My reading was pretty different given:

Not everyone who objects to how the games press works are harassing and attacking, but the ones who are are causing enough disruption for this entire thing, whatever it actually is, to be a mess of resentment and recrimination.

and

These are just a few people, but they are causing great harm, and causing gamers to get caught in a web of misunderstanding and anger. That’s not helping anyone who believes they have a valid point to make about games and the games press.

Seems to me very much like saying #notallgamers and 'vocal minority'.  They also referred to themselves as gamers at some points.

But each to their own interpretations.

[Lyn Farel]

<3 Greg Costikyan.

[Mizhara]

This is why I deride and sneer at "gaming press". They're frankly no better than youtubers etc as far as journalism goes. Hell, I'd say some youtubers are far more professional, albeit having the same lack of professional education within the media. The fact that perfectly normal journalism from mainstream media is objectively leagues better yet merely adequate by media standards says scary things about the industry.