Argobot

Oh for sure. Anyone can get overly anal about something they enjoy, not just genre fans. Just look at the Shining documentary Room 237. That's a clear case of people who are overanalyzing and possibly reading far too much into a piece of writing. It's fascinating in its own right, but I think that it doesn't add to the overall understanding of The Shining.

I'm not sure if this is a more recent phenomenon, but people seem more invested in sorting out the details in fiction or discovering supposed plot holes in stories. I'd assume it's linked to the rise of the internet fan communities, where large groups of people would analyze a piece of writing to a level that the author never intended or expected. Sometimes that can be fun, but most of the time it ruins the purpose of fiction. Who cares if all the little details don't match up perfectly? That's not what the fiction is about and it's not what we should focus on. (Obviously, you're ability to overlook questionable details in a story is directly related to your overall enjoyment of said story. I am not concerned about the little details in Gone Home matching up, because I enjoyed the overall story so much.) Anyway, speaking of fiction, here is some Gone Home fanfiction I wrote (spoilers?): http://sarahargo.tumblr.com/post/59518972461/gone-home-fight-the-future

1. The Producers 2. Young Frankenstein 3. Blazzing Saddles 4. Spaceballs 5. High Anxiety 6. Men in Tights 7. Dracula: Dead and Loving It 8. History of the World Part 1 I've never seen Silent Movie.

I WANT TO, etc

Played through the game for a second time, which is something I rarely do with games, but I kept thinking about the story and just had to play it through another time. It's just so refreshing to experience something so contained and personal in a video game. Matthew Burns summed it up best here: Gone Home is one of the first modern games -- a game that doesn't depend on any genre or pulpy tropes to tell its story. I hope that more games are written about real people, living real lives, dealing with real problems. That is a direction that I'm very excited to see games writing take, and can't what to see what comes next from Fullbright and those that are inspired by their success.

Terry McGinnis is the coolest Batman (or at least he had the coolest theme song).

Yeah, that Kuchera article is weird. He's talking about two separate ideas -- don't put a value price on art and don't judge people who want to get the most bang for their entertainment buck -- and acting like there part of the same issue, which I don't agree with. Approaching games, or books or movies, with the idea that it has to met a certain dollar per hour spent ratio for it to be worthwhile, is a really unhealthy attitude to have, and I don't see anything wrong with pointing that out or trying to actively work against it. I played Gone Home in less than 5 hours and it was the most meaningful video game experience I can remember having. I played Gone Home in less time than it takes me to a read a book, and it was more meaningful than a lot of the books I've read recently. The hours played had little to no relevance to my emotional reaction to the game.

I don't know about that, but I like to pretend that the Morley brand cigarettes mean that Gone Home and the X-Files are in the same universe.

I've actually been thinking of the meaning of video game-isms a lot since I finished this game. I guess realistically, a real-live person wouldn't act the same way Katie did, but it would really be the same game if you weren't able to methodically make your way through the house, looking for clues. To me, it's kind of like criticizing a horror movie when the main characters don't just automatically leave the obviously haunted house -- if they did, then there wouldn't be a movie. There's some differences between a movie following typical horror tropes and what Gone Home is doing with its video game-y mechanics, but I think the principle remains the same. Maybe a game where you didn't have access to as many personal notes about the parents' issues (personally, I thought that the parents' notes were perfectly balanced to what you would realistically expect to be scattered around someone's house) or a game where you could discover Sam's notes in any random order would be more realistic to what would happen in real life, but then it wouldn't have nearly as effective of a story. If the video game mechanics further the story, then I don't have a problem with them being present; my only issue is when the mechanics start to actively work against the type of story the game is trying to tell (see: Bioshock Infinite).

I also live in the area and will be there every day but Saturday.

That was my understanding of the Oscar (not Oswald, I think) story as well. The little clues that you could find about him and the insight they gave into Sam's dad and the reaction he has to Sam's really worked for me as a method of storytelling. As far as the criticism of Katie rummaging through her family's belongings as the main mechanic of delivering the story -- it didn't really bother me. Sam's notes are technically addressed to you, whether or not you were ever intended to read them . Personally, if I was away from home for months, and suddenly came home to an empty house with a cryptic note written by my younger sister, I would immediately start looking for hints as to what happened. So Katie's actions didn't really bother me the way it seems to have bothered others.

I absolutely loved this game. Sam felt like such a real person to me, and her struggle is something that I think most people will find relatable. Everything about Sam, her relationship with her parents, her parents' relationship with each other, felt so honest and believable. During the game, I'd frequently find myself dipping into my own memories of coming back from college and feeling like an alien in my own home, because I'd been absent while the lives of my younger sister and parents went on without me. This game gave me everything that I wanted and more, and I'm so happy that it exists and that people are responding to it positively. Great job by everyone at Fullbright. (I also loved that any time you played a tape, the music volume would decrease the further away from the tape player you got. It's a small thing, but it made me so happy that it was there.)

It'd be cool if a person could say "I don't like this game (or book or movie or TV show or sandwich) because it doesn't appeal to my individual tastes" and not automatically be labeled a hipster -- a nonsense word -- (or Woody Allen??) for having a different opinion. Different people like different things! Personally, the Saints Row games have never appealed to me. My SO swears that SR3 is a good game. I'm sure he's right and that I would get some kind of enjoyment out of it, but I will probably never play it, just like I will probably never play a ton of other games because life is short, etc.

Haha, that's great!

My copy of The Riot Grrrl Collection just came in the mail. It's a reprinting of the Riot Grrrl zines, including some of the original Bikini Kill zines. If you're at all interested in the history of riot grrrl, you should check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Riot-Grrrl-Collection-Lisa-Darms/dp/1558618228 Also, this book is another great look at the history of Riot Grrrl. Besides zines, it has a lot of interviews with the bands/women who were part of that movement: http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Front-Story-Grrrl-Revolution/dp/0061806366/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y (Obviously all of this is study material for Gone Home's launch next week).

I think Hemingway gives enough information for the reader to guess at what the characters' flaws are, but insight into their romantic entanglements -- which I assume was meant as the main emotional conflict of the story -- is severely lacking. It's fair to say that in real life we almost never truly know the inner experiences of even our closest friends, but we can usually tell through basic observation when two people are in love. Writing, good writing, should go beyond what we can easily observe in real life and give us the details that are usually inaccessible or unknowable. I don't expect Hemingway to give a beat for beat summary of Jake/Brett's courtship, but I do expect him to give some kind of insight into why they loved (love) each other. For me, the book is never fully able to do this. It's telling that my favorite scene is when Cohn confronts Brett and the bullfighter, because finally, someone is acting like an observable human and is expressing an observable emotion.

Chris?

To be clear, I didn't find the prose style difficult to read, it just exacerbated the already disconnected feelings I had towards this book. And in general, I don't have a problem with flawed or questionable characters -- I actually prefer them. But nothing about this story felt substantial enough for me to get really invested in it (although now that I've spent so much time thinking about my reaction to this book, I'm seriously considering rereading it).

Re the prejudices: I think authors like Hemingway (and Mailer, Roth, Updike) are saddled with this perception of being overly masculine, sexist boors. I've read enough of Roth and Updike (never Mailer) to know that this knee jerk opinion of them isn't fair, but it isn't necessarily wrong either. There's a lot problematic female characters in their books, and their status as 'Great American (male) Authors' has always rubbed me the wrong way. I lump Hemingway into that group, because he is often fetishized as being a paragon of desirable masculine traits, and I (dumbly) assumed that his writing would reflect that. Turns out Hemingway is better at writing women than Roth or Updike, but I struggled a lot with my false impression of what a Hemingway novel would be, until I basically got over myself and ignored those prejudices. I just really struggled to care about anything that happened in this book. None of the characters -- especially Jake -- ever really appealed to me, and the prose style just exacerbated the disconnect I felt. Hemingway would occasionally drop a really insightful quip that would momentarily reengergize me, but ultimately the book felt like a series of events with a few bits of pithy dialogue. Jake and Brett are supposed to be in love, but I never really believed that or was particularly interested in their relationship. Cohn was a fascinating character, but I felt like he was too underused. It probably does not help that I read a 250 pages over a three month period and I imagine that if I sat down and read this book over a shorter period, a lot of my misgivings would go away. But I just can't muster the enthusiasm to go back and reread it. But I'm really curious to hear what other people like about this book (especially what makes Sean call this a favorite). Maybe that'll convince me to give it a second look.

After three months of starting and stopping, I finally finished reading this book. It was probably one of the more challenging books that I've read in a long time, not because of content, but because I could never really focus on was happening in the story. The whole time I was reading, it felt like I was working against some invisible barrier that I was never able to fully penetrate. It reminded me a lot of the sensation I get when watching a classic Hollywood movie. It's hard to describe, but the storytelling in those movies always feels stilted and off-putting -- I attribute it to the waning stage play influence on films -- and I constantly have to struggle to feel connected with what's happening on screen. The Sun Also Rises felt the same way to me, but unlike with those classic films, I was never able to move past the book's stilted nature. Which is a shame, because there are some parts of the book that I think I could have really enjoyed. I actually really liked the Lady Ashley character, and thought that Hemingway had some truly apt (and gutting) insights into male/female relationships, but it wasn't enough to make me enjoy reading this book. But I'm glad I had the chance to confront some of my Hemingway prejudices. That alone made reading this book worthwhile, even if my reaction to it wasn't as positive as I was hoping it would be.

I'm hoping that's just an example of unfortunate word choice. It's true that it wouldn't make a lot of sense for a character like Elizabeth to physically interact with the world in the same way as Booker, so just doing a generic Booker gender swap would be supremely dishonest (not to mention pretty lazy on the part of the developers).

Are you trolling me Patrick, because congratulations, you've succeeded! But your twine game sounds really interesting and I would like to play it. I think it's totally fair for men to seriously talk about their relationship with their bodies.

I made a Twine game for this, but am a little embarrassed at how cloyingly emotional it seems, so I am afraid to submit it. A lot of the boob-related games I've seen mentioned sound like the they went for the more comedic route, and now I wish I had too.

Sorry guys, I missed a lot of this thread because I was too busy hugging and eating chocolate and having long phone conversations with my mother -- who keeps pestering me about when I'm going to give up my career and start having some children, oh mom. I'm just a normal lady, doing normal lady things. (But seriously, it is hard for me to get super angry about the direction this thread went because there is something ridiculously earnest about thestalkinghead's posts. I'm sorry that you can't grasp why people are getting mad at you.)

Can we just switch rails here and talk about what an amazing game Mainichi is? Probably the most emotionally powerful story that I've ever seen in a video game (I'm hoping/expecting that Gone Home will be equally powerful).