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Idle Weekend April 8, 2016: I'm Walking Here

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Idle Weekend April 8, 2016:

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I'm Walking Here

We here on Idle Weekend are pretty fond of story-based games, so you can imagine we have fond feelings for the genre terribly known as "walking simulators." The weekenders chat about Adr1ft, a space-walking simulator, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, a ghost walking simulator, in order to suss out the future of the genre.

Discussed: Adr1ft, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Tacoma, Firewatch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Gun Street Girl (Adrian McKinty novel), The Fall

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I really like the discussion of "walking simulators."  I think that they hit the nail on the head about there needing to be some interactive component to the narrative and/or a really compelling story to pull you along.  I'm definitely a fan of what games like Tacoma seem to be trying where they make the landscape traversal in a walking sim fun in its own right.

 

Great episode.

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I think with these Walking Simulator games, it matters immensely whether the action is taking place in the present, or whether your sole goal is to discover something that happened in the past, over which you have no agency. Are you a passive (albeit walking) observer, or an actual character in the narrative? Even though you don't actually "do" much in Firewatch, Henry is instrumental to that story. It doesn't happen without him. Therefore, player investment. Same with Gone Home. Although Katie is trying to find out where her family are and what happened to her sister, the real moment-to-moment tension is about Katie, and her return to a house that was never her house and to a family that isn't there. 

What I felt in Ethan Carter was that I was interested in solving the mystery, but I realized that most of that wilderness, although beautiful, was dead space. Firewatch succeeded in distracting me from that same feeling, with the banter, and the small bits of optional interactivity, and the moments where time passed and the world adapted and changed. I've described Ethan Carter meanwhile as the "uncanny valley, but for the forest," because of the way it perfectly reminded me of walking in the woods behind my grandparents' house, to the point that I wanted to feel my jeans get caught on the branches strewn on the ground. When I didn't, I was reminded that the entire world was essentially static.

 

Her Story is an interesting example in this regard. As search engine simulator. I felt it also suffered for the fact that it held back your (the player's) role in the game until the end. It opted for a one-off twist over a whole range of emotions the player could feel, sustained over the course of the experience.

It's interesting that you go on to discuss the Witcher 3, because I think the investigation elements are a bit like if you stuck bits of Walking Simulator inside a AAA open-world RPG.


 

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Even though you don't actually "do" much in Firewatch, Henry is instrumental to that story. It doesn't happen without him. Therefore, player investment.

Do you ever have the experience where somebody says something and once it's said you can't believe it never occurred to you before?

This forum makes me feel stupid and inadequate in the best possible way.

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Her Story is an interesting example in this regard. As search engine simulator. I felt it also suffered for the fact that it held back your (the player's) role in the game until the end. It opted for a one-off twist over a whole range of emotions the player could feel, sustained over the course of the experience.

 

I didn't know Her Story had an actual end. I played until I thought I had figured out what happened and then I stopped playing. I guess the game simply decides you're done once you've viewed a certain percentage of all available video clips? That's kind of an interesting design choice in itself.

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I didn't know Her Story had an actual end. I played until I thought I had figured out what happened and then I stopped playing. I guess the game simply decides you're done once you've viewed a certain percentage of all available video clips? That's kind of an interesting design choice in itself.

It ends when you've listened to a few specific clips that will kind of explain the case.

 

 

I think with these Walking Simulator games, it matters immensely whether the action is taking place in the present, or whether your sole goal is to discover something that happened in the past, over which you have no agency. Are you a passive (albeit walking) observer, or an actual character in the narrative? Even though you don't actually "do" much in Firewatch, Henry is instrumental to that story. It doesn't happen without him. Therefore, player investment. Same with Gone Home. Although Katie is trying to find out where her family are and what happened to her sister, the real moment-to-moment tension is about Katie, and her return to a house that was never her house and to a family that isn't there. 

 

I think this is an interesting theory, but I don't get why Gone Home is taking place in the moment, but something like Everyone has Gone to Rapture isn't.  In both cases, your actions basically just uncover the story.  I think you're onto something though.  I don't think a story taking place in the present is essential to walking sims.  I do think it's one good strategy to get player buy-in.  Other strategies can work too.  I think of Gone Home as the perfect example of how using layered and compelling environmental story telling is enough to get player buy-in.  Firewatch does it through the instantaneous interactions with Delilah.  Stanley parable does it with interactive narration.  The Beginner's Guide does it with unreliable narration about a past relationship.  Dr. Langekovksy does it with humorous narration.  Amensia: AMFP uses mood and the suggestion of risk.

 

I think there are a bunch of ways to get player buy-in.  Some of those I listed involved active story participation.  Others focus on story presentation.  I think there are a myriad of strategies that developers can use to generate player interests.  The problem with a game like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is that it requires a very compelling narrative to make the player willing to slowly lumber between story bits.  If that story doesn't hit with the player they will hate it.  On the other hand, that's an opportunity for a developer.  If you're that confident in your story then adding puzzles or monster sneaking (I'm looking at you SOMA) may just distract and detract from the appealing part of your game.

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I absolutely agree that there are a bunch of ways to get player buy-in. I probably overstated my original case. I simply meant that walking around watching ghost tableaus play out an exciting story is not nearly as interesting as having a stake in it yourself.

But I think you underestimate the importance of the choice in Gone Home to situate the player in the family whose struggles the player uncovers, and the specific circumstances--home from college, new, but inherited house--that make the story possible. I do think that it is more interesting if the player's role in a story is clear from the outset--even if their role is to define their role, as in an RPG--than if they are merely an unidentified observer. This is what I mean about Gone Home's unraveling of past events having importance to the present action in the game. They are important because they matter to Katie, in a way that they would not be as meaningful if you were just an unidentified observer, or if the information about your identity was withheld for a twist. This isn't just any teenage girl's struggles you're uncovering--they're your sister's, and your going away to college is in part responsible for the fact that your younger sister is struggling. You did not do anything wrong, but your absence altered the family dynamic. Further, the final "past" event occurs only a few moments before the game's beginning. The past meets the present at the end, head-on, and all the while the tension is very much rooted in the present "Is my family still whole? Is my sister okay?" This is a question that really matters in the present, different from if you, say, found a dead body at the beginning and were just watching scenes of how it happened. But it's true that Gone Home also incorporates more puzzle-work into the exploration and unraveling of that story, which also buys player investment.

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I was thinking about Rob comment about puzzles in this kind game, and I think depend much on the story, pacing and most important, the puzzle design. Because, put too much puzzles or stuff in some os this stories might cause a problem with the flow of the narrative and even became a distraction or barrier (like in bad designed adventure games). However, the total lack of them is not the end the world, given how the narrative is told and pacing, is something totally doable - there is a whole subgenre of visual novels - the kinetic visual novel, which have not even choices or interaction at all, and let me tell you, lot of this novels are really good.

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