mikemariano

Gone Home from The Fullbright Company

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Who are these people who will drop 20 bucks on a game they know nothing about? Reading anything about what it is would dispell so many misconceptions about what it is.

 

I'm pretty sure there are games that depend on impulse buys, I've also seen the same complaint on Proteus and all the more narrative games mentioned before and I'm pretty sure Hate Plus will get the same hate.

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Eagerly looking forward to picking this up when I have money again at the end of the month. I posted about this on one of my country's local forums, and the response has been... underwhelming, basically fluctuating between "It's not a game" to "It's a game, but a $2-3 game". What can you do?


Otherwise, this one's for Steve:

post-24760-0-83585400-1377014763_thumb.png

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I'm unable to play things like Amnesia and Slender, because I'm a big baby when it comes to horror games. Still, I decided to give Gone Home a go despite it being a notorious ghost game. I'm so glad I did. What a great experience. Congrats Steve et al.! You can be proud!
 
This game is worth $20 for

Sam's menstrual cycle story

alone.

Also, the lights around the attic hatch were a masterful touch.
 
Furthermore:

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I take two things from some of the negativity. 

 

One, some people just aren't at a point in their lives where something like this will resonate. I felt increasingly horrible for Katie's dad, partially because that's a lot closer to my fears. I can't expect some 17 year old CoDBlops fan, for who video games are a kind of sport to relate to a sense that you're passed mid-career and it's just not working.

 

Two, there is probably something worth considering in the complaints, if not the specific idiot complaints themselves. I have really loved some of these pure narrative games Dear Esther, 30 Flights, Gone Home, but I feel there is some validity to questioning the push/pull of pure narrative and interactivity. 

 

 

These are both excellent points. There have been a ton of books that I read in jr. high school/high school, and didn't appreciate at the time, but felt really deep to me when I went back to them in my late 20s after having gained a little bit of life experience.

 

I also think it is really easy to dismiss some of the criticisms because of how inarticulate so many of them are, but ultimately if someone didn't have a good experience with a game they should feel free to say so. The other day I got chewed out on another message board for linking to an AV Club article that expressed a lot of my dissatisfaction with the show Breaking Bad, and of course I was called an idiot in a dozen different ways. It's okay to not like some critically acclaimed work, and it doesn't mean that person is an idiot for not liking it.

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some people just aren't at a point in their lives where something like this will resonate. I felt increasingly horrible for Katie's dad, partially because that's a lot closer to my fears. I can't expect some 17 year old CoDBlops fan, for who video games are a kind of sport to relate to a sense that you're passed mid-career and it's just not working.

 

I don't know about this. I mean what you say is obviously true, but on some level games are so often about taking on a role that is very different from our real lives. I've never been a space marine or wizard (well, that I can tell you guys about. real wizards have to pinky swear not to talk about it. it's like fight club.), for instance, but I'm able to relate to the challenges they face.

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But in those cases it's because their experiences are entirely fictitious. The life of a wizard could involve literally anything, because there's no such thing as wizards.* Even if those characters are vastly different from a real person they're accountable to absolutely nothing in reality. Plus, unlike Gone Home, it's pretty rare that a game would focus on the emotional or mental state of a wizard or a space marine character to any extent.

 

 

*like "magic missile, spectral blade, improved spectral blade" wizards. All "real" wizards are just weird Alan Moore-ish guys.

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But in those cases it's because their experiences are entirely fictitious. The life of a wizard could involve literally anything, because there's no such thing as wizards.*

*like "magic missile, spectral blade, improved spectral blade" wizards. All "real" wizards are just weird Alan Moore-ish guys.

 

Exactly what a member of the inner cabal of the wizarding-industrial complex conspiracy would be required to say.

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Exactly what a member of the inner cabal of the wizarding-industrial complex conspiracy would be required to say.

MagiciansAlliance.jpg

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I was having mouse problems as well (I recently bought a cheap RF mouse to replace a broken one and it sucks), turning off mouse acceleration and sticky targetting helped a lot, because those amplified the crappy mouse issue.

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I could what the who

Further details will be forthcoming in my Gone Home tweak guide that I plan to publish within the week - this game definitely demands max FPS and pin point accurate control. If you don't squeeze every last frame out of this thing you're going to be at a serious disadvantage.

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Setting the resolution to 1024x768, using the lowest graphics settings, and disabling vsync helps a lot already, but I was wondering if there is a way to replace the textures of all the objects that you can interact with with plain red or something. Has anyone tried this already?

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I got the game recently and loved it to pieces. Of course I can see why reviews would maybe not be sensitive to the things it's trying to do (reviewers these days just aren't used to cool ghosts), I might actually say it's in part because the language of game reviewing, not just the psyche of people playing the game that seems to have hindered discussion somewhat. An incredibly affecting experience that succeeded in a number of ways, loved it.

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I think the "language of game reviewing" likes the game just fine.

And can I just say that "Gone Home" being in the "Adventure > First Person > Sci-fi" category at GameRankings is pretty great.

I figured this would be because that website simply didn't have an appropriate category, but then I looked, and they do actually have "Adventure > First Person > Modern". !??!

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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.

If this is true, then is X-Files in Gone Home the first reality television program?

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Gone Home has technology where written diary entries that you will read in the future are converted into audio logs that you listen to when you interact with certain key objects. Sounds pretty sci-fi to me!

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Hell, the entire story takes place inside a complex virtual simulation, with which you as the player mostly interact by moving around a specialized ball that corresponds to the position of your viewpoint onscreen. Sounds pretty sci-fi to me!

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You can use telekinesis to manipulate objects without touching them.  And use your clearly cybernetic eyes to zoom in while standing still.  Sounds pretty sci-fi to me!

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So many questions.

 

So Gone Home is a critical success, but (when) will we know if the game has been a financial success? Will Fullbright be able to make their next project the way they want? Also, do they have actual future plans as a studio, or was this a one-off thing? If they have plans, what are they?

 

Also I'd like to read/hear a postmortem discussing the game design, like if concessions to more traditional video game expectations were made and how the budget informed design. Maybe someone should have Gaynor and/or the rest of FB as guests in a Gone Home Extravaganza podcast episode.

 

It doesn't address the financial aspect much, but http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2013/08/21/qt3-games-podcast-gone-homecast-with-developer-steve-gaynor/

 

Who are these people who will drop 20 bucks on a game they know nothing about? Reading anything about what it is would dispell so many misconceptions about what it is.

 

This is the part of the backlash that mystifies me. Fine, some people won't be interested in or won't like Gone Home. Some people won't feel the price is justified. But who the hell looks at the store page - which clearly says it's purely exploratory - and then bitches about the "lack of gameplay". And how do you buy the game without looking at the store page? My mind boggles.

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Gah watching the speedrun Steve posted on his twitter makes me realize how many journals I missed!!!!

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