Gone Home from The Fullbright Company

[BadHat]

The non-cliche version is the version where Lonnie was a ghost the whole time.

 

I think discussing the writing in terms of what ground has been covered in other literature is fine, but the people writing those criticisms need to realise that this is still extremely unfertile ground in video games. What might have been a relatively cliched and sappy, if still pretty engrossing novel, is almost utterly unique in the gaming space. The punk/queer aesthetic moreso than the romance, but even the romance itself stands out as pretty unique. What's it up against really, visual novels? Not that there aren't some good examples of writing in those, but they're pretty uniform about being "you are this character, fuck/romance one of these characters," which is a pretty different angle than watching it unfold from an uninvolved but caring third party.

 

Even if you were to write this story as a book, the angle of having her sister be the narrator, analysing things through the lens of the "straight" child instead of just painting a sappy teen romance from an invisible narrator's perspective would be at least a little unique (sidenote: are there any books like this?). Also possibly a bit weirder with the voyeurism since you'd have to write in dozens of lines about "and then Kaitlin dug around in her sister's closet" or "and then Kaitlin pulled open her mother's underwear drawer."

[Stuart]

What I found somewhat odd about Bogost's piece is that it ignores the ludic side of the game. As in, how the gameplay elevates the game's story and how it's wholly dependent on that it is a game. Why can't gameplay mechanics and what they represent/mean/symbolize be as literary as a novel's prose or a film's mise en scene? I find this odd because Bogost, if I'm correct, champions ludonarrative and how gameplay can convey meaning. In Gone Home's case, it's innocent voyeurism and discovery in a home that somewhat represents the zeitgeist of the era the story takes place in. The game's story does not stop with whatever Sam narrates or what we read. It's embedded in the little details and what the player does him/herself in it. 

 

You know what I'm surprised I haven't seen written yet? An essay of any sort detailing how Gone Home is an interesting evolution (or de-evolution) of the Ultima/System Shock method of storytelling through environment and environment interaction. After all, the game wouldn't exist without the existence of those two games and the games that would further carry down their legacy (System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Bioshock, etc.) 

[juv3nal]

What I found somewhat odd about Bogost's piece is that it ignores the ludic side of the game.

 

He mentioned it briefly on twitter at the time that it was because it was for a book review site.

[Stuart]

He mentioned it briefly on twitter at the time that it was because it was for a book review site.

 

Ech, still. You can't ignore that in a game critique, because, y'know, it's a game! It's like leaving out analysis of the cinematography, visual metaphors, and acting in No Country for Old Men for a book review site. Like, you undermine the whole work by ignoring those essential pieces. I dunno', whole things just bugs me.

[Steve]

FYI, I think this discussion is fascinating, and why I love the Idle Thumbs forums. Sorry for mostly being a lurker, but thanks so much for the in-depth & thoughtful exchange you guys have going.

[Stuart]

FYI, I think this discussion is fascinating, and why I love the Idle Thumbs forums. Sorry for mostly being a lurker, but thanks so much for the in-depth & thoughtful exchange you guys have going.

 

Thanks for making the game that started it! <3

[TychoCelchuuu]

The non-cliche version is the version where Lonnie was a ghost the whole time.

 

I think discussing the writing in terms of what ground has been covered in other literature is fine, but the people writing those criticisms need to realise that this is still extremely unfertile ground in video games. What might have been a relatively cliched and sappy, if still pretty engrossing novel, is almost utterly unique in the gaming space. The punk/queer aesthetic moreso than the romance, but even the romance itself stands out as pretty unique. What's it up against really, visual novels? Not that there aren't some good examples of writing in those, but they're pretty uniform about being "you are this character, fuck/romance one of these characters," which is a pretty different angle than watching it unfold from an uninvolved but caring third party.

If you think "punk/queer" is a unique aesthetic in video games you aren't playing enough video games, or the right kinds of games, or something. Here is a book you can read or alternatively here is a queer game to play. Or you can read up on a queer game conference.

[BadHat]

True, I tend to think in terms of mainstream (ie - stuff that shows up on Steam) games when it comes to these sorts of discussions. I'm vaguely aware of those games but I should probably make more of an effort to try some.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Wanting "punk" to be mainstream is kind of a contradiction in terms. If something's mainstream it can't really be punk anymore, can it?

[Gormongous]

Wanting "punk" to be mainstream is kind of a contradiction in terms. If something's mainstream it can't really be punk anymore, can it?

 

It may not be "punk" itself, but it can have a punk aesthetic.

[clyde]

Banksy is simultaneously punk and mainstream; no?

[Twig]

steampunk is pretty mainstream at this point

[BadHat]

Didn't say they should be, just that those were the games I was thinking of.

[feelthedarkness]

Wanting "punk" to be mainstream is kind of a contradiction in terms. If something's mainstream it can't really be punk anymore, can it?

 

I think this is entering "no true Scotsman" territory! The weird nihilism of modern networked life is that everything is observable and commodifiable.  Lady Gaga with a G.I.S.M. jacket. etc.. (punk tie in!) 

 

If I can circle this back, a game where a young woman discovers her sister discovering her queer sexuality is fairly unique (as much as anything can be) in light of the larger history of gaming. It is certainly part of an emerging zeitgeist, but don't you think that emergence is due to it be unserved for so long? 

 

I dug Patrick R and TheCineaste's posts, and think it's a mistake to hold game narrative to literary standards, even though there is a part of me that agrees with some of Bogost's article. Though the more I think on the ending and the game in general, I see it as tragic. What seems pat is mostly false hope. Given that so much of game is about what happened in the unobserved space/time I don't see things going well for anybody involved. It's nice the father is trying his hand at writing again, but he's kind of a hack per the letter from the publisher, and his high school daughter has run off stealing the equipment from the job he's practically losing already. None of which our main character notices between sweet nothing postcards.

[Stuart]

I dug Patrick R and TheCineaste's posts, and think it's a mistake to hold game narrative to literary standards, even though there is a part of me that agrees with some of Bogost's article. Though the more I think on the ending and the game in general, I see it as tragic. What seems pat is mostly false hope. Given that so much of game is about what happened in the unobserved space/time I don't see things going well for anybody involved. It's nice the father is trying his hand at writing again, but he's kind of a hack per the letter from the publisher, and his high school daughter has run off stealing the equipment from the job he's practically losing already. None of which our main character notices between sweet nothing postcards.

 

Actually, my point was more that Bogost ignored the actual game part in his criticism. I'm glad people are trying to hold up game narrative to literary standards. Literature is the base form of all modern narrative art forms, whether it's music, film, TV, or video games. What irks me is that despite all that, he, I say again, leaves out analyzing the importance of Gone Home's ludic narrative. How the mechanics serve the narrative and the mechanics at their own a tool of creating a story. And I said in my post, it bugs me even more that this is coming from one of the many game academics that champion ludology.

 

Admittedly, to allude to Merrit Kopas, the fact that this is a game about young lesbian women falling in love shouldn't be a magnificent feat, but in this medium, it unfortunately is. But that still doesn't deter it from its artistry, as do other games that deal with similar issues or have similar, simplistic narrative formulas. To paraphrase Bob Chipman, formula isn't a bad thing. Formulaic narrative is just structure. What you make out of a set formula is what is most important, and in this game's case, it's the details and what the player does in order to uncover them is what matters most.

 

Sorry for what may seem a scattershot response, but I have a cold and a headache. 

 

But yeah.

 

*goes back to shamelessly play Shadow Warrior (2013 version)*

[feelthedarkness]

Haha, whoops! I was agreeing with you on ludic terms, however poorly worded. I meant a mistake in the same sense as judging Eraserhead or 8 1/2 based solely on their screenplays.

[Stuart]

Haha, whoops! I was agreeing with you on ludic terms, however poorly worded. I meant a mistake in the same sense as judging Eraserhead or 8 1/2 based solely on their screenplays.

 

Ech sorry. I'm a bit cloudy headed. Damn this cold.

 

Actually, I just remembered something. During Thanksgiving break, I played Gone Home with my mom. It was quite interesting. I was glad she loved it and how it helped changed her perspective on LGBQT people. I mean, she's been fairly tolerant towards them, but always straddling between that line of being tolerant and being a bit unreasonably close minded. But the game made her understand the struggles of LGBQT people, and actually linked them to her own struggles as an Latina immigrant struggling to find respect and fairness by people in this country. All in all, it was an interesting experience, and she was very moved by it. She was quite surprised the game had no violence or combat, which she had associated most games of having, despite me telling her otherwise. 

 

Then we played Surgeon Simulator, but that's a whole other story (she liked it though).

[Bjorn]

I just read through Bogost's piece on GH.  It left me...disquieted. 

 

On one hand, much of what he has to has some truth to it, both about GH and video games in general.  But then he swings into what feels like a condescending lecture that is so far removed from reality as to have no meaning, as it has no relationship with the game, literature or fans of either. 

 

Actually, the more I've sat here and thought about some of his later conclusions, the more that essay pisses me off, mostly because of how terribly insulting it is to people who were emotionally moved by GH. 

 

Ugh, I think it's too late to coherently explain my thoughts on this tonight, perhaps tomorrow.

[Argobot]

Condescending is a great way to characterize that essay. To suggest that the people who enjoyed Gone Home did so because they don't read (or that people who read wouldn't enjoy Gone Home) is such a condescending way to talk about the game. It's also untrue. I'm not sure what the point of the essay is, except to say that Gone Home is good, but that we shouldn't overly praise the game because it's not as good as Orlando.

 

Compare that to another LARB essay on Gone Home, one that doesn't have this 'above-it-all' tone.

 

(Side note: I had never read Orlando before and am doing so now in part because of Bogost's essay. He uses Orlando as a counter-example to other, "better" queer stories in literature, and I have to say, that's not really what Orlando is about. The book is more about the difference and power dynamics between genders, not about a young woman coming to grips with her queerness. That means Orlando isn't even a good literary counter-example to Gone Home, since they're both telling completely different stories. It's such a lazy comparison and it retroactively has made me dislike that Bogost essay even more.)

[Bjorn]

Condescending is a great way to characterize that essay. To suggest that the people who enjoyed Gone Home did so because they don't read (or that people who read wouldn't enjoy Gone Home) is such a condescending way to talk about the game. It's also untrue. I'm not sure what the point of the essay is, except to say that Gone Home is good, but that we shouldn't overly praise the game because it's not as good as Orlando.

 

Compare that to another LARB essay on Gone Home, one that doesn't have this 'above-it-all' tone.

 

Thanks for the link to that essay, it does a better job of discussing GH as a game, and highlighting more specifics about it.  That was another thing that bugged me about the Bogost piece, he's very general in his criticism and praise.  I'd expect more specificity given the claims he's making.

 

Okay, after a night's sleep, I feel a little more coherent.  Here's the point that set me off last night:

"It’s impossible and undesirable to question these reactions, to undermine them with haughty disregard."

This is just the backhanded concession that he's made, as he is about to not just undermine, but completely dismiss people's emotional reactions with haughty disregard.

"But it’s also not unreasonable to ask how these players could have been so easily satisfied. For readers of contemporary fiction or even viewers of serious television, it’s hard for me to imagine that Gone Home would elicit much of any reaction, let alone the reports of full-bore weeping and breathless panegyrics this game has enjoyed."

This is a classic straight-white-male telling other people how they should be reacting to something.  (As near as I can tell, he is a middle aged, married white man).  That their emotional reactions to this game are immature, obviously, because people who appreciate literature and "serious television" wouldn't have that reaction.  It's arrogant and has echoes of prejudice laced through it.

The emotional power of something is not intrinsically tied to the academic quality of it.  Someone as smart as Bogost ought to know that.  

This insulting dismissal undermines the rest of his arguments about GH.  There is an interesting discussion to be had about whether the praise of GH is in primarily because of how unique it is in theme for a video game contrasted with it's actual quality as a story.  But for me, Bogost excused himself from that discussion with the latter half of his essay.

[sclpls]

I liked Bogost's piece, but I also read it more as commentary on the state of critical games writing and how that community, if we can call it that, communicated Gone Home to its public, rather than about Gone Home per se.

 

I agree with everyone that it doesn't make sense to talk about cliches from one medium to the next. Things written in blood on the wall is a cliche in video games, but it isn't the sort of thing that I would recognize as cliche if I saw it in a novel because that's not the sort of thing you see appear in that space. I've argued before that I see Gone Home as deliberately being an anti-genre game. All the tension people experience in that game (besides whatever natural tension you experience from being in a big empty house at night) is a deliberate result of genre expectations being defied by that game. If it were a short story there would be nothing remarkable about it, but of course it's a game not a short story, so it's different.

 

That's also why I disagree with people that think it would be a great game to show to people that have no level of familiarity with games. I think the game requires a certain level of literacy with games to understand why it is interesting. The narrative is sweet & touching, but I'm not sure its sufficient to grab people that are new to games. (Admittedly, I also never really understood the desire to get non-gamers into games. I love coffee, but I'm not sweating how I can convince my friends that don't drink it that there's more to it than just being a bitter drink)

[clyde]

(Admittedly, I also never really understood the desire to get non-gamers into games. I love coffee, but I'm not sweating how I can convince my friends that don't drink it that there's more to it than just being a bitter drink)

I evangelize because I want to be able to discuss nuance with those around me.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Compare that to another LARB essay on Gone Home, one that doesn't have this 'above-it-all' tone.

Ugh, not a fan of this essay. If I have to hear one more person tell me Gone Home isn't a game I'm going to dye my hair pink and join the army. Anyone who unironically parrots talking points from the Game Police needs to

and read some things.

I also don't buy the idea that the game is easier to interact with than IF. I find it much easier because I've grown up playing first person games. If I made my mom sit down, she'd be screwed for half an hour because navigating a 3d environment with a mouse and keyboard isn't child's play. It's something you need to learn and it takes a while. At least my mom knows how to type - she can play IF without getting literally lost.

And if I have to hear another person bring up how much this game costs I'm going to steal all my family's VCRs, turn all the lights in the house on, and run off. Nobody ever talks about how much books or movies cost, so if we can stop bringing that up for games, that would be wonderful, thank you.

This is just the backhanded concession that he's made, as he is about to not just undermine, but completely dismiss people's emotional reactions with haughty disregard.

So it sounds like you disagree - when he says

"But it’s also not unreasonable to ask how these players could have been so easily satisfied. For readers of contemporary fiction or even viewers of serious television, it’s hard for me to imagine that Gone Home would elicit much of any reaction, let alone the reports of full-bore weeping and breathless panegyrics this game has enjoyed."

You think he's off-base: it makes sense that people who consume all sorts of media will be brought to "full-bore weeping" and inspired to pen "breathless panegyrics" because Gone Home is such an amazing experience. To me, though, what he says makes perfect sense. If Gone Home were a one hour special episode of a teen TV show where the main character comes back from spending a year abroad in Europe and discovers her sister is gay and has run off with her girlfriend, or a young adult novel about the same thing, I have no doubt it would be really affecting in the same way the game is affecting, but I'm having trouble imagining it bringing people who just finished watching Treme or reading Maya Angelou breaking down and weeping or evangelizing about the Gone Home show/book to everyone because it's such a revelation in the way it seems to have influenced gamers.

Gone Home made me cry, but every goddamn thing makes me cry, from the end of Return of the King to literally every Disney movie to reading any given line in a Shakespeare play. Certainly it didn't inspire breathless panegyrics compared to something like Howling Dogs or Cart Life - this isn't to deny that it's a great game and I recommend the game to everyone every chance I get, but Bogost is talking about the particular timbre of discussion around the game that treats it like some kind of revelatory experience which will forever represent the pinnacle of the medium's narrative capabilities, which makes sense if all you do is play video games but which is less understandable if you've been reading about and watching the struggles of queer and marginalized people for decades in the media you consume.

I'm not sure why you think Bogost's comments represent an "insulting dismissal" - he explicitly says it's a good game and that to place it at the same level as teen novels and such is not to denigrate it. Honestly I think the idea that "high" art or whatever is the only good art is something people are bringing to Bogost's essay, not something he himself believes, or to be less charitable to him but to still salvage the point, it's something we don't need to believe to agree with him - there's a time and a place for everything, and Gone Home occupies a certain place that Ralph Ellison doesn't. One's not better than the other, they're just different things with different merits.

In other words, this is how I see it:

I liked Bogost's piece, but I also read it more as commentary on the state of critical games writing and how that community, if we can call it that, communicated Gone Home to its public, rather than about Gone Home per se.

Nobody's arguing that Gone Home is a bad game or that you shouldn't like it or anything. Bogost is just pointing out that our standards for games are pretty different than our standards for other art and there are a significant chunk of people for whom Gone Home isn't exactly going to be the second coming of Queer Video Game Christ or something. It's a great game like John Hughes movies are great movies. Hughes made some of my favorite films but it's clear that he's doing different stuff than Kurosawa or Kubrick or Tarkovsky and I wouldn't praise his movies for doing what those other directors' movies do any more than I would praise those other directors for doing what John Hughes did. It would be a disservice to both groups: to Hughes for missing what makes his movies great and to Kurosawa & Co. for missing what makes their movies great.

In other words, don't act like Gone Home is so amazing that this is the end of the line in terms of what games can aspire to when it comes to narratives or writing or anything like that, because you're selling games and their capabilities short. There are things games can be other than what Gone Home is, just like there are things movies can be other than The Breakfast Club.

Does this mean other movies are better than The Breakfast Club? That's a subjective value judgment, and you're free to say whatever you want. Even if you disagree and think The Breakfast Club beats Seven Samurai or Full Metal Jacket or Nostalghia any day of the week, I think you still have to admit they're doing different things and that games can do both. Even if you think Gone Home is better than Howling Dogs or Cart Life or the hypothetical games that are even closer to traditional "highbrow" art, I think you still have to admit that Gone Home is different from those games and that if you enjoy both you're enjoying different sorts of things. We don't have to worry about which is better or worse - we just have to realize that games can be more than just what Gone Home is.

 

steampunk is pretty mainstream at this point

Steampunk is so hilariously not punk that it's not even funny. The only reason "punk" ended up in there is because the moniker is aping cyberpunk (which is actually punk), but steampunk is basically the opposite of punk. Let's celebrate the technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution and dress up as the fancy aristocracy with a bunch of cool steam-powered gadgets! The proletariat? What? Who are they? Oh, you mean the underclasses that live in Under-London, in constant war with the morlocks! Yes, I suppose they do slave away making these gadgets for us... how unfortunate... well, I'm sure the occasional glance up from their coal-choked darkness, the small glimpses of the sky, where they catch sight of our glorious zeppelins, serve to cheer their dismal lives... gives them something to aspire to and so forth... well pardon me I have to go tighten my corset.

[Argobot]

In other words, don't act like Gone Home is so amazing that this is the end of the line in terms of what games can aspire to when it comes to narratives or writing or anything like that, because you're selling games and their capabilities short. There are things games can be other than what Gone Home is, just like there are things movies can be other than The Breakfast Club.

 

 

Did anyone actually do this? There was a lot of praise for Gone Home, but I don't remember anyone talking about it in this way. Glad that Bogost could come into the conversation though, and tell us all how to feel about Gone Home. It sure is embarrassing that we all had the wrong opinion about the game before he set us straight! 

 

(Sorry, but I am just forever annoyed by that essay. I'm fairly confident that most people writing and praising Gone Home are aware that it's not the pinnacle of what game's can be, and we certainly don't need someone like Bogost telling us that in the most condescending tone imaginable.)

[TychoCelchuuu]

As the curator of the Gone Home thread on the Something Awful forums, I've been collecting quotes from people in the thread for the OP. Here is a selection:

I've never played a game that made a person's life so believable before. I can't even describe how I felt playing it.

Just finished this and been crying for about a half hour since I finished it. Fuck.

This is the first Video game I have ever played that I would feel comfortable defending as a legitimate artistic piece to other adults in real life. As someone who's been obsessively wasting my time on this garbage since I was 5 years old, it's really cheering. Also, the ending was the single most emotionally affective set piece I have ever come across in a Video game.

Seriously, this game has made me a happy man in so many ways.

Only found out about this game tonight, and then proceeded to play it for like 3 hours, to its conclusion. It's one of the best games I've ever played, and no other game has ever come close to provoking the emotional reaction in me that this one did. Like, god damn, it hit me like a ton of bricks... about five or six times.

If you replace "game" with "book" or "movie," try to imagine the sort of book or movie you'd picture. "Just finished this [book] and been crying for about a half hour since I finished it. Fuck." "This is the first book I have ever read that I would feel comfortable defending as a legitimate artistic piece to other adults in real life." "Only found out about this movie tonight, then proceeded to watch it for like three hours, to its conclusion. It's one of the best films I've ever seen, and no other film has ever come close to provoking the emotional reaction in me that this one did."

What book or movie would you picture? Would it look like Judy Blume? Or would it look like Invisible Man? Which is Gone Home more like? Again, this is not to say one is better than the other (I enjoy both! They're on separate scales! Basically incomparable to each other!). It's just to say that the sorts of praise people give this game would seem a little out of place if they were praising the closest thing to Gone Home in other forms of media.