GraysonEvans

Super Personal Games?

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What do you guys think of games as self expression?

 

I have made four games, each taking me a few days. I made them to express some feelings that I had been having that I found were hard to talk about.

 

For example, I made a twine game about how I am in love with my friend : http://graysoneevans.itch.io/before-you-leave

 

 

Should games be about mechanics, systems and narrative? or can their be room for self expression?

 

 

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Should games be about mechanics, systems and narrative? or can their be room for self expression?

 

I don't think you would suggest these are mutually exclusive right?

 

I think it's obvious how narrative and personality/self-expression coexist, your twine being an example. The idea of mechanics expressing something is a much rarer treat, but if you've played Papo & Yo, that game serves as an amazing expression of something personal through its mechanics.

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Honestly I'm not sure that games are a great medium for expressing something personal and specific, because of all the concessions you have to make to player agency. You're not just dictating a story, but asking the player to actively participate in it. This depends on a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and emotional investment from the player, and if they're not buying into it, the whole thing quickly falls apart. You also have to account for all the things that the player might try to do that don't contribute to making whatever point you're trying to make, or you have to greatly restrict the options that are available (and then at a certain point, why are you even making an interactive thing in the first place?). It's not impossible, but I think it's pretty difficult to make a game that expresses something personal while also actually being satisfying to play. IMHO, sometimes games get cut a little too much slack for attempting the former while utterly failing at the latter.

 

If you want to see my own failed attempt, feel free to check out this text adventure I made a couple of years ago. In that case I couched the personal crap in a few layers of ironic detachment and general silliness, but apparently I overdid it because nobody even seemed to realize that there was anything personal about it. (Or maybe they did and just didn't care.)

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While I can certainly see your point, Shammack, I also believe that the interactive nature of games make them very powerful when you actually manage to pull it off as it essentially puts the player in your shoes. Rather than passively absorbing your thoughts/experience through reading/video they actually can interact and poke at it.

 

My go to example of this, which I've brought up several times on this forum, is Depression Quest. While the players agency is quite limited (in fact there's even a mechanic where it might even take more of your agency away) it was an extremely effective experience for me. Probably the most emotionally affective experience I've ever had with any medium. Granted, my personal experience with the subject matter certainly contributed to that but the fact that it can work at least remains.

 

The key I guess is not to just transfer personal history into your games in a 1:1 fashion, but add stuff to the edges, the what-ifs and so on.

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I would argue that games are quite excellent at personal expression, but not with specificity.  As Muppjockey pointed out they can put you in that person's shoes, but also can create a framework for the player to understand why certain things exist or decisions are made.  To give a personal example, everyone in school learns at some point about Napoleon pushing into Russia in the winter, but the foolhardiness of this idea didn't really sink in for me until a particularly long game of Empire: Total War when I made that same exact mistake because I wasn't paying enough attention to the seasons.  I have personally had a number of experiences like this where I found myself understanding why certain things I don't like exist, a conclusion I could only have come to by taking part in a particular experience.  I absolutely love games that allow me to put myself in a historical setting and basically see if I could do any better.  I get the sense that I experiencing someone's story even if I don't know who they are.

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Should games be about mechanics, systems and narrative? or can their be room for self expression?

 

There are plenty of games that do all those things (Fez is hugely about mechanics and systems, but has an underlying theme of exploration and discovery and wonder, Where is my Heart is a puzzle-platformer like the Lost Vikings, which managed to have me close to tears at the end) - but also, games without narrative can have massive potential for self expression (by the players, if not the creator). Think about how people's personalities come through when playing a board game - Some people immediately try to take over, some keep there plans secret, and I bet you didn't think that friend had the potential to be so RUTHLESS :)

 

Games also let you experience perspectives in a way movies don't. Papers Please or Cart Life are the textbook examples for this, but Valiant Heats showed how well stuff like this can be done by a big studio.

To dive quickly back into boardgames, Battlestar Galactica is a show (and boardgame) about paranoia. The game doesn't really contain a "story" as much as it does a setting, but it makes you completely paranoid through a mechanical choice alone: At the start of the game, everyone's on the same side, except one person is a traitor. Or two. Or NONE. There's almost no way to tell if the people around you are telling the truth or not, except to wait for that moment when a plan goes south and your food supply is sabotaged, just as raiders appear on the horizon. But even then it COULD have happened by chance.

 

I kind of agree with shammack - narrative and mechanics often work at odds (especially mechics based on choice) but some times the narrative comes out of making believable choices.

 

Muppjockey already mentioned Depression Quest, but I'd like to throw http://ncase.itch.io/coming-out-simulator-2014 into the mix, because it is knowingly about choice, and how much/little those choices affect things

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