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Walking simulators aka "Notgame" Thread

Crooked Bee

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Crooked Bee

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This thread is for posting anything and everything related to the thread title. You played one of these? Got some thoughts or repressed desires to share? Post 'em here.

E.g. I did this editorial more or less recently: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10001 It has some context re: what the hell a "notgame" is, if nothing else.

There's also this Gamasutra article, for example: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/251191/How_walking_simulators_allow_us_to_touch_other_worlds.php

You rifle through bits of life in all of these games to answer crucial questions. In the process, the exploration becomes a kind of alchemy, turning the most basic forms of interaction and living into golden discovery.

Put simply, it's because these games tap into our desire to reach out and touch the world around us.

Riight.

I'm also playing The Stanley Parable creator's The Beginner's Guide. If The Magic Circle is a reconstruction of a game from a notgame, The Beginner's Guide is more of a... deconstruction of a notgame to further pieces (if that's even possible) via a sort of meta-narrative? I'll report back later.
 

Starwars

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I've played 3 that I can remember. Dear Esther, which I couldn't finish. It was just too boring. Eidolon, which looked kinda cool, but also ended up being hideously boring after a short while. And then The Old City: Leviathan, which I actually quite enjoyed. Liked the story and writing of it, and it had some nice visual moments. I finished that one and enjoyed it.

Personally I'm not as dead set against walking simulators as some people because I believe there is a lot of space between "game" and "movie". I think that just being in control of a character changes how one perceives things when compared to a movie for example.

Of course, having so little gameplay means that you'll have a lot of pretentious hacks selling their shit which is unfortunate.
 

Jaesun

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Forgot about The Old City, I'll add that to my Wishlist and wait for a sale. That did look pretty cool as well as the "story".
 

Unkillable Cat

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Mind: Path to Thalamus.

Has a handful of moments of puzzling, but otherwise is a walking simulator in somewhat outlandish environments. I only played it long enough for all the Steam cards to drop.
 

Archibald

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Are they commercially viable? I remember that everyone from mainstream media seamed to shit their pants when Gone Home was released, but after that I didn't hear that much about them.
 

Crooked Bee

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These are experimental games, so most of them are not commercially viable. Tale of Tales thought otherwise with Sunset and got burnt.

A couple of them were successful, like The Stanley Parable or Gone Home or Ethan Carter (to a lesser degree), but most simply can't be. For all their accessibility (you mostly just walk around and your interaction with the world is highly limited), they are not the most accessible genre conceptually. Most people won't pay much if anything for them, and for the most part rightly so.
 

almondblight

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There were a number of these a couple of decades ago (Puppet Hotel, Freak Show, early Cyan games); it's odd to see people treating the ones that come out nowadays as groundbreaking.
 

Naveen

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Got some thoughts or repressed desires to share?

Repressed, now that's an understatement. Hearing or seeing the words "interactive", "nongame", "deconstruction", "space" (not used as a physical space), "transcending the limits of...", "it's time to open up/mature the medium", or "narrative-focused" send me into a fit of anxiety and terror. Years ago I read a lot of contemporary art philosophy bullshit and that raped my brain and left me scarred for life. Now I'm seeing the exact same arguments, the same verbal diarrhea, and the same academic wankery but now applied to games. It's triggering.
 

Crooked Bee

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I'm not sure I'd call most of them exploration games. First, they're not games ("notgames"); this isn't meant to judge them, it's just the way they're conceptually defined. Second, a lot of them don't have much to explore; those that do often limit exploration to walking around and triggering scripted events or just taking in the view and the atmosphere. Even in the most exploration-y of them, the actual focus is usually not on exploration as such, but on the "experience".

Anyway, in latest notgame news, Tale of Tales launched a KS for their next media experience:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/taleoftales/cathedral-in-the-clouds-contemplation-in-the-digit

Virtual dioramas to contemplate ancient religious themes in real-time 3D

Right. Should I call this a "contemplation game"?
 

felipepepe

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Damn, the guy is so anti-mainstream that he ditched glasses in favor of a goddamn monocle chained to his earring. Even JRPG designers can't come up with look-how-unique-I-am bullshit like that.

Also, €35,000 for a Cathedral with only TWO dioramas? Be prepared for a massive failure & subsequent butthurt rant on how gamers are ignorant.
 

Naveen

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So, a virtual museum. Won't work. You can't just create a 3d model of the virgin Mary, make her alive, insert a nice music and call it contemplative art (redundant expression, of course); for meditation perhaps if the music or sound effects are nice, but meh. In fact, I suspect that the "alive" and 3d nature of what they want to create will break the aesthetic experience. And I'm assuming they can actually create beautiful 3d models.

This, in visual arts, is beatiful:

Pieter_Claesz,+Bodegon+1633.jpg

In real life, dynamic 3d, or in an interactive medium, it's just someone who forgot to do the dishes.

We love visiting museums and churches in search of these experiences. But it’s not always convenient to do so. And since there’s all this wonderful technology now, it really shouldn’t be necessary anymore. We should all have works of art in our pockets or on our laptops, for when the mood strikes, or when we need a moment of calm and focus.

There's a game for that, it's called google.
 

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They are gonna cry on twitter again after they fail to reach even 50% of their kickstarter goal.
 

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Despite of being atheists, we can’t help being intensely moved by some of the religious art made during the Gothic and Renaissance period. These experiences can’t convert us to Christianity but they do make us think about universal themes as kindness, self-sacrifice, patience, empathy, love, and so on. We feel they make us better people. These experiences are intense and often accompanied by tears. And they last! They stay with us, become part of us, tremendously improve our lives on this planet.

I'm sorry but... :what::what::what:
 

Crooked Bee

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A write-up on The Beginner's Guide's "material-narrative dissonance”: http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2015/10/the-beginners-guide-by-davey-wreden-et.html

But this is also where TBG broke for me, in a “ludonarrative dissonance” equivalent of 3D construction and production value. (Maybe call it “material-narrative dissonance”?) As someone who’s seen hundreds of community Source levels through the years, none of this looks like the work of a “lone amateur” who’s messing around. All the 3D carpentry here is very clean and trim; there are almost zero construction flaws in the entire game; the whisper of the walls here is extremely confident and experienced.

Emily Short on The Beginner's Guide -- this one's more interesting because well, this is Emily Short: https://emshort.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/the-beginners-guide-davey-wreden-and-intimacy-inside-games/

The Beginner’s Guide is a new game by one of the creators of The Stanley Parable. The premise is that Davey had a game-developing friend called Coda who wrote a bunch of small, arty games between 2008 and 2011, and Davey wants to walk us through these, showing the progression of the games and of his own relationship with Coda. He provides a voice-over that narrates everything we encounter. In some cases the discussion focuses on the design ideas and in some cases it touches lightly on the technical work that went into making a level.

This is one of those games in which the experience really suffers from spoilers, so if you think you would like to play a roughly 90-minute, mechanics light game about creativity, the challenge of understanding other people, and the mental health of creators, you may want to check it out before reading too many reviews, including this one. While I will not be giving away all the details of how the game turns out, it is impossible to discuss its major themes without ruining some of the surprise.

I must say, after The Magic Circle, encountering another gamedev character named Coda was a bit surprising. The name does bear the obvious connotations, but to see it in two meta-games almost at once? I wonder if that perhaps isn't just a coincidence.
 
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So I just "played" TBG, man what an absolute turd that was. It's like playing through someone's collection of unfinished levels, they're quite pretty and neatly done but you can't enjoy them because a highly annoying pretentious wanker keeps talking and going on boring rants about this and that while you play. It's like looking at a nice picture but to see it you have to let Davey Wreden jerk off into your ear. I wouldn't recommend it to others, it's just not worth it.
 

Mustawd

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Played Gone Home. It was aight for was it was I guess. Can these type of "things" be considered in the visual novel kind of genre?
 

AN4RCHID

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Gone Home had some decent environmental storytelling and the novelty of being set in a familiar real-world place. At least it didn't feel like a total waste of my time like Dear Esther.

I don't think Visual Novel fits. A lot of these games don't even have that much exposition (for example Proteus, TIMEframe, The Path).
 

mondblut

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Wasn't this crap invented by Myst and hugely trendy back in late 90s?

And virtual museums? Fucksakes, Cryo interactive has spammed the marked with them back in the day. Egypt, Versailles, how is that new?
 
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Wasn't this crap invented by Myst and hugely trendy back in late 90s?

Modern walking simulators are here to prove wrong the Myst-bashers from the 90s. "You thought Myst had no gameplay?! Well, take a look at this!"
 

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