demagogue on 21/8/2017 at 09:59
I vote we (i.e., a GenGaming mod) move this whole discussion of walking sims into the "Games like Dishonored & Deus Ex" thread and rename it to something to do with the genre, so then we can give it a proper discussion there and I won't feel bad fattening up the What are You Playing thread.
Anyway, in the hopes this does get moved, I just wanted to officially register, I don't like the term walking sim. What I don't like about has to do with the entire discussion that already happened in IF ages ago, which is that there are certain things devs need to do to make a narrative game work, things like problems over puzzles. But one of the important things is that it has to have some kind of legit interactivity (or playing with the concept of interactivity, a la Photopia / arguably Stanley Parable). Walking sim only encourages the authors to drop interactivity, and they're going to go through the same long discussion we already had like 20 years ago with IF when we figured all this out then.
OR, they could just read up on all the lessons we already learned from that and start making them the way the gaming gods intended. This is the major reason why I voted for FPIF (First Person Interactive Fiction), because I want people to feel they need to be literate about how IF games work before trying to make first person versions. Dear Esther was great and all, but it was a poor paradigm to start the ball rolling. You'd learn more about how to make one of these studying how Anchorhead was put together, or at the least Fire Watch.
henke on 21/8/2017 at 10:03
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Hold the phone. First, what do we call ourselves? I disagree with 'pedants', because we're clearly most concerned with genre, not the universe at large. Pigeonhole bandits? Epigenretologists? Classificants?
Mmm, indeed, "Pedant" brings to mind some kind of pedaling ant. A far more fitting categorization for ourselves might be "a bunch of goddamn taffers who can't agree on anything".
Thirith on 21/8/2017 at 10:07
Moving it into its own thread has my vote.
I have to say that I have a problem with "some kind of legit interactivity", because I have no idea what would constitute "legit" interactivity and what would be interactivity that isn't "legit". If navigating an environment falls under the latter, I'm not sure I have much use for that particular distinction.
Sulphur on 21/8/2017 at 10:07
Quote Posted by henke
Mmm, indeed, "Pedant" brings to mind some kind of pedaling ant. A far more fitting categorization for ourselves might be "a bunch of goddamn taffers who can't agree on anything".
Now playing: 'ABoGTWCAoA', the sequel to 'Taffers Stole My Lunch Money and Now I'm Getting Revenge by Co-opting their Genre', and 'What's Benny Doing These Days Anyway, JC?'
Sulphur on 21/8/2017 at 10:11
Quote Posted by Thirith
Moving it into its own thread has my vote.
I have to say that I have a problem with "some kind of legit interactivity", because I have no idea what would constitute "legit" interactivity and what would be interactivity that isn't "legit". If navigating an environment falls under the latter, I'm not sure I have much use for that particular distinction.
Same.
I believe what dema's talking about is the early 90s revival of IF where they were closely patterned after the Infocom tradition of blocking progress in an otherwise serious story via multitudes of puzzles, which were often transparent in their purpose to provide a challenge to players. These have slowly moved towards less 'here's a match-3/sliding tile puzzle some mad designer put in the way cuz we could' to plausible obstacles that would legitimately block the way forward, a change I'm very much for because (ingame universe) mimesis is conserved that way.
demagogue on 21/8/2017 at 12:03
I was kind of presuming too much and explaining too little when I said that. The whole point is that it was this whole, decade long discussion that IF people had in the 90s to come to realize certain things over time. And interactivity, especially in the FP_ context, isn't really the right term. The way I like to think about it is the narrative and gameplay are connected. So interactivity should be in the joint service of advancing the gameplay plot (to complete the objectives) and the narrative plot (to advance the story along).
Thinking about it in terms of not breaking mimesis is one part of that. And actually the really famous manifesto that started the ball rolling on this discussion was called "(
http://www.reocities.com/aetus_kane/writing/cam.html) Crimes Against Mimesis", which offered rules on how to design good IF. And summing it up as story problems over puzzles is one way to capture the flavor. But the way I think about it is, in my mind, even broader than that. You can respect mimesis and still fall flat with the gameplay/narrative connection. I think the idea of making mutual progress in the game and the story through your interactivity might capture it.
Anyway, the problem with exploring the environment is that it has the risk of not advancing you through any kind of plot through your actions. You aren't really part of your own story, your just along for the ride watching somebody else throw a story at you. Of course exploration can engage you as part of your own story too. Fire Watch actually had that side to it. But it should be designed that way. That's not what Dear Esther did. It's maybe easier to give positive and negative examples than to explain what exactly it is.
Well ... You really didn't have an MO, a reason to be going anywhere at all in DE, and there wasn't any particular reason why certain bits of story were being thrown at you when you got to certain places. Whereas in Fire Watch, the entire story was doled out exactly according to where you were, and you had a pretty strong MO to go to different places on the map. You were going out to get some job done, or find out what's going on. The engine of you acting isn't just to walk around for its own sake, it's to do whatever you're out there walking for. So I was afraid the term "walking sim" would slide over that important distinction (even when walking is actually part of it), and it'd be better just to cut to the chase and say we're trying to tell a story here that you're part of. Something like that is what I was thinking about.
Edit: To be more clear, I'd like a really broad umbrella term that'd cover good storytelling, like the "crimes against mimesis" line, but also gimmicky but still pretty stories like Dear Esther. I don't want to say one is inherently deserving to be part of the genre over another. They're all in the genre. I think the connecting element which makes it a genre is storytelling through a first person perspective involving some kind of interactivity. So FPIF.
All of that said, if the entire rest of the world wants to understand these things as walking sims, then I'm going to use what people will understand. It's still the same genre with the same things to think about. Not my pick, but if it is what it is, it is what it is.
Thirith on 21/8/2017 at 12:17
(I'm hoping that dema will follow up on his suggestion and move this to a separate thread.)
That's an interesting distinction and one whose point I can see - in terms of describing the various games and what they set out to do, if not in terms of deciding what these games should or shouldn't be. Games are great at putting you in the shoes of someone else, regardless of whether they give you much agency or not. Something like The Last of Us invited me to put myself in Joel's position without allowing me to change who he is and what he does, and I think there's value in that. However, I also think there's a place for games that put you in the role of an observer, like Dear Esther or Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. I understand anyone who says that those aren't why they play games, but they both use the distancing effect of you not being a character within the story and IMO they use this well. You bear witness to others, but this ain't your story.
Which may also be why games such as Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, while they use many techniques common in gaming, are at least as closely linked to site-specific theatre. (Ironically, the Wikipedia page of one such production, Sleep No More, mentions that this may be "best described as immersive theatre, rather than interactive theatre, because although the audience may move through the settings, interact with the props, or observe the actors at their own pace, their interference has no bearing on the story or the performers except in rare instances". I wonder whether theatre geeks also have long, heated debates about which definition is the best one and the only one to be used from now on.)
Nameless Voice on 21/8/2017 at 12:39
My thought was that what people mean when they talk about "walking simulators" is games with minimal-to-no traditional gameplay elements. There are few or no challenges, be those puzzles, combat, action sequences, etc., you usually can't die or fail, and instead the game is more easy-going and just about exploring the setting and telling a story.
But to be fair, my ideas probably don't matter much, for the aforementioned reason of people who haven't played such games trying to make definitions about them.
The only game like that which I've really played is The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (which does have some small gameplay elements.)
I'm glad to see games which try to do something different from the usual over-emphasis on combat, but the idea of really "pure" walking simulators, with even less gameplay elements than Ethan Carter, don't appeal to me.
The concept that I find more interesting is one which is halfway between a "pure walking simulator" and a more traditional game - having actual gameplay, action sequences, puzzles, etc., but still being heavily narrative/exploration driven. Those are probably another genre altogether.
Sulphur on 21/8/2017 at 13:05
Quote Posted by Thirith
Which may also be why games such as
Dear Esther and
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, while they use many techniques common in gaming, are at least as closely linked to site-specific theatre. (Ironically, the Wikipedia page of one such production,
Sleep No More, mentions that this may be "best described as
immersive theatre, rather than interactive theatre, because although the audience may move through the settings, interact with the props, or observe the actors at their own pace, their interference has no bearing on the story or the performers except in rare instances". I wonder whether theatre geeks also have long, heated debates about which definition is the best one and the only one to be used from now on.)
Dear lord, could there be a set of people going, 'You know, I'm not sure if I relate enough to the events in 1984 to really call it "immersive". Interactive works for me, though. And I got caught up in that two-minute hate sequence where I slapped a man, so maybe we should just call it "haptic theatre"?' right now?
dema: what you're talking about is codifying design principles that lead to a more, let's say, authentic experience. Makes sense as a guideline for creating games that have a sense of narrative verisimilitude over something that seems aimless (though of course, that can always be the point for some games).
Unfortunately, genre terms need to be immediate and catchy, so 'walking sim' is what we're stuck with. I still go by my long-held belief that any work of this nature belongs to interactive fiction, which is truly an umbrella term that we don't use enough. FPIF is a nice enough move towards that as fiction doesn't only have to be textual to be interactive. But then, you could also have second- and third-person IF.
Starker on 21/8/2017 at 14:01
Quote Posted by henke
Not all walking sims are first person tho. The Path and Passage for instance. What do we call them then? "Experience games"? Actually, that's not bad. I've also heard "Narrative games" suggested for the genre. Anyway, for better or worse, walking sims is what everyone knows the genre as and at this point it'd take something big to get the entire gaming community and press to agree on a new term.
Yeah, I think "narrative games" would be an improvement as well. But then again, what about games that are not that much focused on narrative like Yume Nikki?
To be fair, "exploration game" doesn't really describe the games much better than "walking simulator", I just think it sounds better.
Quote Posted by henke
Mmm, indeed, "Pedant" brings to mind some kind of pedaling ant. A far more fitting categorization for ourselves might be "a bunch of goddamn taffers who can't agree on anything".
The Nitpickers... Too grand?
