Analysing Player Experience @idg5202 - Tumblr Blog

Feed me cokes, if you dare

My name was after all Rochelle. Second time grabbing my guns – I have to admit there are much more efficient – and trying to protect myself from different kinds ofzombies. I hate bombers, but became slightly better at avoiding them or killingthem from a safe distance. I also killed a so called witch – or startled her apparently – which proved to be very, very bad. Other than that I accidentally shot my team players a couple of times, wandered around aimlessly for a couple of minutes and managed to complete the second level of the game.

Most frustrating facts? First of all, I had to wait nearly one hour for the game to update. It certainly did not help with my immersive experience. Secondly, there was a certain part, where I had to carry some cokes back to a shop owner, so he would let us in somewhere. However, I could not carry both the cokes and my gun, so I kept dropping the cokes, in order to defend myself and had to grab them again. Totally unsatisfying and nerve-wracking. In the end, I started pushing my way through, while holding onto the cokes for my dear life. And cokes? Really? We are facing a post-apocalyptic, dreary situation and the shop-owner wants cokes? What kind of a compulsive behavior is that?

Other than that, I have to confess that my second time playing was slightly more interesting than the first. I already knew some basic concepts and controls of the game and was more potent into finding my goal, and better at trying to achieve it. Still, I remain a rather disappointing executioner, but a more involved one I dare say. Actually, although before playing the game I was totally bored and considered it a tedious task to get over with, after playing it I caught myself at the same night deliberating my moves and pondering ways of improving my game skills. Indeed, I even dreamt about it picturing myself as a zombie hunted individual, yet in a much less shooting and more climbing-escaping modus operandi.

Nonetheless, what is interesting is that I saw firsthand what Gordon Calleja – my professor and the man responsible for my constant complain – means by differentiating the involvement in video games to macro-involvement and micro-involvement. Micro-involvement is how engaged a player becomes, while playing a specific game, and obviously what I continue to lack. Macro-involvement on the other hand is the player’s mind being occupied by the said game before and after the game experience, which is exactly what happened to me.

I believe that the bases for this involvement are different from the micro one, at least in my case. My need for being good for the rewards sake and my incapacity to accept failure, have me constantly contemplating ways of improving, whereas my immersion at the time of playing the game has not increased and I persist on finding it uninspiring. I suppose the reason behind it is that I can not only choose where my attention will be addressed, but I can also give justification for my choice. Simultaneously, however, I cannot choose if I will be immersed or not. I can know beforehand the chances of it happening or I can predefine it up to a certain point by being negative or positive disposed towards any kind of activity, yet I can never know for sure.

Isn’t this the excitement of novelty?

#IDG5202renata

Freshman Year

Is this the last blog post? Hurray! So since last time I commented on the sound, now that I played the browser games from the week I was absent, I can give my take on them and especially on the Freshman Year by Nina Freeman.

Actually I changed my mind. Since we are doing an analysis on player experience I decided for my final entry to account the experience of another person, namely a friend of mine that is not hostile towards games, but certainly sees them as something not serious. From the start she approached the game with curiosity and an air of superiority of the kind pertained for miniscule tasks.

At the beginning she was not sure what she should do. Then she was frustrated, because the game did not accommodate her desire not to go out. She also felt that the physical appearance description was working against her self-esteem. Interestingly enough she quickly started addressing the experience represented in the game as a first person narrative and particularly her own. “I got drunk last time” she told me while recounting the plot of the game.

She also blamed “Gina” – the friend of the game – for her troubles. She got mad at the culprit-bouncer of the game, yet she remained distanced and emotionally unattached to the fate of her character, like she could not affiliate with her. I am not sure if that is due to her inexperience and resistance to games or a problem of the game per se. Moreover, she though that that the game ended abruptly and in an un-climatic way.

In the whole, she didn’t like it. She didn’t like its theme, she thought that there was no point in it. She saw it coming, however she was confused about what the heroine wanted. When asked if she felt that it was the heroine or herself to blame, since she was the one controlling Nina’s choices, she stopped to ponder over it. She was frustrated by the lack of choices and was of the opinion that the heroine didn’t know what she wanted as she was very young. She felt that Gina dictated her choices. She wanted to play the game as herself and not as Nina.

Now regarding her reaction towards the form of the game, she said that she didn’t think of it as a game. She compared it rather to a psychological test or to an experience she had recently of an application portraying the story of a Syrian refugee that put her into the position of choosing how to flee to Europe. For her, games are all about fun. That is what playing is about. She admitted that this game was too text-based and found that counteracting.

“I found myself empathizing with Nina and her experience affected me, but because I knew that nothing I will choose would influence my real life, the experience was not satisfying. I had understood from early on – even from the setting of graphics and music – that it would have something to do with abuse. After that it became mundane. I didn’t feel a part of it.”

I am not going to analyze these comments, thus for now I will pause at the Player Experience without the Analysis. Nonetheless, I strongly believe that it is equally valuable to learn how to collect the experience and learning how to analyze it.

#IDG5202renata

Samorost 1 - A Circus for the libido of play

After playing Machinarium by Amanita Design, I sort of knew what to expect from Samorost, a game by the same company. To my surprise, Samorost did feel like a fresh, albeit familiar experience.

Summed up, Samorost for me feels like a post-modern experiment in parodic, collage-y psychedelia (that’s the best way I can describe the game). Throughout the whole game, I felt like a mere observer into the consistently beautiful semi-cartoonish / semi magic realist world.

After a few moments playing, it becomes clear how Samorost was made by the same people who created Machinarium. However, while Machinarium went out of its way to make me identify with its cute robot character, at no point did I feel sympathetic or empathetic towards the main character in Samorost. However i did feel a strong desire to interact with the game and see where the absurd nonsensical sequence of events would take me.

Indeed, it is in this nonsense aspect that I feel the game parts ways from Machinarium. While the latter did have amazing WTF moments, it felt like its overarching narrative made sense. Samorost, while following a basic outline (character gets lost in a planet, and needs to get back to his ship) just couldn’t add up to anything sensical. But this was not a bad thing. If anything, it proved how games need not have coherent sequence of events to be interesting.

What’s even more interesting is the fact that similar to the game events, most of the actions performed by the player in order to progress are also nonsensical. Throughout the game, I found myself clicking on various objects in the game just to see what would happen. Many times, this pixel hunting led to some interesting actions which progressed the character’s story in very odd ways.

While pixel hunting became infuriating in most point and click adventures, making the player feel slightly incompetent, it was not the case with this game. Since the game felt so bizarre, it was difficult for me as a player to feel incompetent (how could I feel incompetent considering I am a rational being? - I would hope I am at least!) Somehow, all the pixel hunting in this game became like a form of curious exploration. I was exploring the strange and many times funny actions that resulted from my clicks. Looking back at the experience, it makes sense that the in game character was not the one doing the actions himself. He was merely observing the circus of play like I was.

Samorost does not feel like a game that takes itself, the players, and its characters seriously. There are very few puzzles in the game which the player has to solve, but on the whole, these feel trivial and unnecessary. i do not consider Samorost to be a ludic game. Instead this game feels like an allegory of the paidic, random nature of play.

#idg5202 josef

Freshman Year

Freshman year is a short point and click adventure with little ludic involvement. During the game, you are introduced to Nina; the new girl in town who just started her freshman Year.

The player can choose what Nina says, wears and interacts with characters around her, but no matter the player’s choice, the ending is unavoidable. Nina is always harassed by the Bar's bouncer. These little choices the players are presented with serve to help one engage with Nina as a character. Alternatively, the game's lack of ending choices serves to drive home the final message: Assault happens; and the result can be shocking and bewildering for those taken advantage of.

This is a strong message that is pretty accurately conveyed in such a short time, with relatively simple art, sound and programming. I actually felt for Nina, and thought that "Freshman Year" was a great example of how games can be used to accurately embody another person or character's lived experience. All in all I genuinely feel that nothing felt over the top, and was a very realistic representation of an encounter of that nature.

The thing is, nothing is explicitly stated, and just enough is left unwritten for the players to draw their own conclusions. Because of this, an alternative conclusion would be one more on the lines of: If you are a teenage girl, nothing you do can change the fact that you are vulnerable and people will take advantage of you. Your body is seen by some as a public convenience. You will also get little sympathy from your crappy friends.

My only issue with some people taking the latter as the take home message is that to me, not only would it be belittling the experiences of women who have had to go through cases of much more aggressive assault; it also paints a picture of a society where females are ever cowering under the iron fists of "the patriarchy". That ideology paints a picture of a world full of vulnerable female victims - and of a society I genuinely don't believe I grew up in.

I really don't mean to belittle anyone's ideologies through this. I am fully aware that gender stereotypes exist and in many cases are quite harsher on women in particular; but there is a point where the idea of "The Patriarchy" does become a bit of a caricature and worthy of parody.

The creator made a very bold decision sharing her experience thought the medium of gaming, so I might as well do a little sharing of my own. Now it's a little awkward saying this publically; but I have actually been on the receiving end of unwarranted catcalls, unwanted advances, and was on two occasions followed down a dark road; once by someone on foot, another time in a car. I'll be the first to say that it's not nice. It leaves you with an inexplicable feeling of confusion, frustration, bewilderment, and depending on severity of the case- fear. But never once did I ever see myself as a victim in those cases; just a person faced with a scenario before her. I believe that it was because of this view of myself as an active moral agent that allowed me to think more clearly about the actions I could take to diffuse and prevent scenarios taking a turn I didn't want them to take. My choices and actions carried weight, and I always found that empowering.

The thing is, it is a very dubious road one must go down to shift from having women see themselves as victims, to empowered agents, and if understanding that was that straightforward, it wouldn't still be an issue, would it? The problem is that one can't just go about creating campaigns giving tips to teenage girls on how to protect themselves when faced with such scenarios, without treading a fine line between that, and perpetuating negative ideologies of victim blaming.

I would personally view said tips and protocol much like arming oneself with a weapon that can be used to protect and defend. However, I do also understand that the message can easily be skewed if not worded appropriately. My opinions on people who consciously victim blame surely should go without saying. That being said, the game makes it pretty clear - sexual assault happens, and "Rapists gonna rape" (Manias, 2015) - I can't control how other people behave, but I can control how I behave. That alone might be enough to change the outcomes of such unfavourable encounters.

I agree that there are less visible factors that create obstacles for women that do not necessarily apply to men. I've experienced them. I've seen friends experience them. And when it comes to cases of sexual assault; I think it's safe to say that men don't have to worry as much about feeling objectified in public situations. There are genuine issues that I feel deserve to be addressed. In "Freshman Year" this issue is highlighted very well. Nina's experience feels real, and genuine. It's not a case of rape, nor was it overly aggressive - but it WAS relatable. It was bewildering, and it happened so fast that you were left unsure how to react - for the player as well as Nina. That's what made it great. The discussion that this game brings about is also really interesting, and may be the best reason to encourage more people to play it.

#IDG5202Yasmin

Nighmares and Fixation

Hobbes', in potentially his magnum opus Leviathan had written that speaking of a summum bonum, a greater good, is redundant. People's greatest desires differ drastically – when they differ enough, revolutions happen. Revolutions are based on ideas of differing ideas of societal summum bonum. What Hobbes argues, in a very Machiavellian vein, is that what can drive people is the summum malum, the greater evil. According to Hobbes, this fear is the fear of violent death. He continues that is in human nature to find yourself in a political community. However, he also argues that is not in human nature to have a political community founded on good.

Fisher-Diver is a game where you play as a diver, represented as a circle, that is new to their job. On your first day, you hunt in the ocean for fish with your harpoon. Shooting the fish, represented as abstract geometrical shapes, disassembles these shapes into bloody lines as they increase your money count and fill up the storage you are allocated every day. On your first night, you have a nightmare. You dream that you are attacked by the largest compilation of geometricwe shapes. The nightmare ends when you are hit a few times and bloodied.

Our relationships to most digital games could be viewed in terms of Hobbes. In early ludological works, writers such as Juul wrote about the telicity of digital games (one of the six formal properties of games, according to Juul in Half Real, is end orientation). However, formal properties describe what a game is, not what we are in relation to games. Even if a game is orientated towards its end, it does not describe why we return to digital games day after day. It also does not describe why we want to play again right after we lose – loss is an equal telic resolution as winning.

As we play the same game, we all seek different objectives. This is why Bartle felt the need to write about killers, explorers, socialisers and achievers. This is why Rosewater described Johnny, Spike, Timmy (and later Vorthos) in his columns about Magic: The Gathering. Or summum bonum is drastically different. This summum bonum leads us to seek winning. While in an actual political community, winning would be imposing our political idealism onto that community, in digital games, winning would be imposing our victory conditions onto this digital game.

Meanwhile, after over 1,500 hours of DOTA, winning 735 of the instances of the games I've played, I return. In Hearthstone, after winning equally countless card games, I return to the game. Without the fear of violent death, we return to digital games – digital games allow us to experience this summum bonum, an aim for a singular (or perhaps even communal) greater good as the summum malum no longer exists.

Fisher-Diver is touching because the summum malum still exists. Our nightmare shows us that we will reach our end to our enemy. I have played Fisher-Diver a few times, I have never finished the game.

#idg5202john

Those bloody cicadas!

Since I didn't attend the previous lecture due to healthy issues, I find myself inadequate in expressing any opinions on the topics covered then. Hence, instead I will focus on a point raised in class this Tuesday about how sound defines our perception of space. I agree that the reception of sound is a subjective experience, whether in totality or not I will not comment here. I will merely collocate my own take on the matter based on a rather funny anecdote of my life.

Some years ago a German friend of mine came to visit me in Greece. I live in a suburban area of Athens very quiet and serene, where the noises of urban life are replaced with the sounds of nature. For me this environment is such a big part of my existence that has resulted into being transparent, yet not many days passed before my friend started complaining about having trouble sleeping. I asked him what was the problem to receive the answer of those ‘bloody cicadas’ and the ‘damn rooster’. To his annoyance, I started laughing. It was rude, but for me it was impossible to comprehend that someone was disturbed by cicadas and roosters.

Similarly to all other stimuli, if someone is exposed to a sound consistently its impact changes to the point of non-being. My argument therefore is that indeed even though a sound can have a physical trace, its perception is highly individualistic. This actuality is not only a matter of habit, but in my opinion also a matter of language. As with colors, certain languages differentiate sounds in different ways. It is always entertaining to compare onomatopoetic words between languages. For example for me, a cat will always make the sound “niaou” and not “miaou”, the dog will do “gav” and not “woof”, and the rooster “kikirikou” and not in any way “cock-a-doodle-do”.

This is very interesting because my ability to comprehend these words according to my mother tongue does not change no matter how many, which or to what extent second languages I will acquire. Even more interesting is the way we perceive language. If we hear a language we do not understand, the part of our brain that is activated is the one pertaining to music, namely the right hemisphere. On the contrary, when we start comprehending with semiotic value the utterances of a certain language, then we are doing so using our left part of our brains, i.e. our linguistic part.

The greatest and most common example of that is the Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that pitch contours within a word distinguish the word from other words with the same vowels and consonants. In that way tone for Mandarin Chinese speakers has a linguistic meaning, thus ceasing to be a mere sound stimuli. On the other hand, for non-Mandarin Chinese speakers the hearing of this language is perceived and translated by their brains in the same manner and from the same neurons as music.

As far as I am concerned, the aforementioned simply examples prove a great linkage between how language and environment influence the way we apprehend sounds and they constitute a part someone examining the perception of sounds cannot and should not disregard.

#IDG5202renata

omgfranzlove

Freshman Year is a game that is freely available on Steam or playable in browser.

You play as Nina, who is invited by her best friend Jenna to meet up at a local bar for a night out.

As player all you do is pick answer options of your choice, which are in the game represented through mobile...

#idg5202franz

omgfranzlove

This time I want to do better on the essay we have to write as a final assignment of “Analyzing Player Experience”. Initially I wanted to write about “space in digital games” – about multiplayer arena levels and their affordances. The plan was to write an essay and in the process learn about level...

#idg5202franz

omgfranzlove

Well played, Frog Fractions

It took me longer to figure this game out than I would like to admit - if it can be figured out. I figured out that it is not what it pretends to be, and than I learnt that it is even more ridiculous… and then it became even weirder. It is quite a journey that I can easily recommend anybody to take, as it is a free not overly time consuming experience. And it was the first time in a long time a game made me actually laugh out loud.

Even mentioning that it is not what it pretends to be was already too much of a spoiler so I can go into detail: The art style and name of the game make you expect a somewhat educational game, but it is a quite crazy and absurd parody that plays with your expectations more than once… or twice… or trice.

And just when you think you saw it all it gives you some more madness.

Leaving, what you thought was the locked screen space on your badass dragon, to find some treasure. Finding yourself in court, before a butterfly judge on Bug Mars(?). The game changes gameplay and setting and style various times over the course of a playthrough and should be considered part of a new genre: Puzzling game.

A predecessor to the game has been successfully funded on Kickstarter already. I caught myself thinking that this game couldn’t possibly surprise me now that I have a rough idea of what kind of game it is probably going to be. But can you be sure of anything when it comes to Frog Fractions?

#idg5202franz

Revising My Fractions

What is "hermeneutics"?: Hermeneutics has been defined as the study of the methodological principles of interpretation. But what does that have to do with a game about frogs? Everything, apparently.

Frog fractions is not what it seems: What makes frog fractions such a cranial contortion? First off, its primordial language (that is, the information it gives us even before the actual game begins) is...misleading to say the least. Through elements like the artwork, the music, and the title, I was lead to think that it must be some sort of educational, cutesy, U-rated game. Oh what a fool I was, to be mislead by bright colours and the lure of simple mathematic tasks.

All lies I tell you!

You see, everything starts off straightforward enough. You begin to wonder "should I eat the fruit? Am I protecting the fruit? Are the prettier insects edible or should they be protected too?", but everything falls into place relatively quickly. Then out of nowhere, the shop comes up. "oh interesting, I can buy upgrades" , I thought. Before I know it I went from my humble beginnings as a frog on a lily pad to some sort of sentient, astro-frog, riding on the back of a dragon into space, and getting into trouble with a planet full of insects.

How was this relevant to our discussion on hermeneutics and mental models? : Glancing at my handy little notebook full of class material; I have made the decision to spare you all (and myself) the particulars. All I will be mentioning here is what I understand as the bare minimum of hermeneutics as a concept.

Let's take a moment to talk about the hermeneutic circle. The hermeneutic circle is a theory that tries to make sense of the discrepancy between how an object is perceived and what it is objectively. It's very hard for a person to fully perceive a concept, poem, or novel, as a whole. However, what we can do is interact with aspects of a certain thing at a time.

Each time we do, the feedback we get from that part, helps develop our understanding of the whole. Each part is also understood in the context of the readers understanding of the whole at the time (i.e our expectations shape the experience). Each successive part contributes to the understanding of the whole, as our mental models of the object in question shifts and develops. Don't worry, I was super confused too.

This process is outlined quite appropriately when playing frog fractions. Each time another aspect of the game was revealed (and boy are there many different aspects!) my understanding of the game as a whole changes, and my expectations began to shift as I went along. In fact, any expectations began to slowly crumble.

I found that in order for me to form a complete mental model of the game, I first had to suspend my disbelief.

Frogs are going to ride dragons through an asteroid belt in this game (despite space lacking a breathable atmosphere); and there's no point arguing.

One must stop expecting certain things to occur and just go with the flow of this wild and wacky experience that is "frog Fractions". There's a point where one realizes that looking for consistency becomes redundant.

I think for me that particular point was reached during the court room scene.

All in all, I actually really enjoyed playing this game! I love the unexpected, and so the randomness of it all made me giggle. Wondering what strange thing I might encounter next motivated me to keep playing. It also makes an interesting point about hermeneutics and how our overall understanding of a thing is slowly built up through experiencing different aspects of it.

That being said...I still don't know squat about fractions. But I did learn a little bit about hermeneutics and mental models, which is also cool I guess.

I am a frog and what is this?

#IDG5202Yasmin

Virtual crimes

I have nothing of interest to discuss this week regarding what we covered in class, so I will bring to your attention an article I read during my assignment research for game sex. The article is called A Rape in Cyberspace and is written by Julian Dibbell. In it the author describes her witness of a rape case in LambdaMOO, an online community of the Multi User Domain Object Oriented variety. According to her testimony, a user of the domain forced multiple other users with the employment of a voodoo doll to perform various humiliating actions including raping themselves with inanimate objects.

What basically happened was that the fictional characters of those people were harassed by the character of another gamer, who taking advantage of certain in-game rules forced the gamers into compulsive behavior, since they were controlled by the owner of the doll. The spell only broke by a wizard – one of the main programmers of the MOO – who locked the culprit in a cage that stopped the influence of the voodoo-doll. After that, one other non-intelligent about the event player freed the prisoner, who consequently took off from the crime scene.

The consequences of such an act that the author points out in her article are of two kinds. First, that even though the whole atrocity happened inside a virtual world, the players who were the victims of these actions felt distraught in their real lives as well. To the extent that some days later they asked from the community the toading of the rapist. Toading in the MUD jargon means literally to turn someone into a toad, forcing them as a result to lose all their powers and features, but specifically in the case of LambdaMOO toading meant deleting one’s account. Therefore, what they basically asked for was a death penalty.

Hence, comes the second raised issue. How does a virtual community deal with a virtual crime? The obvious answer would be that the designers of the domain would just take care of the matter. However, in LambdaMOO it had previously been decided that the wizards would have no other role than to simply execute the commands of the people, so the domain had to self-regulate itself. Easy to handle until then, but what about when rape happens? Almost unanimously the community condemned the act for what it was; a hideous crime. The problem nevertheless was found in the punishment.

Some of the participants were against any form of punishment, since there was no decree prior to the act that specifically outlined the repercussions of rape. Some others said that there would be no need to punish rape, if the victims learnt to avoid it. Nonetheless, the main argument was between those who saw themselves as anarchists, among whom – interestingly enough – were the rape victims, and those of the royalist stream. The former were in favor of the community being in charge for its actions while the latter wanted to reinforce the wizards’ full power to take all the necessary actions.

I will not reveal my thoughts on this subject as of now. Not because I want to retain the suspense, but because I feel there are so many important issues to be discussed that any rushed comments will minimize the cultural and game-research value of this story. I will just conclude my post by saying that unlike Huizinga’s magic circle, unlike Perron’s spiral, and surely unlike the hermeneutics circle, you cannot have people without their politics. A fact that when someone analyzes digital games, and particularly games based on shared communities, should surely take into thorough account.

#IDG5202renata

Action, adventure and a Spiritual Journey

Shadow Of The Colossus (Team Ico 2005)

About ten years ago, I was lucky enough to “randomly” pick up Shadow Of The Colossus from my local electronics store, where I had just before bought a Playstation 2 in addition to my first console of choice (- in hindsight - a regretful choice) from that generation, the Xbox.

I had never played Ico, the spiritual predecessor to this marvel, and was not hyped for – nor even informed about - SOTC.

When I first played it, it simply BLEW MY MIND.

I am not carelessly using this phrase (– in all caps), but I really couldn't quite believe what I was seeing (and hearing and doing), while playing this beautiful game. I was amazed.

I would describe Shadow Of The Colossus as “AWESOME”, if the expression hadn't been overused and corrupted almost worse then the term “friend” has been by the likes of (heavy) Facebook users. So let me go with awe-inspiring instead, and finally elaborate on that AWE.

I have neither been - nor will I ever be (again) – as emotionally charged playing any other digital game.

This game was my video game equivalent of first teenage love. I will always think fondly of it. I will always be harsh on other games, for not making me feel like it did.

This game was my “Ocarina of Time”.

I get dreamy and nostalgic even a decade later when I watch youtube videos, of people still searching for mysteries and secret areas, with unbreakable hope, even though the game has long been opened up and dissected by hackers.

Also Shadow Of The Colossus might cause bipolar disorder, because I have never before been so happy and sad at the same time - as I was while wandering its minimalistic, solitary and aesthetically touchingly beautiful landscapes.

Action/Adventure

The long breaks between the 16 boss battles – there are no enemies other than the 16 colossi - makes them feel even more epic, as they already are.

It was all in the contrast - and a decade later I am still quite disappointed by the little impact this exceptional use of contrast seemed to have had on AAA game developers' (or producers') understanding of the phenomenon.

SOTC is one of the rare games that can rightfully be called Action-Adventure:

There is a sense of exploration, while wandering the vast landscapes between the action-packed battles, with the colossi that mostly truely feel colossal.

Level Design – Boss Design (Puzzles)

But it is also a puzzle game. The bosses are increasingly tricky to beat. Each one is designed like a level: You climb the colossi and have to find their weak spots and the right way to reach them, in order to take them out.

This can take quite some time, if you try to figure it out on your own without using guides.

Personality:

The colossi are uniquely designed. They have an ancient feel and also really are (visually) part of the world they inhabit. They almost look like mountains themselves, when they are resting, which some of them do, when you encounter them.

Role Playing

Especially in my teens when the game first came out I had a huge problem identifying with the protagonists of most games.

That was not only the case in single player games. I was almost offended by the male character models of World of Warcraft. They looked as ridiculous as the cast of Epic's Gears of War series did later. Those walking mountains of muscles. Colossi themselves.

I on the other hand was a skinny guy, with long hair and always went for the female characters when I had the option, as I deemed them more fit to the image I had of myself.

HEROES:

Furthermore the type of hero that fascinated me in games and in stories in general, was never the Parsifal-like, flawless, mighty being, chosen by the gods for greatness. Those powerful creatures wouldn’t understand the likelihood – not even the possibility of failure...

I always preferred Spiderman to Superman.

“My heroes” would always face seemingly impossible ordeals – they would be in over their head. They would be fragile. They would be flawed like any human, but their heroic deeds through their unlikelihood would be that much more meaningful, because they would be overcoming their own limitations.

Starting as ordinary humans they would against all odds successfully deal with their own or the whole universes' misfortunes and ordeals and return from their journey transformed.

This hero's journey was always a spiritual one to me. As it is deeply rooted in western mentality: To achieve greatness a certain level of suffering seemed almost desirable or logical to me.

The hero who had no difficulty achieving his or her goals, was no hero to me. His exploits were worthless.

As Joseph Campbell says in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book I was very fond of at that time: “[...] where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves, where we had to thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence;”

This “slaying of oneself” I understood as overcoming whatever it is that holds the hero back, and thus figuratively being reborn.

Shadow Of The Colossus was a metaphor for this very phenomenon to me.

Especially the ending I saw a metaphor for what Campbell was writing about.

Minimal Narrative – Mystery/Interpretation

SOTC left a lot of its plot open to interpretation. The minimalistic design philosophy of the game was also evident in the story telling.

The ending itself, was not executed greatly in my opinion, as the designers let you “play” (control) some small portions, without the possibility to change the outcome, which made me feel cheated.

But the rest of the story is vague enough to have people come up with their unique stories. The protagonists relationship or his motivations are left to the players own interpretation.

And to be fair, also the ending is – even thought you cannot affect it – very open to speculation about what actually happened.

The Hunter and the Hunted

What I found curious about the game was that the colossi were as mentioned before (mostly) truly colossal, but also had unique design and even different “personalities”.

Some were hostile, some where peaceful until the player attacked them, which made the act of slaying them very questionable.

The game is beautiful but also violent. You see colossi experience pain and fear, as you tiny human weaken and kill them one after another.

After a colossus dies, strange black seemingly poisonous energy breaks out of inside them, seeking you in form of tentacles, no matter how far you mange to run and penetrating your body in a violent fashion, causing you to lose consciousness and be mysteriously brought back to the central temple, for a little chit-chat with some god and/or demon, that promised your love-interest(?)'s resurrection in exchange for the defeat of the 16 colossi, who seem to be connected with it being banished and trapped in this mysterious forbidden land.

The slaying of colossi, besides being not exactly an easy task seemed to be physically and emotionally hard on the protagonist and also ethically questionable, which I found very interesting and had not seen in any game before.

The main character actually subtly changes (for the worse) with every beaten colossus.

In addition to that every “kill” had meaning and emotional attachment, because you did not “murder” anything on your way to the boss fights. (Unike in other games, like the COD series, where you kill thousands, remorselessly - or without even thinking about it.)

Multiplayer

There was no multiplayer mode, but it is still one of my favorite “multiplayer games” of all time, because I played it together with my little brother and my cousin, in a way that sadly became quite rare these days.

Back in my day “Let's plays” were watched offline together and people actually had their turn to play. We tried our luck in the time trial mode to unlock and collect special items. When we were good enough to unlock all the items we tried to beat each others’ best times.

We went together to explore the landscape and hunt geckos with white tails, or climb up the wall of the main temple, to reach the secret garden that can be seen in the game’s ending sequence.

Besides being insanely fun it was one of the games that helped me connect to my brother and my cousin. So now I can (and will) officially blame the alleged lack of exceptionally good games, for the gradual decay of my family bounds.

Goals

When I first played SOTC it was also a time when I was very enthusiastic about video games, because they gave me the feeling of achievement and certainty. Unlike in real life, in games everything asked of you was quite possible and doable, even though it might seem hard in the context of the narrative. In life I was pretty lost in this time of teenage angst, which was maybe one of the reasons why the before mentioned fragility of the protagonist was immensely appealing to me, in addition to the fact that I am a sucker for the “everyday hero” like Isaac Clarke in Dead Space (1 - In part 3 the protagonist had gone from misfortunate Engineer, trapped in a nightmare to full-blown generic “Rambo”, and thus lost my sympathy).

The End:

I mentioned that the ending was quite odd and open to interpretation, but I didn’t mentioned the quite detailed interpretation I had of what the metaphor of the (quite spiritual) hero journey meant to me in the case of SOTC:

The way I saw it, the game’s narrative was “dealing with loss and/or rejection (which to me was synonym for loss)” and acceptance: The woman Wander brings to the forbidden land, which to me was a manifestation of a psychological space, was dead to him (as in - for whatever reason - not available, for what he wanted from her). “Her soul was lost” (From his point of view.) The colossi he had to slay to retrieve her soul, were not what he had thought at the start of this learning process. Love can not be “won” that way. Eventually the colossi (like dragons and other inner demons) to be overcome, would turn out to be representations of a struggle for acceptance of a fact and Wander is transformed and reborn into a state that makes it obvious that their “togetherness” would never be possible in the sense he had once wished for. The nameless woman is left in the forbidden land with a version of Wander she cannot “be with” in a romantic way. To me this was a metaphor for something that became apparent to the hero: The fact that he would be the one locking her up in the Forbidden Land, which exists within him. The alternative is letting go.

To me that made sense.

#idg5202franz

Bonding Time and Unreal Worlds

I was seven years old when Unreal Tournament was released. At that time I had no idea of the world of video games other than having played Wolfenstein 3D for ten minutes at some point previous in my life – having understood very little of what was going on. I used to go downstairs to my brother’s room and sit beside him and watch him play whenever our parents were out. My father disapproved of the massive amounts of gore and violence that the game depicted and my brother would have gotten in trouble if they knew I took every opportunity to go downstairs and watch my brother play. This was the beginning of a long period of time in which I sat beside my brother whenever he played computer games and watched. In the beginning rarely did I feel the want to actually play myself – I was content to sit there and watch. Whatever free time I had, I spent sitting next to my brother watching him play Unreal Tournament, NetHack, Silent Hill, and countless other games. Yet the one that stuck with me the most was the first of these – Unreal Tournament.

At some points my brother did let me take control of the game for a short while and in these times I felt as if I was privileged to enter an incredible world, so far from the reality that I was used too. Looking back on it, one might say that I had a skewed sense of the ‘player 2 syndrome’ – not being allowed to play such games myself, either because my parents wouldn’t allow me or my brother wanted to play himself. Yet even if this was the case, each minute I held the mouse felt like a minute in which I had to chance to explore new worlds, and shoot any moving thing in sight. It felt to me like an exercise in previously unimaginable freedom. So incredible was this feeling to me that I was happy to sit and simply watch waiting for the potential couple of minutes I would be allowed to play.

Time went by and at some point a couple of years after the release of Unreal Tournament, my brother bought a new PC and gave me his old one – on the condition that I would leave it in his room as he used it to download and use emulators on. This seemed to be reasonable. On weekends and during holidays, no longer was I confined to sit on the side-lines waiting for a chance to play; now I had a seemingly endless amount of time in which I could sit down and play the games myself. Obviously the first game I wanted to play was Unreal Tournament. I realized that I had the chance to start playing the game seriously, improve my skills, and test out the rules that governed this world of freedom. My first moments in this arena of freedom were bittersweet – I had the potential to play but I lacked the skills to spend more than a few seconds running around before I was killed. I refused to do the single-player campaign to get better as I had only see my brother play online – it seemed to me that that was the only relevant part of the game. This disheartened me – never having had a competitive edge – yet whenever I came close to giving up my brother, sitting next to me, would laugh and convince me to try one more time. Sometimes we would play on the same server and he would let get in some kills, trying his best not to let me find out that I was only getting the kills because he would not attack immediately.

This was my first step into the world of gaming, on that PC I played myriad other games, and yet every once in a while the Unreal Tournament icon on the desktop would call out to me. There are two things I have done persistently in my life – play Unreal Tournament (even after that PC succumbed to old age) and sit next to my brother watching him play or playing myself (even now after he moved out). For this reason the two always seem related – both invoke a certain feeling of nostalgia and both allow me to experience a certain confidence in trying as hard as I can.

Onto the game itself. Unreal Tournament is a first-person shooter whose competitive multiplayer mode is still famous to this day. It combines a variety of different weapons and maps in order to create an arena game that maintained a feel of freedom in which in the player could run and jump around, and kill with a certain amount of creativity. Whether one wants to be a sniper, a berserker or a tactical player, the game allows for a sense of possibilities that are not necessarily the case. What I mean is that the game is most fun when it is played with a certain degree of recklessness, especially in deathmatch mode. Yet I remember people hiding on towers with snipers on the lookout deterring enemies. I also remember swearing at the screen whenever I was killed by one of these snipers and the joy I felt whenever I managed to get close enough to one to blast them with a rocket launcher with the gore setting on full. The game seems to me to focus on fun – it puts aside physics and realistic deaths in favour of creating an unreal (get it?) experience. It is this experience that gave me the feeling of freedom and that showed me the true potential of video games as experiments in different realities.

Playing it today Unreal Tournament remains one of my favourite games of all time. I had the opportunity to play Quake on a Nintendo 64 a couple of months ago, something I had never done before (surprising I know after loving Unreal Tournament so much), and the influence is very evident. Yet I still felt it as providing an inferior experience to Unreal Tournament. It was then that I realized how much my relationship with the game is tied with my first experience of sitting down and watching my brother play it. I have played games that have entertained me more, I have dedicated large chunks of my time to play completely different games and yet I have still to find a game that invokes the same feelings of freedom in me that Unreal Tournament does. I understand this now much more than I used to – and for this reason I appreciate it even more. Unreal Tournament used to feel like more freedom to me than I could have imagined, now it remains as a symbol both of freedom and of the joy of inhabiting new worlds.

#idg5202Paul

Video Games, Growing up, and Bioshock

Disclaimer: It's going to get super cheesy really fast. Also, it may contain Bioshock spoilers.

I find it amusing to think that while we've been critically analysing games and player experiences for almost a whole year now, I can still occasionally read something about games that makes me look at them in a way that never really occurred to me before. Once such case was when I read Patricia Hernandez's personal review of Fallout 2.

The idea that a game can offer a deep, meaningful and personal experience wasn't exactly a foreign concept of course. That being said, the way she spoke about the influence of RPG-classic Fallout 2 on her life made me take to heart the idea that the games we played growing up may have indeed shaped us as people.

The average game can take anywhere from 8 hours to World of Warcraft level 100 Paladin to play (Yes, Level 100 Paladin is an accurate and established unit of measurement) . This coupled with the fact that gaming can be such an emotionally charged experience, how can it NOT affect us?

You don’t play World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft plays you.

I'm usually quite the fan of objectivity when it comes to writing. I guess that's precisely why I think it would be quite a worth while experience for me to try out my own subjective game review this time round.

I don't have to think all too hard to pin point a game that affected me when I was growing up. This is possibly because I didn't play too many games as a child, or teen, or adult for that matter.

Yes yes I know, the joke’s been made.

If I had to choose just one, I'd say it would be the first Bioshock (Played on the Xbox 360). What made this experience so memorable to me was that even at the time, I was able to relate things that happened in-game to things that were happening in my life. (No I wasn't harvesting young children). In addition to that, what made Bioshock so special were the people I played it with. I was preparing for my Matsec O'level exams at the time (a fact that will become more relevant later on). I used to attend horrid maths private lessons in Mosta with a friend of mine, Josh. I had never hated Thursdays more so than then. One thing changed that however. After realizing that two other close friends, John and Ryan, lived just around the corner of said lesson location, I was invited along with Josh to "chill" afterwards. That time was spent playing Bioshock with them on their xbox.

Bioshock The Subjective Experience

John started up the console. 15 seconds in and I just sat there, impressed at how far graphics had come from my days playing Spyro.

I know it may seems a little shallow of me, but even to this day, the aesthetics of a game really does affect my overall enjoyment . Bioshock did not disappoint. Not only did I find the graphics brilliant, but every aesthetic feature; colour scheme, sounds, and steampunk theme, was just to die for. I was captivated by the Rapture. Before unraveling the narrative itself, I already felt that the environment was telling it’s own story. The atmosphere was so clearly established.

Rapture is essentially an underwater Dubai exterior that holds a steampunk Detroit inside.

When it came to game-play, what really stuck me at the time was that I really felt...destructively powerful. It was way more visually dark and "hardcore" than anything I had ever played before, and certainly rather more aggressive than anything I had played before - Which was precisely why I really liked it! I know it sounds unnecessarily violent of me; but I was in a really mentally frustrating situation at the time. I was preparing for O'level exams that I didn't want to take (See I told you the maths thing would be relevant again!), working through a family member's serious medical illness, house renovation, puberty, stressing out about what college I should go to, and what career options are actually out there. I was frustrated and anxious; but for those few hours after my maths private lesson, I could chill out with 3 great friends, and vent out all my frustration on grotesque NPC's.

Come ere' beautiful! I have months of teenage angst that I must project onto you.

Here's where it gets a little more personal again. One thing I should mention about those maths private lessons I went to is that he is literally infamous around Malta. Ask the majority of Maltese mum's with o'level aged kids who Mr.Vella Bonello is, and they'll give you wide eyed look, followed by a shudder. He was the kind of private lesson teacher who seemed more at home in charge of a concentration camp than a classroom. He'd shame students who got something wrong, worked us to the bone, and well, generally break spirits. I can't give more concrete examples, but wile I was attending, 4 different people shed actual tears in class (one was me). Why did people still go there? Because He was good. It was like maths boot camp. I had never been so good at maths in my life - but I really didn't like it. I didn’t like him. The way he looked down on me made me feel stupid and powerless. He made me stand quietly in place for 45 minutes once because I forgot my text book. He saw that I was afraid and already tearing up when I had to tell him that fact, but he punished me anyway. That was it. I pictured him as the Ryan to my Jack. A final boss I had to defeat if I wanted to play the game right, and pass that exam. That's how I viewed it, until the ending happened that is.

" A man chooses. A slave obeys"...boy did that scene get me thinking. Come to think of it, I had quite a profound existential moment due to Bioshock. I came to realise that that Maths teacher wasn't Ryan at all, nor was he just a maths teacher anymore. He had slowly become the embodiment of everything in my life that made me feel so powerless at the time. He was Atlas.

Once completed, Bioshock was swiftly replaced by Rockband, yet very often while I sat in that math's class, I kept thinking; am I hear because people are telling me to be? What's stopping me from rebelling? I remember smirking when he once said, directly to me: "Would you kindly give me your reasoning for your answer of 4a?" . I promptly gave the answer, sat back down, scoffed at the coincidence, and felt a little disappointed with myself. I'd think to myself "Why am I listening to this guy? I know I don't want to be here. I hated him, but I always ended up complying. Was I a “slave” or a “man”? If so, what were my shackles? My "Would you kindly"? With some introspection, I realised that it came down to not wanting to worry my mother. My family was going through a rough time as it was. It was my family who also put an immense pressure on me to do well academically. I guess I felt I owed it to them to be there. I had never though of any other possible life-paths other than academia; but was I just obediently following a plan that was pre-set for me? My first world angsty teen problems were hilariously cliche, I’m aware. I’m not going to pretend that this story is nearly as profoundly emotional as Patricia Hernandez's own review. That being said, I’m certain many people with a similar “privileged” upbringing may have had to grapple with the constraints and expectations placed on them by their families. The fact that I had no siblings only meant that I had to fight harder to mediate between defining myself as an individual, and living up to the hopes and dreams of two very overachieving individuals.

It would be rather fun to say that I stopped attending maths private lessons, and attribute the “strong rebellious decision” to being influenced by Bioshock's awesome plot twist ending. Sadly that wasn't that case. I continued going to those hellish private lessons like a responsible student making decent life choices. That being said I no longer felt like I was drowning in the situation I was in anymore, or felt as pressured by my family's ridiculously high expectations. I didn't feel like life was unfairly difficult because I had finally stopped to think about what I was really working for, and more importantly WHO I was working for. I know it sounds terribly cheesy, but playing Biochock really helped me feel a little more in control of my life; even for that short period of time. I was not a “slave” because I came to terms that I was doing it for myself. My parents were tough, but I truly did want to do well academically. I had dreamed my whole life that I would attend university, graduate, possibly do my Masters and PHD. He was not the Atlas to My Jack, because I was going to rock that class, and kick that exam's behind.

Bioshock The Impetus

Bioshock will always hold a special place on my shelf, or more appropriately, my steam library. However this is not just because my experience with the game helped come to terms with my suburban middleclass teenage turmoil and family's high academic expectations. It did something perhaps a little more life changing.

Bioshock was the catalyst for my relationship with video games. While probably quite a controversial topic due to the whole "Gamers are Dead" scenario that happened recently, this was probably the first time I actually felt like a "gamer"; because I finally felt like part of a community that shared the same interests. What ultimately made this a categorically different experience was playing the game with John, Ryan and Josh. Being able to discuss the game, play it together, laugh at the ridiculous plumbing simulator mini-game; sharing the experience made it special.

Despite having a PS1 and a gameboy colour prior to that, before Bioshock, I typically chose to play digital games alone. This was not because I was perpetually friendless (At least I'd like to think that wasn't the case). It had just never really occurred to me that games could be a social activity. Well, there was no one there to tell me otherwise. I was an only child and so was used to playing games alone as a means of filling time. I mostly played to escape boredom while at family events or if I had nothing better to do. Whenever friends did come over, we'd usually play outside or something of the sort. I always assumed games were something you play alone for some reason. This felt immediately different, and I loved it.

Even now, it seems to be the case that what I look for most in a game is its shared elements.

Oooh, a new game? Does it have multiplayer options? Can other people watch my game? Will there be a modding community?

I would not be surprised if my fondness of the social aspects of gaming took root from this initial brush with Bioshock.

Concluding Thoughts

It's funny to think that something as trivial as a game can affect a person profoundly. I would say I took more out of the game than just one of three possible endings. I received an experience. One that perhaps shaped me in some way. I sound terribly cliché saying this, (and will probably regret it) but it wouldn't be out of this world to suggest that some games never truly end because we take the encounter with us.

Ps. I rocked my O'levels by the way. Especially maths.

#IDG5202Yasmin

Songs of Innocence and Experience – Skyrim

Innocence – Isabeau Lirrean

If I were to ever write an article for Rock Paper Shotgun's Games that Made Me cycle of articles, Oblivion would definitely be a game I'd consider. Not because it was a perfect game; even great would be an overstatement. The game was riddled with problems. Whether you were playing it for the story and had to go through a million oblivion gates or playing it for the system where you had to write down what skills of yours levelled up to make your character playable after level six. I'd consider Oblivion precisely because I could still play it for the story in all its flaws. I could still game the system it had with an excel sheet to keep track of how many times I jumped and summoned zombies (+5/+5/+1 level up every time). Oblivion taught me that games were not (solely) about winning. They were about doing. It also had insanely good graphics for the time, which helped impress 14 year old me.

What I'm trying to say is that I pre-ordered Skyrim.

Not only did I pre-ordered it, I pre-loaded it over Steam too. I had to go out on the afternoon when it came out (I think it was a Friday), so I made sure that as soon as I came back home, I could play it without a moment's loss. I don't think I've been as excited about a game coming out since that release (maybe Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, I guess?).

I hate cinematic stuff. The scene in the slow moving cart, with the crappily rendered faces that The Elder Scrolls are famous for, the repetitive terrain that I would get subjected to for at least a hundred hours – it was pure bliss. I loved recognising the races in the cart that I had not seen for a long time. I mean, I would like to pretend that there was any difference between a Redguard and an African American, but who am I kidding? And Nords? They might as well just come out of a Scandinavian post-card. There isn't, but still. It felt nice to be back after a long time – especially knowing that I'd explore lands that I had never seen.

Look at those repeated ad nauseum tree textures. I am so pumped

I made my character, a female (I almost always play female characters. I guess I like to explore different experiences?) Breton (I almost always play white characters. I guess I'm wrong) named Isabeau Lirrean. I remembered the surname from Oblivion and the name sounded sufficiently Faux-French to pass for Breton. I knew I would also focus on magic – nothing makes you feel as powerful as meeting these new types of draugr skeletons and killing them before they even get next to you. And Skyrim boasted these new magic things such as dual casting spells which is exactly as unexciting as it sounds and traps which are actually kind of cool. I was definitely on board to be a mean lean (I almost always play skinny characters...) exploding machine.

I also married Muiri, because diversity.

And then I fought dragons, and I started shouting and I destroyed this super orb that was shown to me by the Skyrim equivalent of the illuminati and right after I killed the evil dragon (really easily, pretty disappointing Alduin fight). Sixty hours gone.

Experience – Max-Unarmed Char. Build

In Oblivion, I used to really like playing unarmed characters with touch spells to boost the damage dealt with my fists. This would normally be accompanied by heavy armour as well as strong spell resistance to mitigate the damage received by other sources. The blocking skill was also another option as it allowed you to decrease the damage taken if timed well while also allowing you to create space between you and your opponent, allowing for a power attack to follow. It was time to try this in Skyrim.

Anyway, time for a new game. Obviously, choose Khajit for that extra claw damage that accompanies them as well as their racial skill bonus to unarmed. Open game...and close game. Forgot about the cinematic intro. TL;DS. Open up Nexus Mods (Not a fan of the steam workshop, mods do not always properly upgrade). Scan computer for new games and add Skyrim along with the rest of my moddable games (mostly Bethesda stuff). Google a bit, found a mod that allows you to skip the entire opening sequence and just move into character creation post tutorial. Installed.

Anway, time for a new game. Entered the artificial character creation when I remember that star stone powers aren't as they are in oblivion. Not going to play an unarmed character without atronarch. One meeting with a necromancer and I'd be writing this review about rag-doll physics instead. Close the game again, open Nexus Mods again. Remove the mod that skips the sequence, install a different starting mod that overrides the character creation to be more akin to Oblivion (where you get to choose the standing stone rather than having to find it). Levelling up obviously remains as it is in Skyrim, because Oblivion's level ups were terrible. Removed the other one because of potential mod conflicts. Also installed SkyUI while I was at it. I didn't have any problems with the UI in my first character. However, since I installed it, I get PTSD just by looking at the base UI.

I don’t even remember what the normal UI looks like

Anyway, time for a new game. Entered the game, setting up my character in the old oblivion way. Feeling happy that the starting location is also randomized, so I can ignore the main quest for a while. Choosing skills...unarmed is no longer a skill in Skyrim. Close the game, open the wiki. Yepp, completely removed from the skill tree. How did I not even realise this? They even removed touch spells. However, apparently, if I get an item early on from The Ratway (Gloves of the Pugilist), I can still dish out large amounts of damage. I also read that I should probably add Enchanting to my base skills so that once the damage starts going down, I can disenchant my gloves and start crafting enchantments on dwarven armour. I also think that Restoration is probably also a good idea because it has the only touch spell (healing hands against undead does damage), and draugr overlords are annoying. It also has the ward spell which allows me to decrease distance between me and heavy artillery magic users (hargravens and wispmothers).

That’s what it looks like!

Anyway, time for a new game. Randomised location is close to Whiterun – I go to the Whiterun stables, hire a carriage to Riften. Meet Brynolf, who initiates a quest that sounds like it could start the thieves guild quest. Ignore Brynolf and go to the ratway (which apparently is also a way to start the thieves guild quest). Find the pugilist, kill the pugilist. Take the gloves, my character is now grossly overpowered. One hitting base draugrs is pretty satisfying.

I play for a few hours. Damage clearly peaked. Go to enchanting table...Can only enchant greaves with fortify unarmed damage. Oh well, that experiment was fun. Go to main menu, delete saved file, start character 3.

#idg5202john

Avoid the red, embrace the red.

Red and its power to allure. Red and its power to entice. Red can be so many things. Whatever it is, it’s generally very powerful. But what if it does is all this at the same time? How can it be that red is intimidating and enchanting simultaneously?

The cosmos doesn’t discriminate. There is a place where good and evil do not exist. Everything falls into place as units, into a perfect whole. Perfection is key here. Red becomes something perfect...a perfect colour. Its function is irrelevant. The same can be said about the shapes, and the music. All blend together in unison, creating an experience that seems to embody the metaphysical.

‘The Last Voyage’ seems to do all of this at once. It transcends the physical matter of the laws of nature. It’s a game where for a while, you have a chat with an abstract god, and then come back to life. At various points I felt like I was playing a game reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, or Terence Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’. No wonder, the developers of this iOS game mentioned how the game was so inspired by Sci-fi.

While playing ‘The Last Voyage’, I found myself asking if I was experiencing something larger than life. Was this game a representation of life, life itself, or a whole new version of life? I am still not sure.

Is ‘The Last Voyage’ a game?I will step back for a second, and look at the numerous attempts taken to define ‘game’. Well that’s the thing. While there have been various theorists / designers who agreed about certain elements which constitute a game, the definition of the word is still very much open. Maybe, as Wittgenstein himself mentioned, ‘game’ is one of those things which can only be defined according to their familiar resemblances. Maybe ‘game’, like art, or love, can be defined based on its familiar features, but can these features be all encompassing? And in that sense, maybe ‘The Last Voyage’ is a game not because of its ludic elements, but because of its familiar yet all encompassing, larger than life feel.

But enough with this abstraction. I’ll go through the game. I promise that by the end of this subjective review, you’ll find that all I say will remain intangible. This is a game meant to be played. Correction: This is a game meant to be experienced. Correction: This is an experience meant to be interacted with.

What to Review?

Given that I spend most of my boring time on the iPad, I thought to myself that i should review an iOS game. It was a win-win situation. iOS games are generally brief, and there are quite a number of intelligent titles one can still write about.

Enter the App Store, and I notice this indie-looking app called ‘The Last Voyage’ for 99c. Well I was sure it was one of those presumptious artsy fartsy games (sorry Monument Valley, in my eyes, you can’t hold a candle to Fez!).

I still clicked the app to read more. First 2 reviews read: ‘Mind-Altering’ (Wired) and ‘Like going through the Star Gate in 2001: A Space Odyssey’ (Pocket Gamer). How could I resist?

Download.

Title Screen

5 pm (sun still shining). I was completely alone in my room, sound of traffic in the background...sitting on my bed...two pillows behind my head to make it feel like I was sitting down. Head up high. I was preparing myself for a transcendental experience.

An ambient dreamy soundscape immediately soared. I couldn’t hear the traffic anymore. I was already pulled in, but I wasn’t sure what this place was. Somehow, I felt this game was going to be memorable. I closed the curtains so that I could have complete darkness, and sat back down on the bed. At this point, I didn’t mind slouching.

Chapter 1 - Astral

A bright scarlet colour, and nostalgia-inducing floating grey waves. The depth formed by the animation was mesmerizing. I felt present in this abstract space. And that’s saying something for someone whose concept of presence is different from what is traditionally understood in gaming. Come to think of it, it wasn’t really me that was present. I felt the game was pushing me to be there in mind...think of it as a meditative state. It worked.

Two towers make their way up, and it seems obvious that the player needs to touch them to progress. I was being prepared for some journey of the mind, through peculiar game space.

A number of puzzles emerge, which seemed to act as unlockables to the commencement of my journey.

Most of the puzzles seemed trivial to be fair, and throughout the game, most puzzles seem like someone interrupting you from that holistic conversation with the absolute / god. But maybe it was making it obvious to me that the game was about my relationship with space. There was one puzzle that stood out. I had to make a straight 2 dimensional line out of 3D objects. Maybe this was a way for the game to tell me that ‘The Last Voyage’ was about my relationship with space. Maybe the line signified the journey I was about to embark on.

Chapter 2 - Void

It seems I’ve started my journey. And it seems I’m in a vortex, reminding me of another game - Rez.

Only in this case, the aesthetic seems to be more minimalist, which makes it clear how the game is about the abstract concept of space.

The music remains atmospheric but morphs into something of a contemporary new age / techno feel. I couldn’t not notice how what is called the LFO effect in the music (basically a fast up and down play with frequencies) seemed to create a sense of rapid movement when coinciding with the abstract patterns I journeyed through. I was exhilarated. This wasn’t a representation of a journey. It felt like an actual journey of the mind.

The destination of every level is a black or white shape. When reached, the music progresses, and that colour becomes the background of the new level. Every time this shift (in colour and sound) happened, it felt like I was experiencing a revelation of some kind, and every time, I was forging new relationships with the iPad. it was like boundaries of the mind were being destroyed through this chapter. Was I emptying my mind?

As I mistakenly hit a red shape, the game prompts me to start again, although the progress is saved. The music however starts again from the beginning. Since it will take me less time to finish the level, I will never manage to reach the height of the musical experience. Maybe this is the way for the developers to tell me that I haven’t really cleared my mind yet. Nevertheless, I progress to Chapter 3.

Chapter 3 - Mind

By now, my mind had been refreshed. The previous chapter felt like it had opened the contours. Which is why I was slightly put off by the fact that I was now being tested in what seemed like a doctor’s office. Is this what the designers really had in store after opening my mind? For fuck’s sake! Maybe I’m being too cocky. Maybe my mind was still closed after all...

The tests presented in this chapter felt frivolous once more. Yet to be fair, the game exposed itself to me in its full glory in this chapter. This was indeed a game about the the concept of space. Every movement in the puzzles may not have been a ludic challenge, but they managed to shift my relationship with space, and somehow molding it to fit in a perfect aesthetic. See below pictures and you’ll know what I mean.

Red became a main character in this chapter. I now knew I had to become friends with it somehow.

Nevertheless, doctor’s office. I’m sure that’s not where the cosmos intended to take me after Ch 2. Moving on.

Chapter 4 - Path

That’s pretty much how I felt in this bizarre chapter. All I had to do was stick to the green path, but the experience was mind blowing.

This journey of the mind is not what I expected after doing a series of tests at the doctor’s office. ‘The Last Voyage’ was now taking me on a transcendental journey or sorts, similar to a DMT voyage in Noe’s ‘Enter the Void’.

I felt like this experience bore resemblances to those presented in Chapter 2. But while, I felt like Chapter 2 was a preparation for an emptying of the mind through space, Path felt more like a journey into unknown mind spaces. My mind was travelling in an abstract space. I’m not sure what the destination was, but that was not the point.

Sticking to the green line is also a nice touch, although I could not get why red suddenly became my enemy again. The path instilled in me a meditative state where I was required to find the right balance between being aware and immersed in the journey. Kudos to the designers.

Chapter 5 - Beyond

So this was it folks...the final test...the hero’s challenge. This is where any hero’s journey would end if they decide to do a permadeath. The challenges here were tough.

But hey, I was going beyond. Beyond what, I am not sure. Was it beyond the universe, or beyond the perception of space? Was it about me as a player at this stage, or was it about something bigger than myself?

This chapter was both difficult gamewise and convoluted.I could not really follow what I was supposed to be taking with me as a player, although at times it did feel like I was now an objective entity travelling through an alien dimension of space.

Maybe this was the close of a bigger chapter. I was first prepared, then emptied my mind, then tested, then took a journey. Could this be the spatial metaphor of the ‘journey beyond’? Unlike Chapter 2 and 4, I was not the one moving here as actions were not presented in first person. Instead, I was the one controlling an illuminated entity from outside. Had I as player become god? No. I was now truly present and detached from myself. I could now see myself from an omniscient perspective.

Was I as god, helping this illuminated entity to avoid the conventional, limiting shapes that have no other purpose but to put the entity back in its closed minded place?

I was raised to this level and it was my duty as a detached player to help myself in getting to the absolute. It was the least I could do.

After I won a series of tough challenges, the game abruptly finished. I was sucked back into normal routine. However I felt invigorated. The world around me was the same.

But somehow, it wasn’t,

End thoughts

This was a very biased review of The Last Voyage. The game will probably not appeal to a lot of players, and its intentions are not explicitly clear. But that’s really its beauty. Its abstract nature is so open to interpretation that it can manifest itself in so many different ways.

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Blog Task 2

One of the reasons people like to play video games is because they can change shoes. Role-playing is a prominent affordance in many games; and not only those under the obvious category. In adventure games your character always matters and a major part of the experience of the game is to understand and explore who you are and what are your special attributes. That is why deep narrative worlds and multidimensional heroes constitute an asset of the game as important as the game mechanics and its audio and visual facets.

Jane Jensen is a game designer, whose latest achievement is Malachi Rector. Malachi stars in his own game by Phoenix Online Studios called Moebius: Empire Rising[i]. In it you embark in an adventure where the present meets the past and history repeats itself. Following the traditional gameplay of point and click adventures, the game has been criticized from both sides of the spectrum as excelling its medium and genre affordances, showing high potentials but failing to deliver, and/or proving a complete disappointment.

In this take of the game, I will not comment on its design and concept inadequacies or achievements, but on the contrary I will solely address the criticism of the male hero of the game. In many articles Malachi Rector is condemned as unlikeable and foul, which supposedly results into players not wanting to play him. On the other hand, Jane Jensen claims in her blog[ii] that Malachi is a hot man, whom both female and male players would like to corporate themselves in. My endeavor is to first examine the truth of her former assertion and subsequently the second.

Jane Jensen provides her readers with a full list of traits a hot male lead should possess, in order to lure players in and reach the feeling of identification to the maximum. These are as follows:

a. Looks

It’s a given that he’ll be good-looking. But what does that mean? Consider your audience. […] P.S. – A nice ass goes without saying.

b. Personality

Your character can be damaged (‘hurt/comfort’ is a big romance genre) but he needs to show vulnerability, be redeemable, and improve over the course of the story.

c. Voice Over Casting & Dialogue

A woman can be seduced by—or put off by—a man’s voice. […] Sexiness is very much a vocal characteristic. […] And your voice actor needs to have likability, even when being sarcastic, and sound a little sensitive and/or a tad vulnerable at least some of the time. Accents can be very sexy. Bad grammar and screaming is not.

d. Other people find him sexy

One of the best ways to demonstrate a character’s attributes is in the way NPCs react to him. When other characters react to your MC (main character) as if he’s attractive, they are reinforcing in the player’s mind that the guy is hot.

e. Employing romantic tropes in your plotline

We’ve all seen enough TV and movies to subconsciously recognize romantic tropes. Even when they are not applied directly to a romantic relationship, they still trigger feelings of sympathy and attraction to the MC. Seeing him face these things triggers the response in us that he is the romantic lead. […] By working with common tropes you can create a romantic tension in your work, and romanticize your hero, even if you never intend to have a romantic relationship consummated.

f. Actually give him a love interest

You know what makes a guy really sexy? It’s called UST – Unresolved Sexual Tension. Someone wants the guy, badly, or the guy wants someone, but they resist and/or are kept apart by obstacles. That unresolved tension is transferred to the player and now the player wants. They want to keep turning the page (or buy the next game) to see that UST resolved.

Malachi Rector – a case study

As far as I am concerned, it is difficult to show a hero sexy just in a game world. Because of the pixelated and drawing-like portrayal, the verisimilitude of beauty eludes the player. In female characters it is somewhat easier, because most of the times they merely need big bosom and buttocks scarcely clad by revealing clothes. In case of Malachi Rector, out perception of his hotness is manifested firstly from what we hear and consequently – if not at all – from what we see.

As Jane Jensen suggested, Malachi wins the audience primarily due to his voice. The voice actor chosen to play the role, Owen Thomas, accompanied the avatar with a beautiful and sensual male intonation and clear British accent that most women would find sexy. Secondly, it is very much true what Jane comments about the NPCs reaction to his attractiveness. She actually refers to a scene from Moebius herself in her blog. Particularly:

In Moebius chapter 3, I have Malachi’s store manager, Gretchen, take his sidekick David out for a drink to warn him about how people (sic) fall in love with Malachi because he’s good-looking, intelligent, and aloof. That’s building in a sexual backstory that helps the player feel the attractiveness of my MC.

Moreover, Malachi certainly bases on the romantic tropes Jensen mentioned. Before the game even begins, the player already starts feeling empathy towards Malachi through a comic serial providing information on how Malachi’s mother was eaten by a lion somewhere in Africa when he was still a boy. We then find him many years later, successful antiquarian by now, dealing mesmerizingly with a conman, both in regards of his artistic knowledge and eidetic memory, and of his courage and disregard for dangerous situations. All that while wearing an immaculate suit and sporting a velvety British English accent.

As a result, calling Malachi unlikable and detestable, because he is an elitist and mistreats people, is no different from perceiving the world in a naively fragmented and arbitrarily Manichean manner. Malachi’s nastiness steps into the well-formulated mannerism of the anti-hero. His harshness is shown as the outcome of his trauma – and what does more the player want than to cure his wounds? It is like facing a terrifying wild animal that you – solely you – succeed in transforming into a plush teddy.

Indeed, Jane Jensen coins Malachi Rector as the aloof type or the man without a family:

Malachi is a super intelligent, cold genius in the vein of House or Sherlock Holmes in his many incarnations (which is also, in itself, a classic 'beast' type). You admire the Aloof One for his amazing brilliance. A tragic past helps us understand why he can’t trust people. Flashes of vulnerability show us how lonely the guy REALLY is. I mean, come on! Someone needs to crack those defenses and befriend the poor bastard. And we want to see it happen.

Here is where my personal account comes into the picture. I am a big supporter of the anti-hero, aloof, brilliant kind, so Malachi did not face a great difficulty winning me over. At the same time, I am not a big fun of fictional gay couples. Don’t get me wrong, I respect all consensual sexual preferences, but being myself a heterosexual, I cannot affiliate with homosexual relationships that much. In the case of Malachi however, I found myself rooting immensely for the fulfillment of his bromance with the second male hero of the game, Captain David Walker.

David is the only character that manages to create deep emotional feelings within Malachi and it is true what Jensen said about love interests coming in different forms, whereas the love tension does not have to be resolved to draw the player in but plainly be there. Therefore, we have a situation, where I – as the player – want for my male avatar a love story with another male character, while at the same time I blatantly disregard women purely as sex vessels and victims of my efforts to complete my mission.

It is apparent that the narrative of the game imposes such emotions on me, since I see Malachi – me – acting in a way that clearly demonstrates his – mine – caring and self-sacrifice only for David. Olli Leino categorizes these emotions of wanting your avatar to find erotic happiness with another inside the game character as vicarious love[iii]. Many things can be said here about love and its manifestation in digital games, but for now I will purposefully underline the importance of it for the presentation of Malachi as someone who is capable of showing love and receiving it.

If I want another simulative being giving love to him, then I cannot not be in the first place at least attached to him, to the point of thinking that he deserves it. Certainly, that cannot happen with an unlikable hero and specifically it cannot happen in such a way with a hero that I not form this bonding of consciousness especially digital games grant us with. It even surpasses my distaste for his name. I am not sure how strong your knowledge of Greek is, but let me assure you that the pronunciation of Malachi rings very closely to that of a word other languages can live without.

As a matter of fact, he also has a short version of Kye for his very close friends and who could be closer to him than me? Thus problem solved :)

[i] http://www.postudios.com/company/games/moebius/

[ii]http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JaneJensen/20140414/215473/WRITING_HOT_MEN_FOR_GAMES_Yes_please.php?print=1

[iii] Leino Ol. 2015. “I know your type, you are a player”: Suspended Fulfillment in Fallout: New Vegas in Enevold, Jessica; MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. Game Love: Essays on Play and Affection. McFarland. Kindle Edition.

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