"Free-to-play?"
Okay, second-most. I'm referring to "Walking Simulators," and that in and of itself is a rather loaded statement. The term "Walking Simulator" has been applied as an insulting brand to a number of low-interactivity, story-based game experiences. People being people, it has also since been "reclaimed" by game developers all too proud to advertise the story focus of their game. Because, you know, once the insults start flying this has to become a massive war and we can't just step back for a second and realize there's actually a common point to what's going on here.
At the core of this controversy has been Gone Home, a story-based indie title about a young woman returning home from college to find her family mysteriously missing. As she explores the empty house, she finds it covered in passive-aggressive notes they decided to write to each other instead of simply talking about their problems like normal people. So begins her quest to piece together what happened. No puzzles, no enemies, just a slow reconstruction of past events by completing the YA novella that is her sister's diary. Yeah, in case you couldn't tell from the summary, Gone Home didn't really hook me, and it wasn't just me. It was one of the most divisive games of last year, with some people absolutely swearing it was a landmark storytelling achievement for video games, and others going so far to say that it wasn't a game at all.
So why was Gone Home so divisive? How to people manage to feel so wildly different about these "Walking Simulator" games?
Okay, first let's unpack the idea of "Walking Simulators" and define what they are. This is tricky, because it tends to get thrown around quite a bit, often as a way to discredit games which people feel are overly lacking in meaningful interaction, but I would argue there is a workable definition we can pull from all this.
The way I see it, Walking Simulators are games that lack a core "loop" to their interactivity. The reason a lack of combat is so noticeable to most people is that combat is a loop that is often employed to drive people through a game. Simply put, the loop is the satisfying, tactile form of engagement that keeps you playing. In a racing game, the loop is doing races, and you continue to play because you enjoy the races and want to race more. In a game like Bioshock, the combat and collection elements are loops that keep you moving from area to area.
In most games, the loop is the carrot on a stick that leads you through the story. Gone Home does things a little differently. In Gone Home, the story itself is meant to lead you through the house. The desire to learn more, find more pieces and understand what happened is the core of the experience. Basically, the game does nothing to "trick" you into caring about the story. Instead, the experience is predicated on you caring about the story enough to continue, more similar to a television show or a book.
And this, right here, is why Walking Simulators are divisive. Simply put, if the story the game is telling doesn't hook you...there's nothing else in there to do so. The game doesn't employ anything else as a vector for engagement outside the story being told. If the story bores you or, hell, just isn't something you can relate to, the whole thing feels like a waste of time and there's nothing to keep you there. On some level, it's easy to see why some people might have trouble classifying it as a "game" at all. Interactivity has commonly been understood as the primary engagement vector for games. It's not that Gone Home lacks interactivity, (because you do absolutely interact with it,) it's that the interactivity isn't the thing holding you there. The interactivity is an excuse or conceit to deliver the story, rather than the other way around.
TANGENT: It's interesting, when you think about it. Games are kinda the only form of media that can pull you all the way through the experience on the merits of something other than the story being told. A game can have an absolutely awful storyline, yet still send you away satisfied if the gameplay was solid enough. I don't say this as a knock against the medium, but at the same time, is there really any mystery as to why we continue to put up with bad storytelling in games? Maybe John Romero wasn't too off the mark when he said the story in a game is like the story in a porno. I mean, that is the only other media I can think of where it's commonly something other than the story keeping your attention.
On the flip side, it makes sense that people defend Gone Home so strongly from critique. If the game does engage you, that means the story resonates with you. I've seen plenty of articles praising Gone Home that boil down to "I was also a punk-rock suburban lesbian teenager in the 80s!" Okay, that's a bit extreme, but my point is that if you got into the game that means you either identified with the characters or could just empathize with their situation enough that the desire to learn more about them drove you forward. In a Walking Simulator, the primary mode of engagement is, very directly, your emotions. Therefore, it becomes easy to conflate a dismissal of the game with a dismissal of one's own feelings. And that's when things get ugly.
"So who's right?"
No one.
"Eugh. How did I know you'd say that?"
Look, the fact of the matter is that story-based games like this are going to inherently be divisive. To appreciate a Gone Home or a Machine for Pigs, you absolutely have to be picking up what the game is laying down in terms of story. It can't be helped that the Walking Simulator you adore is probably only going to appeal to a fraction of the greater gaming populace, no matter what it is or what it's about. What we can do is recognize that this is a fact of the genre. Don't hate on people for thinking Gone Home is a masterpiece and don't hate on people for thinking it's a boring waste of time. Because, at the end of the day, it's both of those things...depending on who you are. It's your personal experience with the game that matters, regardless of how it was received by anyone else.
"Wait, one more thing before we go. In games where the focus is on interactivity, isn't the player telling his or her own story?"
Yeah. That's a good and, perhaps, more charitable way of looking at it. In a game like Skyrim the story you're really engaged with is the one you're telling by running your massive orc through a bandit camp with a flaming battle axe and no pants, not whatever those dragons and wizards are blabbing about whenever they grab your face and talk at you. It should be no surprise that popular Let's Play channels tend to be so heavily personality-driven, when the player is the primary storyteller in most games, whether its explicit about that or not.
This is another way Walking Simulators potentially alienate those not on board with the story being told. They represent a removal of story agency from the player. Even if the protagonist is technically "doing things," it's all at the behest of the author and not the player. Lowering interactivity lowers the potential for emergence and all that.
"Okay, now for balance's sake, say a nice thing about Walking Simulators to close us out."
What if I told you a Walking Simulator was one of my favorite games of all time?
There's a reason I picked the Halloween season to discuss this topic. Coming up next, I'm going to talk about a game that's very near and dear to my heart, Yume Nikki.
Until then, pleasant dreams.
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