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[PATV] Wednesday, August 8, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 4, Ep. 25: Mechanics as Metaphor (Part 1)
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
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Maybe I'm way off base with this comment, and didn't get the point of the video at all. Flash game was neat, by the way! I tried to go to EVERY group, even though I knew none of them would come near me.....
Then, once I discovered that the dots vanished once you went near them, I returned straight to the middle and headed on forwards, ignoring what all the groups are doing.
You're right, this does say something about me.
However, I found it rather manipulative of the game music to be what it was. You could replace it with somthing from an old horror movie and it would be conveying a different set of emotions than what the creator was clearly going for. But I never turned off the game, I scrolled all the way to the end just to see if there was one, and I wasn't dissapointed. It's strange how some art game like this i've played that intentionally have no "ending" outside of the one wheren the user shuts off the game in disgust or boredom and that's "the point". Any ending at all is a good ending so long as it give closure to the expiriance.
Apologies if I've bored anyone I just had a lot I wanted to say. Was that not the point of the video?
But then, as they became fewer and fewer in number, my rage faded, and it was enough to simply go up to each group to see if they too would run away. I doubled back once, to see if there were any that stuck around. I found one, and had a brief moment of joy, followed by sadness as it too fled away.
As I rode into the final blackness, I thought, "at least this one, death, accepts me." I mean, that's what it was, right? The pixel is gone, forever consumed, returning to the dark from whence it came, the end.
A bit depressing from my perspective, but there's so many other interpretations. I can easily see why some people would call it "stupid" and "pointless" but EC is right, it's all about the narrative you assign to it. Can't wait for the next episode to point out other games that do this.
...and then the end-texts scrolled in. I got pulled out of my space-exploration real quick and felt annoyed at the game. Or Not-A-Game. Whatever. Yes, this was one of those artsy games with a "deep" message, which I already knew from books I had previous read and movies I had watched in the past. Real deep stuff. * yawn *
I just kept going after being engulfed by complete darkness, hoping to find a white space beyond it, and then the text appeared, white over black—and I felt so sad for that little square. That game really hit me hard at the end; guess I can relate.
I thought top/down controlled the clouds, and left/right controlled the singular. I didn't think of the singular as myself.
I moved one group toward the singular, and one group toward the bottom edge, then one group to the top.
Then all I saw was the singular, which can only move left/right, and I figured it was over and quit.
Only when I watched episode and the comments did I figure there is a real end, at the top, and the only objective is getting there.
It's nice that you want to convey a message, but at the very least make sure your user knows what is going on.
Passage is extremely similar game, but at least there the background moves, and you know what is "you".
Only the last lone square made me stop for a moment. I wonderd if it maybe was like me and felt a solidary kinship to it. But I didn't go over, because if it was like me it would by this point be just as hardend and cynical and wouldn't trust the possibilty of companionship - and if it then would reject me it would be just the same as all the others.
I don't care if it is pretentious - if a game can make you project any kind of emotions or thoughts on a bunch of little black dots on a blank screen, it's a win. Take that, 2k Games!
Great episode!
I tried avoiding the rest, and felt terrible when I couldn't. Then at the end, when everything went black I was terrified. What if I went and destroyed more of the stars...
Still as an example of 'Mechanics as Metaphor' this game fails because it relies heavily on its music and the background gradually turning grey and then black to get its point across. Take away the music, take away the background and you might as well be Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo and see the populace fleeing before you.
*gets to the end* Oh, this was some pretentious metaphor, I guess.
And then it's depressing as Hell. Seriously, you make a game for lonely people, and the game is, "Every time you get close to anyone, you will destroy them. No one will accept you; not even one person. And at the end you fade to darkness." I feel better now; my loneliness is much more tolerable now that I know I will forever be rejected and die alone.
And regarding the notgame , I tried to join every group not because I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to see how the groups dispersed when I got near. I thought that I'd get points for the ones that I'd catch , and it was a bit dissapointing when the ones I managed to catch just disappeared like the rest of them.
I lost track of the box I was controlling as a character. It's easier to project upon than any customizable game I've played (even Minecraft) because it took so little effort, but the fact that no matter what you do, you always end up in the dark shook me out of the experience so hard I had to go to the bathroom (though that could be unrelated).
It's like if every ending of "The Stanley Parable" ended with the female narrator urging you to quit before Stanley dies, giving you only two options regardless of how you decided to play the game. It felt like it had a cool thing going there, but it tried to zoom off and decided that being alone was terrible, and as an introvert I find that offensive (I don't find it offensive, but I do find it frustrating for the "narrative" of the game).
The way I played the character - hitting every group - it hadn't learned anything by the end. Nothing in my behavior would've changed if the game had gone on for thirty more minutes, and that's the inherent problem with it.
Is it my fault that I didn't mind that they were scattering? That I didn't learn the "lesson" because I was not - nor am I - bothered enough to change my behavior to affirm the beliefs of the developer(s)? I found that the attempt to make me sad only brought me comfort.
Honestly, even trying to view it as someone who does mind being alone, I get the uncomfortable feeling like the square is giving up - still wrenching control from my hands, but in a way I'm more comfortable with due to most games being more or less the opposite of this game's GaSmTeOpRlYay (interwoven gameplay and story).
tl;dr I love the game, but the ending assumes you're in some way unhappy with your experience, and I wasn't.
Games usually make me feel "unsocial", this one urged me to be more "social".
"troublefindingtherightwords"
I thought that it was a commentary on how willingly separating oneself from others will eventully cause them to shun you themselves, and I must admit that depite how interesting the reality of the game was, I was disappointed when I went back and realised that this was not the case.
A much better example of mechanics as metaphor is Persona 3. The entire plot is about the importance of embracing both the will to live in yourself, and about making connections with other people. Much more than "beat the boss" it's about beating humanity's tendency toward isolation and depression. You don't have to do any of that. You can build a very small number of social links, and still beat the game. But if you *do* build your social links, the game becomes much easier. By making the world a better place, by making connections with people and improving their lives, your own journey becomes more pleasant.
That's a mechanic as a metaphor. And it's a use of the skinner box to improve the player's life. By encouraging us to choose to improve the world around us, and giving a reward for it, hell by simply encouraging us to be social within the game, I believe it makes us more likely to behave that way outside of the game. All this without having a title like "OMG help people and be happy" or ever explaining that meaning.
Loneliness was just a waste. Without the title telling me what the metaphor was going to be, without the video priming me to look for a metaphor, and without the little bit at the end explaining it, there's no reason people would understand the metaphor of the mechanics. And that's simply a bad metaphor.
What does that say about me?
Eventually, I tried to get the ex-members of old groups to collide with the members of undisturbed groups.
So I'm not sure if this says more about my predisposition to groups (I am kind of a loner after all) or if it's simply a manifestation of my ingrained gaming reflexes (even though bullet hells aren't exactly my favorite genre, I've played my fare share over the years XD).
Either way, an interesting concept, although certainly a little bit heavy on the pretentious side...
For far too long the general gaming public has accepted games like Mass Effect and Bioshock as being decision driven games (they're simply not - which isn't bad, but they're simply not).
Its not really about a metaphor, its about getting an emotional response from gameplay rather then getting it from the storyline (like a cutscene or plot). There doesn't need to be a deeper message like Loneliness had. It just has to get the player motivated to either accomplish something or to keep playing.
Loneliness did this poorly. As Seldon said, the only way to understand the point of the game was to be told. If I was to just accidentally find the game and start playing without any lead in, it would make no sense, and I would of probably given up thinking it was a bad joke, or a zombie face would pop out at the end and scream through my speakers. The mechanics gave no hint as to a purpose or goal.
I do not often disagree with the guys from Extra Credit. But I think there was alot of reaching here to give this game so much credit.