literacy in small terms

max edits all the essays i write. everybody say hi to max, big round of applause to max, give lots of thanks to max. THANK YOU MAX

he put in a request though to do a little exposition on a common idea vextro treads on and around. we bring up like, games not being quite coherent and games not living up to an expressed potential. the best shorthand for addressing all of this is a statement starts to become a mantra. developers (or just as often inverse, gamers in interpretation) lacked the proper videogame literacy, and that’s why a game is. this a lot of assumed knowledge for my audience, and a lot of universalizing a concept that has no center, no core, no place of education. or I mean, you can’t go learn videogame literacy, so what we’re actually saying is that they “don’t understand videogames as well as we do” and that is pompous as shit. i don’t want to create hierarchies. i want this to be easily understood, i want it to be hopefully an accessible concept. i’m not the best at clarity, but i’ll put in an effort to explaining on my terms.

a lot of this is just paying forward ideas lana polanksy wrote in a response to ludonarrative dissonance as a concept making the rounds again. it hasn’t made the rounds much since. coherence versus incoherence is a really clear and direct model for a critic to adopt, though it’s usefulness is tied up with a critic’s desire to ascribe meaning or value to a work. which I mean fuck it, that’s what most gameswriters do anyway, so it’s a good model. my friend becky applied the framework what is a most comprehensive way, it flat out works, and it’d be nice to see a lot more people shifting away from the nebulous “the videogame is good because it makes me feel good” and “the videogame is good because it’s appealing to the market” toward “this videogame is meaningful because of precedents in art and history, and I can prove it”

Like Slow Disappearing

I’m not an expert on horror games or anything, so I can only guess the origin of persistent horror is from Slender: The Eight Pages (or maybe, arguably, Ao Oni?). I can’t actually handle persistent antagonists either, especially in first person. I’ve never finished Slender, but I’ve played it a bit, sorta just to face my fears. I gotta force myself to play most horror games. Maybe I just feel a lot, maybe I’m gullible; I just get really invested and really scared. The point is to get scared, but I don’t know. It’s not exactly pleasant.

A persistent antagonist (usually randomly) spawns in and chases the player. It may chase permanently, or it may despawn after a certain point. Commonality here is how it fosters an intense vulnerability. Control and tempo of play isn’t dictated by what the player necessarily wants, it’s a matter of being in constant avoidance. Rhythm is determined by whatever chases; a player must cede control over the space, in a way that other genres or styles rarely, if ever, require someone to do.

vextro loves games: episode 6

 

 

in this episode we’re joined by GUEST: COLIN. talkin’ about the struggles of indie development and the hustle that goes with it.

his choice of games: gyossait (2011), armada (2013), and colin’s own game in development: lucah.

next month we’ll be discussing oikospiel book I, proteus, panoramical, and dyad.

Outer Sight

From the description of Agent Escape:

This is a serious game that explores the motivations of a paranoid and depressive schizophrenic. Auditory and visual hallucinations are common in these patients … Lack of motivation and drug abuse are very common in schizophrenic patients … I hope that through playing this game the player gains a better understanding of the motivations and mental state of paranoid delusional schizophrenics, and will exhibit empathy and understanding.

I really don’t like this game. There are a lot of problems considering its short runtime. An intrinsic motivator to create conflict is that the player-character has complete amnesia after going through electroconvulsive therapy. Chances of this actually happening are astronomically low. It has happened, but this outcome happening, and somehow also the hospital staff are not aware that it has happened, is flatout impossible. It only happens to create tension, to preserve a false start framing.