Firewatch meaning full#

If you canвЂ™t tell, IвЂ™m not a huge fan of theВ genre В it throws awayВ what IвЂ™ve always considered the mediumвЂ™s greatest strength-not just interactivity, but real, active choice-in favor of, essentially, a kind of amateur filmmaking. There have been quite a few released since, the most well-known probably being TheВ Fullbright CompanyвЂ™s Gone HomeВ and The Chinese RoomвЂ™s sophomore effort, EverybodyвЂ™s Gone to the Rapture. Yet people liked it, and it birthed the genre of вЂњwalking simulatorsвЂќ-games with definitive, prewritten narratives, often revealed through audio logs or soundbites, that in the end grant no real player choice or agency. It was completely linear-more in line withВ a visual novel than a traditional video game-and lacked any of the focus on interactivity that makes most great games great.

Firewatch meaning full#

Meanwhile,В in February 2012, a developer called The Chinese Room released a game titled Dear EstherВ (which, full disclosure, I own but have not yet played), about a ghost story on a mysterious island.

ItвЂ™s immersive precisely because of the investment its focus on choice creates. IВ pointed this out when I wrote about Undertale,В and why it sits at the pinnacle ofВ what video games can do itвЂ™s a game about agency and choice in a world where choices actually matter. In short, outside the odd stab at second-person writing, video games are the only fictional mediaВ that involveВ theirВ audience in theirВ stories. And video games? Video games take components from each of those mediums and combine them with something that nothing else can provide. Music createsВ sensory images-imagesВ that completely ignore the visual focus that dominates our perception of the world. Film, on the other hand, can communicateВ experience in both the most naturalistic and, with the advent of modern effects, the most spectacular ways. LiteratureВ isВ incrediblyВ adept at revealingВ the inner motivations and machinations of charactersвЂ™ minds in a way that most other mediums cannot equal. I should probably rephrase the original question: what makes a game, a greatВ game? Because every medium has its strengths and its weaknesses. HereвЂ™s a question youвЂ™ve probably heard before what makes a game, a game? And for that matter, what makes any piece of artВ in any fictionalВ medium (to name just a few examples: literature, poetry, film, television, comics, music, visual art, dance), distinctly a piece in that medium? Sure, we can say that literature is written prose, and that film is recorded, and music is a composition of sound, but those areВ all surface level qualities.