By Ember Kvande, Grace Talbert, and Carly Thomas To the untrained eye, Minecraft is an open world survival sandbox that has no inherent story to it. You spawn in with no direction or instruction, and you’re in an infinitely generating open world. It’s up to the player to choose what they want to do with this world — fight monsters, build structures, farm, adventure, or “defeat” the game as it doesn’t have a hard-stop ending. Minecraft seems entirely open and plotless, but this could not be further from the truth. Minecraft, despite a lack of written words and explicit explanation, has an interesting and creative way of telling stories. Firstly, there's all the ways that the game encourages and enhances the stories you as a player chose to create. There are naturally occurring landmasses that demand exploration, mobiles (mobs) to interact with for items or fight, and ways to tame certain mobs into pets. On a world all alone, players can make a tragic story of surviving the night, trusting nothing but their fists until they tame a dog. The dog is inevitably killed by a monster (probably a creeper), and the player truly mourns losing a trusted companion, probably making a grave. Perhaps even more influential than the setting and mobs is the option for multiplayer. Players can bring real life friends in to shape a world together. There are whole genres of Twitch and YouTube dedicated to the stories people create with their friends on Minecraft, enhanced by inherent game mechanics and the creativity Minecraft brings out in people. It’s hard to name how many Minecraft worlds have been razed in the name of accidentally killed dogs or stolen loot. To build your own story, Minecraft offers five types of game modes: Survival, Hardcore, Creative, Spectator, and Adventure. Survival and creative mode are the most popular modes. Survival mode is quite challenging for beginners. Players spawn into a world randomly and have approximately twenty to thirty minutes in real time before dusk falls. During this time, they must find resources like food, but they also must find resources to craft tools and other useful items as well as build a proper and safe shelter. When dusk falls, players are met with monsters like creepers, zombies, spiders, and more to fight off. The player has ten hearts (worth 2 points each) to survive. The days basically replay based on your tasks of finding resources, food, and fighting monsters, but the game is beatable once you finish the final boss. Hardcore mode is the most difficult mode in the game. This mode is survival mode, but if you were to die, you would not be able to respawn. The game would simply be over and have to be restarted. Mobs and other monsters deal more damage in this mode, and they are stronger. This means they will likely find your shelter and easily break through without good reinforcement, which can be difficult to find. Hardcore mode is known to not be for the faint of heart. Creative mode is very popular for beginners and nonchalant players because there are no dangers, and players are given unlimited lives. Players have access to all items in the game including blocks, tools, weapons, seeds, potions, and food. This mode offers flying to make building and getting around easier as well. Creative mode is best known for its name because it is used for players to get more familiar and creative with mining, building, killing, and other tasks that could occur in a more difficult mode. Spectator mode allows players to simply fly through worlds. No interactions can take place, so players cannot interact with animals, or mine blocks. Instead, they can fly through everything. This mode works best with creative to allow players to quickly scope out the world. It is also a great way for players to spectate what they have built, especially if it was a village or something large to look for any changes that could be made or just for admiration. Adventure mode is how many creators make their own Minecraft “minigames.” Stories and other experiences are often made in this mode because it limits what tools can be used for certain tasks. Games with levels or multiple worlds are created in adventure mode since the games made within the Minecraft game are meant to spark adventure in players. On top of the choice that it gives to the players, Minecraft also has a rich and interesting story that the players can learn about by simply interacting with the world around them. Throughout the game there are a number of abandoned or inhabited structures that tell us about the world if we just ask why they are there. For instance, there are the strongholds. The stronghold is a place where the player can transport themselves to another dimension to find glorious treasure and do battle with a dragon who serves as the “final” boss of the game. But these strongholds are uninhabited. There are no living creatures there, save the silverfish left behind to defend the place from intruders. Whoever built these strongholds believed they were returning from wherever they were going. The catch is that it is impossible to return until you have defeated the Ender Dragon. If you venture out into the end you will find cities on islands far far away from where the dragon lives. These cities are also uninhabited, and contain rare loot for the players taking. Some even have end ships which float in the air as if parked right outside the end cities. What these the stronghold and the end cities tell us in conjunction is that there were a group of people skilled enough at magic or technology (what’s the difference?) to transport themselves to another dimension, but were unable to defeat the terrible monster that lay on the other side, so without a way home they fled into the outer reaches of this new and strange dimension. They created homes but could only survive so long until they died out. Without a single word spoken, the story conveys a tragic tale of adventurers stranded from home forced to make the best of their situation.
At first glance, Minecraft may look like a straightforward sandbox game to let creativity run wild without story or direction. But in reality, this game has pieces of a story players can put together if they so choose.
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By Harris Dorgan and Ethan Rhoades In 1987, MicroProse published Sid Meier’s Pirates! for the Commodore 64. Sid Meier, a founder of MicroProse in 1982, created the game as a combat vehicle simulation game in which the player plays through a pirate's life. The game is a single-player open-world game that allows its players to simulate a pirate's life. The game has received multiple remakes, the most notable being the 2004 version. The 2004 version of Pirates! was produced by Firaxis Games and released on multiple platforms (including Xbox, PC, and Wii), but the general idea of the game remained the same. This time, however, added story elements and interactivity. The game begins with your character at a family dinner when a group of pirates breaks down the door. They kidnap your family, but you manage to get away. All you have with you is a locket with a picture of your family and the will to find them and avenge the pirate who kidnapped them. The game then fast forwards 10 years later, when your character is now an adult. He arrives at a tavern with the intent of signing up for passage to the Caribbean as part of a crew. There, you can customize your character and choose your name, hairstyle/color, as well as facial hair. More importantly, you also have to choose your level of experience (apprentice, journeyman, adventurer, rogue, and swashbuckler) and choose your special skill (fencing, gunnery, navigation, medicine, and charm). Both of these decisions impact both the story and the gameplay. You also can choose which decade in the 17th century, which incorporates historical elements into the game. Choosing a decade dictates which countries are at war with each other, which other pirates you might come across, and other details. Finally, at the tavern, you can choose whether you want to be associated with the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, or the English. Each country will have port cities that you visit, and your experience in them is influenced by what country you choose. Once your character is fully customized, there’s a cutscene at sea where you start a mutiny and take control of the ship. After being given the opportunity to fully customize your ship, the gameplay officially begins. From here, the open-world elements of the game come to life. Most of the game is spent sailing across the Caribbean. While doing this, you have the option to try to develop a fleet by attacking other ships you see. In combat, you start with a naval battle where you try to line yourself up with the other ship and fire cannon shots at them. If the enemy hull is hit enough, the ship will eventually explode. Conversely, you can intentionally crash into the ship and swordfight its captain. If you win, then you claim that ship as part of your fleet. You also have to opportunity to hire its crew to join your crew and take their supplies. If you loose against the rival captain, you either get captured in put on a small island (if you lose to a pirate), or put in prison where you have to escape (if you lose to a captain who’s associated with a country). The other main aspect of the game is what you do in port cities. Once you arrive in one, you have the option to do multiple things. One of the key activities is to visit the governor, where you may be assigned tasks that will help their country. If you help the country enough, then you’ll be promoted, which gives you new abilities and things to do. Additionally, you might have the chance to dance with his daughter. If you do well enough at the dance, you might even have the chance to marry her later in the game. At a port city you also have the ability to visit the tavern, where you can recruit new sailors to your fleet or talk to strangers, some of which will give you clues about where your family is. If you choose to, you can follow up on these clues and eventually complete that aspect of the story. In all, Pirates! provides a fulfilling roleplaying experience in a game that may not seem that complex on the surface. But, the open world elements allow the story of your character to be truly up to you. In other interactive storytelling mediums there is usually a more concrete plot to follow, and the interactive elements only change a set amount of resolutions. In Pirates!, however, you can have complete control over the life of your character. There is the loose plot of finding your family, but there isn’t a time frame for that or any penalization for not completing it. This allows the game to feel truly immersive, even if it isn’t as mechanically complex as many other roleplaying games. Overall, Pirates! is a very enjoyable game that doesn’t portray itself as particularly complex, but still plays with the medium of video games in a way that gives the player the feeling of immersion into the life of a pirate.
By Devin Gloeckner & Phillip Nelson Are you a fan of the procedural corporate slaughter of every one of your favorite pieces of pop culture? Have you ever looked at the gaming industry and found it lacking in a through line? Look no further than our friend, Fortnite, peaking at 11 million concurrent players (the size of their servers no doubt) all time and 3.7 million concurrent players earlier today (Fortnite Player Count). As it has remained totally inescapable since its launch in 2017, it bears quite the merit on the digital stage. Before the big blue bus dumped Peter Griffin, Son Goku, and Spiderman out of the sky, there existed a simpler, more peaceful existence: Fortnite: Save the World. The idea of Fortnite was first formed to create a hybrid between the success of a fully customizable survival game like Minecraft and a “zombie shoot’em up” like the Zombies mode in the Call of Duty franchise. The point was to defend or complete an objective against an onslaught of zombies. Unfortunately, the mode has always left a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of those who remember the heavy corporate promises around it. When it was in its alphas and betas, the developers promised that it would one day be free to play. This promise encouraged people to purchase the game earlier rather than be stuck alongside the hordes at its full release. This promise has since been rescinded, with the latest season receiving its own newer survival mode branded with LEGO. In terms of gameplay balance…there is no balance. Save the World, while fun and initially exciting, has a tendency to become repetitive in similar ways to other mission based crafting survival. A mission is the same no matter how many times you play it, with several missions being required several times. The weapons are diverse but there are objectively correct answers in order to have the tools and damage output to progress in the story. While building is a core system, often levels rely on abusing a trap gimmick(such as tires bouncing down slopes) to easily cruise through. The reduced player count of recent seasons has slowly turned the game mode from a largely co-op game to a single player scramble. Party matchmaking and the game mode’s age are such that it is difficult to find anyone else who is towards the middle of the game. Instead there seems to be a firm divide between those that have already finished the story, and those who have started the game only recently. The game’s difficulty is dramatically increased by playing it single player so this disparity is self-fulfilling. In terms of the UI (User Interface) there is simply too much. Between expeditions, survivor squads, heroes, hero squads, defenders, blueprints, and the inventory, there are just too many factors to be constantly min-maxing (optimizing) or trying new things. The over-complication often just leads you to find one thing that works and sit in it for as long as you can. While I personally enjoyed the game for its tongue and cheek dialogue, big numbers, and nostalgia, Fortnite: Save the World is simply not up to modern gaming standards in several departments. The developers of Fortnite: Save the World also made a multiplayer counterpart called Fortnite: Battle Royale. This game mode didn’t initially have a story or direction, just more of an arena mode for a different form of gameplay. As the mode gained popularity, though, the developers realized they needed to go somewhere with it before players became disinterested and it died off. It started with a meteor. The meteor was originally just a small dot in the sky in season 3 of Fortnite: Battle Royale. It started growing in real time, day by day, as more players noticed and speculated what it could be. As it continued to grow, so did the conversation around the game. The meteor spawned theories and clickbait and predictions about where the game was headed. In the later part of the season, the meteor became a bigger feature of the game, when smaller meteors started to rain down during matches as the screen occasionally shook. This spawned even more conversation, and made more people interested in playing the game as gameplay changed. The collision of the meteor started season 4 of Fortnite: Battle Royale. There was now a large crater near the center of the map, with a research base built around the remains of the meteor. Immediately, players speculated about the purpose and origins of the base, who owned it. Then, the meteor broke open, and the first member of “The Seven” was introduced, “The Visitor”. As the season progressed, the visitor built a rocket in a secret base hidden in the mountains. The season concluded with a live event of the rocket launching, opening a giant inter-dimensional rift in the sky, starting season 5. New map changes were rifted in, and they made an ARG: a giant “Durr Burger” in California. Then, in game, the rift in the sky started shooting lightning down on a mountain, and boom, more conversation. The lightning started shrinking the rift, until the final strike, where the entire rift went into one strike in the center of the mountain and formed a cube. Players lost their minds. The cube was an active, in-game… thing. Players could interact with it, and that added more and more interest to the gameplay. The cube made its journey through the map until it reached Loot Lake, and it dissolved into the water. Then the island started floating. Season 6 started with the cube lifting the central island of Loot Lake out of the water, moving around the map and infecting certain areas with “cube monsters”, basically just zombies. Near the end of the season, the island arrived back at the lake where it started, and the cube exploded. This is nicknamed the “Butterfly” event after a rift butterfly that led players through a surreal event that showed the Fortnite “zero point” for the first time, which sets up much of the later story.
Seasons 7 and 8 were where Fortnite diverged from the main storyline, and became more about flashy map changes and different gameplay so the developers could get more money. In season 7, there was snow, with a mountain castle named Polar Peak. In season 8, there was a volcano. It erupted. That’s all you need to know. Boom -- season 9. Mainly, it was another cash-grab focused on flashy gameplay and beefing up the competitive scene. However, the volcano eruption cracked a season 7 ice-mountain named Polar Peak. It exploded, and a character named Singularity started building a giant Mech-Robot. That was finally another moment of speculation for Fortnite players, as there was something big actively going on for the first time in months. The purpose of the Mech was finally revealed as the cause of the Polar Peak explosion, a giant, one-eyed monster, emerged from the ocean. They fought in an epic live event that players absolutely loved, it was one of the highest received events of the game. Within the event, the robot used the “zero point” to kill the monster, and the zero point started messing with time. In Fortnite season X, the zero point reversed time in tiny areas all over the map. Mainly, it reverted to just before the meteor struck the map. In this season, there were constantly new updates, weapons, and gameplay features that were decently controversial, and mostly a cash grab. The game became too fast-paced for many casual players, and too unbalanced for many competitive players. This season ended with the most discussed event in the game, “The End”. In this event, the zero point exploded, and sent the entire game into a black hole. For three days, Fortnite was unplayable, it just opened on a black hole screen, and then chapter two started. Since then, the story has gone on significantly. They finished The Seven’s storyline, and went off the rails many times. There was an entire three-month season dedicated to a collaboration with marvel. It was just about money, and they can do that because of Fortnite’s insane popularity. What started as a need for direction turned into a way to attract more attention and money. While developers are still making some good gameplay decisions and keeping the game interesting, they slowly cared less and less about a through-story. Hopefully, they get back to a better narrative, but at the moment, it once again feels like just a different mode of gameplay. We’ll see where it goes. By Serena Tuan and Abby Willis What is it?: Club Penguin is an interactive game for kids. You can customize your character (a penguin) and make friends with the other penguins online. You can build your own igloo and invite other penguins to it. There are also interactive competitions and conversation threads where players can ask questions and reply to each other. There are penguin comics that players can read and penguin parties that players can attend. Since all penguin players are real people who are online at the same time as each other, it is a very interactive game. The options of chatting, creating, and competing are all aspects of the game that make it diverse. The game was originally launched in August of 2005 through beta testing and was founded by Lance Preibe, a creator of several other youth focused games. After being fully released in October of 2005, a couple years later, the game was bought by Disney where it began to grow tremendously. Headquartered in Canada, it began with only ten employees; it ended up having over one-hundred by the end of its first year. Originally designed for players between the ages of 6-14, the game had over 300,000,000 accounts from 190 countries. Unfortunately, it was discontinued in March of 2017 but there are several different versions still played today (New Club Penguin, Club Penguin Journey, Super Club Penguin). Why we chose it: We chose Club Penguin as our game mainly because it holds nostalgia from our childhoods. A popular online game for kids in the 2000’s, the website reminds us of our early years getting involved with technology. Not only does the game have personal connections to us, but it also exemplifies great examples of digital literature including transmedia and interactive media. Parents tend to be strict with the games their kids are playing due to safety concerns. Putting simple information like your name or chatting with strangers online can be major safety concerns for parents. With Club Penguin, however, parents do not have to worry about safety as much as they would with other games. The website tells players not to use their real names which keeps it confidential and private. Other players won’t be able to find out private information about who they are interacting with online, which makes it a safe place for kids to play. The game is also monitored by parents through a parent page and by requiring the parent’s email when you sign up. Correlation to the class: As previously stated, Club Penguin holds a lot of examples of digital literature. To be specific, transmedia is seen in the different websites that they have for interaction. Aside from their main website, they have Twitter, YouTube, Discord, and TikTok accounts that users can follow along. In terms of storytelling, the game allows players to create their own story and make their own friends. In the game, instead of parties being available to be joined at any moment, the parties were set for certain dates each month. This replicates real life events more closely and makes it more interactive and realistic, which isn’t the case with a lot of other games. The story is more heavily based on the players’ decisions than the games we played in class. The games we played in class gave the players options to choose from; however, Club Penguin allows players to say/do/build whatever they want to. The target audience for this game is kids, and it is a good way to introduce them to the idea of interactive games, digital storytelling, and transmedia. Although meant for fun, the game remains somewhat educational for children by giving them passages and stories to read, and forcing them to make informed decisions.
By Kerrigan Dunham & Cate Phillips
In 2017, a team of three indie developers known as Team Cherry developed a game involving a subterranean fallen kingdom of bugs, chock-full of lore that you must explore as an unknown traveling knight who stumbles upon this world of wonder. This game is Hollow Knight, and it is known as a Metroidvania: a genre of game involving free-roam exploration across numerous areas, with lots of backtracking as you unlock powers and abilities that allow you to access new paths and locations. While exploring the world, you discover the various and diverse regions that make up the kingdom of Hallownest, and learn more about its vast and complex past. This game showcases environmental storytelling through its detailed graphics, the atmospheric-enhancing musical score, and the extremely detailed lore of the world that glues it all together.
You can learn so much about an environment simply by living in it. Hollow Knight excels in this by utilizing the foreground, middle-ground, and background to add detail and character to each area you travel through. The glowing bubbles of Fog Canyon and lush verdant plant life of Greenpath perfectly capture their respective vibes and histories. In contrast, the Kingdom's Edge shows a gray, dull, and ashy landscape, where the world has simply started to decay. Ash and dust fill the air, while bodies of dead bugs can be seen falling from the Colosseum above. However, the most intricate area is arguably the City of Tears, the capital of Hallownest; its layout reflects an urban city, with visibly rich and poor areas. The Blue Lake above the city has begun leaking through the earth, putting the city in a perpetual rainy state, which adds to the solemn and decrepit atmosphere (also, raining underground? SO cool). An unmissable portion of the city includes the memorial statue of The Hollow Knight and the three Dreamers at the city’s center. Ignoring the incredible story relevance this image has, the shadowy smooth stone accompanied by the graphics of rain falling all around showcase a powerful display of detail that this game is able to replicate time and time again. Now landscapes alone can be impressive, but they're nothing without the soundscape. The musical score of Hollow Knight is one of the most interesting aspects about the game. Written by Christopher Larkin, the score features a myriad of leitmotifs that follow characters and a large variety of tempos and styles for boss fights and exploratory areas. Without this elaborate score, the atmosphere of the game would be incomplete. There is a stark contrast between most songs in the soundtrack which shows the versatility of the game and what kind of stories it can offer. “Resting Ground,” which plays as you enter an ancient bug graveyard of the same name, brings an ambiance of remembrance and warmth instead of sadness. “Fungal Wastes” is also an area song, but has a more upbeat and whimsical vibe that makes the player intrigued to learn more about the area they are in. In contrast, “Radiance” is a battle anthem that plays during one of the final boss fights of the game; it gives an epic feeling to the player to mirror the action happening on the screen. Larkin’s array of styles within the music serves the lore and course of the story very well and immerses the player into the story on a new level. The lore of this game is the secret sauce that takes it from a cute scenic walking simulator into a full-fledged saga, one that has spawned many YouTube careers. While you uncover lots of story and history through dialogue from other characters throughout the game, most of the lore in the is found either in hidden lore tablets scattered throughout the world, or through purely visual details that populate each area (literal "Environmental Storytelling"). What's beautiful about this is that it puts the onus on the player to seek out and discover more story if they want, which inherently creates a rewarding feeling when they do obtain it. In an effort to avoid spoiling any lore that's too central or impactful to the main story, the example we will use is that of the Mantis Lords, the deadly trio of sister warriors. When you arrive in their village and challenge them to battle, you may notice something interesting in the background, hidden in plain sight.
Do you see it? There's something almost faded, asymmetrical, cast aside.
To the right of the sisters, a crumbling stump of a throne. There was a fourth Lord…but who were they, where did they go? This is a question that lingers for some time and doesn't get answered until you venture deep into the Queen's Gardens in the late game. You stumble upon an observation deck, and suddenly get ambushed by Mantis Traitors, mantises who were driven mad by the Infection. But what are they doing all the way on the left edge of the map? Then, as you defeat the last mantis, the ground begins to shake, and down from the rafters falls a hulking, beastly mantis, overcome with Infection and anger. As he lets out his battle cry and the music kicks in, his boss title is revealed to be "Traitor Lord," and all the dots start to connect.
Once a Lord of the Mantis Village, while his sisters were able to resist the influence of the Infection, he gave into its power, and turned against his sisters, fleeing the village in search of becoming stronger. If it's no surprise already, you end up defeating him in battle, and his story ends in a seemingly sad way, dying as a corrupted version of a former noble warrior.
This is one example out of thousands of complex characters and stories that populate this game. What might seem like a standard adventure platformer is so much more when you look under the surface of this underground game (both in terms of popularity and setting - too many puns to pick from). For a complete package of visual beauty, captivating music, and compelling lore, this game may be the perfect experience for you. By Taylor Davis & Bekah Leipold & Faith Reidinger What Remains of Edith Finch is a first-person walking simulator game developed by Giant Sparrow Games and designed and composed by Ian Dallas and Jeff Russo, respectively. The player has arrived to the Finch household, and is taken through the remnants of the abandoned house through the perspective journal entries of Edith Finch: the returning sole survivor and inheritor of the Finch property, interested in discovering more about her broken family history. Having fled previously with her mother and following her great-grandmother’s passing, Edith recalls her interactions with her previous family members, as well as the stories that had passed through the years of their legacies and passings. Each room tells a different story, through its physical placement in the house mapping, visual elements and interactive items, short “films” of their legacies, as well as the tied artifact in every room: a shrine and photo dedicated to the member it belonged to, as well as their birth and death year. Every story has a mythical or whimsical element to it, whether in its wording (like the poetic retelling of Walter’s time in the bunkers) or visual storytelling (like Barbara’s comic-book telling of her final night alive). They seek to highlight what was special or interesting about their character: celebrating what legacies they have left behind despite their passing. The player must hit all point paths in order to advance the storyline, though the player has reign to discover each room in a unique path as they build the remaining family “tree.” As the curse continues, the player eventually finds out that they have been playing the role of Edith’s son Christopher, who is visiting the house in honor of his mother who died during his birth. What Remains of Edith Finch is considered to be among the list of iconic “walking simulator” games to date, with other titles among it being fan favorites such as Dear Esther and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and even ones we’ve played in class such as Gone Home and Firewatch. While these “walking simulators” are popularly characterized by their immersive environmental storytelling and walking-based gameplay, the genre also has some shared characteristics that are often unlisted: Edith Finch takes place off the coast of Washington State on Orcas Island where the eerie and mysterious home of the Finch family is located. Looking first at location, the game is similar to Firewatch and Gone Home in the way walking simulator projects almost always seem to take place in the Pacific Northwest, with the other two games taking place in Wyoming and Oregon respectively. Not only that, but the specific location of a remote island also matches other famous walking sims (i.e Dear Esther). Next, the bulk of gameplay stems from exploring an expansive empty house filled with the “ghosts” of those who inhabited it, another connection to genre defining walking sim Gone Home. The connection walking simulators create with their common themes of old houses shrouded in secrets located in the Pacific Northwest paints a popular perspective audiences may develop of that side of America: lands and homes surrounded in mystery, with something or someone hiding behind every corner (and the gloomy weather only adds to the eeriness). Walking simulators are often dismissed due to what some might perceive to be simple gameplay; however, it's the genre's ability to masterfully create immersive environments and storytelling filled with such suspense and intrigue that proves its validity as a credible type of video game. What sets What Remains of Edith Finch apart from other walking sims is that the story that unfolds as you explore is left up to your interpretation. Certain stories about the family members are pretty clear, it’s fairly easy to figure out that Gregory died from drowning in the tub when his mom left him unattended. However, there are other family members' stories that are left vaguer. Barbara’s story, for example, is not completely explained, and is not clarified later in the narrative. We discover her story through a comic book that was released about a year after her death, and we can infer that the family had a part in creating that comic. Was she killed by a serial killer that was mentioned during her story? Did her boyfriend do it? Could it be her little brother? Were parts of the comic book made up to make the family more interesting? We never find out. There are many theories on YouTube about the game, including from channels The Game Theorists, and Roobla, and an in-depth explanation by the channel GamerSault. Where most walking simulators just slowly reveal the story, Edith Finch gives us the option as players to discuss and debate on our own and create our own theories based on the details given. Yes, it’s a simple walking sim, but it’s also an interactive story that leaves open gaps for you to fill. By Brianna Brunk & Eva Taub & Sam Stokes The Sims is a social simulation game that was first released in February of 2000, but has since been remade and revamped several times. The most recent rendition of the game is The Sims 4, which was released in 2014. Since its initial release, the game has become widely popular amongst teens and young adults. One reason people speculate the game has become such an integral branch of mainstream gaming culture is because the game allows people to choose, customize, and craft their own character’s and lives. Players have the ability to customize the appearance of their character, the design of their home, their occupation, friends, ambitions, romantic partners, and so much more. Games that are inherently based on choice, such as The Sims, have become very popular because creating a life that is carefully crafted and customized to one’s own preference allows for players to develop a connection and, sometimes, an emotional attachment to their Sims. This type of game structure is known as choice-based narrative, or could be better described as emergent narrative. Emergent narrative games allow the player to choose their own path and customize their experience, but the choices they make are largely informed by interactions with the subsystems already in place within the world of the game. For instance, there are set characters that each Sim will encounter, but it is up to the player to decide what to do when given the opportunity to interact. Although The Sims allows you to choose almost everything for your character there are still some things that are out of your control. For example, sometimes there are random events (fire, floods, etc.) that you have no control over. Another thing in the Sims that you can’t control is things like food and going to the bathroom. Your Sim will tell you when they have to go to the bathroom, you have no control over it. You also have no control over when your Sim is hungry, when your Sim is hungry, they are hungry, and you need to feed them. A third thing that you have no control over when playing The Sims is moodlets. Moodlets are reflections of mood-altering events or situations that a Sim has done or experienced. Moodlets can be positive, negative, or neutral; they will increase or decrease a Sim’s moods and emotions. You have no control over what moodlet occurs or if they will be positive, negative, or neutral. Having no control over these events in your Sims day represents how life really is. You can’t stop the events from happening, but you can control how your Sim responds to the event. Including these things that you can’t control keeps the game realistic. In real life you can’t control when there is going to be a fire or when you will have to go to the bathroom. Sims keeps true to that, which makes the game more realistic and relatable.
One of the more interesting parts of The Sims are the characters that inhabit the town. Sims players call these characters ‘townies.’ Many of the houses in the game are inhabited by Sims created by the game. These households all have their own lore as well as personalities. One of the best ways to see this is by talking with the other Sims. If you flirt with an NPC before having a close enough friendship, they will respond negatively to your interaction, or if you enthuse about the outdoors to someone who hates the outdoors, the relationship meter will go down. There are tons of families that have histories through the game. One major point of lore in The Sims 4 is about the Landgrab family and Johnny Zest. The Landgrab family is the richest family in The Sims and they own things from schools to parks and stores. Johnny is a poor comedian who lives in a trailer. Johnny was disowned by his family when he said he wanted to be a comedian. This is something that you can not change. Even if you, as the player, go in and play as the Landgrabs you will not be able to reintroduce Johnny back into the family even if you befriend him. This inability to control everything in the game allows for you to affect the narrative but the game to also affect your narrative. By Lily Bryson & Bryn Sentnor The world is not unused to blatant cash grabs to keep profiting off of a successful cultural phenomenon, and the ever-expanding Harry Potter universe is no exception. The seven-book series was adapted into eight movies, and the franchise has only grown since with the release of the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – which is currently running on Broadway and in London, Melbourne, Hamburg, and Toronto – and the hotly-contested Fantastic Beasts films. There have been many video game adaptations for various platforms made from the franchise, but the most recent is Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, a mobile game that lets the player attend Hogwarts just before Harry himself becomes a student. The basic premise of the game is that the player is a new student at Hogwarts; gameplay progresses through the player’s seventh and final year as a student, following their quest to find out what happened to their older brother Jacob, who was expelled after trying to open the “Cursed Vaults,” ran away from home, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Amongst the other characters in the game, the player character’s brother is notorious for his disregard for authority. The player can choose whether they follow in his footsteps and assume the mantle of outspoken troublemaker or play nice and fly under the radar to avoid suspicion, even as they work to uncover secrets that the wizarding establishment clearly does not want to see the light. Much of the plot revolves around the building resentment of Muggleborn witches and wizards – magical children born to non-magical parents – that directly leads to Voldemort’s return during the canon of the books. Because of the direct link to the existing Harry Potter canon, in order for the game to be successful, particular attention to detail was necessary when realizing the game’s characters and environment. Like Gone Home and Firewatch, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is an animated game that strives to achieve the highest degree of realism possible. While by no means perfect, and often appearing low-poly as compared to games like The Sims, the graphics are excellent for a mobile game and move and interact smoothly and relatively seamlessly. The creators do a good enough job resembling the Hogwarts environment and pre-existing characters from the movies for players to engage in willful suspension of disbelief. The player character is the same age as Charlie Weasley, one of Ron Weasley’s older siblings, and interacts with many familiar faces: Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Hagrid, Nymphadora Tonks, and a host of other existing characters that are directly modeled off of the cast of the films. In addition to existing characters, there is also the introduction of several new characters who are more traditional NPCs, providing tutorials and teaching the player about the Wizarding World. The narrative is driven by those new characters – friends, enemies, potential love interests – as they work to uncover the secrets of the Cursed Vaults and form a resistance group, the Circle of Khanna, to directly fight a criminal organization and break curses put onto the student body by the aforementioned Vaults. The additions to canon do not directly contradict any of the source material, instead filling in gaps about what the Hogwarts experience was like post-First Wizarding War and pre-Harry Potter, when children were being educated in relative peace but still existing under the looming memory of wartime and Voldemort’s influence. While not a significant addition to canon, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery provides fans of the series an opportunity to explore Hogwarts on their own outside of the familiar characters they know and love. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery also bears some resemblance to other mobile games like Episode. Both games have fun aspects like character customization, as well as some that are particularly less fun, such as the “freemium” design of both games. The primary objective of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is to complete quests that will inevitably help players solve the mystery of the Cursed Vaults and their missing older brother. In order to complete those quests, players need energy, which is half currency, half ‘lives.’ Most quests will consist of a series of smaller actions to execute, and each action requires a different amount of energy. Upon using up all their energy, players have to wait for their energy to refill, similar to the premise of lives in many other mobile games. In keeping with the ‘lives’ structure of those games, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery offers players the opportunity to purchase more energy if they don’t feel like waiting to continue. That said, due to the game’s structure and design, the player’s lack of energy is typically justified within the story, making such interruptions less irritating than in similar games like Episode. The wait times to recover energy mimic real needs for rest on the part of the player’s character, and allow the person playing time to digest the story. For example, in Year 1, the player’s character gets locked in a room with Devil’s Snare by a bully in Slytherin, which motivates them to learn how to duel. When searching for a book on how to duel, the player character has an intense series of visions and has to rest for an hour and a half in real time before continuing on. However, not all wait times are entirely justified, which can be frustrating to some players. Occasionally, the game will make players wait to complete a subsequent quest regardless of how much energy they have, and unless the player has timer toffees, the only way to bypass this waiting period is to use gems, which are hard to earn within the game, thereby enacting the familiar yet frustrating pay-to-play structure of many mobile games. Gems and energy are only two of the many in-game currencies that Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery employs, thus separating it from other mobile games that only have one in-game currency. Other currencies, such as coins and notebooks, can be used to obtain clothes, furniture, pets, and more, and all currencies can be purchased using real-world money if players aren’t satisfied with the rate at which they’re earning currencies via gameplay. In our playing, we found that while ill-timed waits could be irritating as a result of interrupting action sequences or delaying the long-awaited conclusion to a suspenseful build-up, they did not diminish our interest in the story enough to make us stop playing.
While the pay-to-play aspect of the game rubbed many players and critics the wrong way on the game’s initial release, overall it does not unduly impact the narrative of the story. Even though Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery doesn’t directly appeal to people who aren’t already fans of the series, it offers an interactive dive into the Wizarding World and a chance to explore a new era of Hogwarts for a new generation of fans. If you’re willing to be patient, it offers a rich storyline with all the conveniences of mobile games. By Grant Unruh & Adam Walker Portal 2 is a 2011 first-person puzzle-platform game created by Valve as a sequel to their 2007 surprise hit, Portal. Portal 2 expands on the lore of the Portal franchise, which is a part of the larger Half-Life franchise, by delving into the past of the Aperture Science facility. Early in the game you are placed into the facility and forced to do puzzles to get the Wheatley personality core to the control room to overthrow GLaDOS (a rogue artificial intelligence and antagonist from the first game) and stop the life-threatening tests from continuing. Eventually, you succeed, but Wheatley betrays you and sends you away to the original Aperture Science lab below the complex. Here you find the truth about Aperture and are introduced to the game's main theme, human hubris. Aperture Science was a company that sought to test its inventions at any cost. Founded in the early 1940s by Cave Johnson, the company got its start making shower curtains. From 1950 til the early 1980s, the company made a multitude of products that were entirely toxic to human life and performed multiple tests that were incredibly immoral. Some of their various tests included turning human blood into gasoline, fluorescent calcium coffee to monitor the brain, and using experimental RNA to treat tumors they caused. The number of traumatic tests done to trick volunteers was done solely to further their company and for beating their rival companies. Eventually, Aperture switched to automation-based tests using androids to fill their workload. When their leader fell ill he demanded his mind be transferred into a machine to live on. Unfortunately, he was not well enough for the procedure, thus he made his assistant Caroline be the transferred consciousness instead, this was the creation of GLaDOS. The GLaDOS AI was created and shut down not to be disturbed until around 1998, on Aperture Science’s Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work day. Upon being reactivated, GLaDOS gained self-awareness, took over the facility, and used a deadly neurotoxin on all the workers marking, the end of Aperture Science. The thematic usage of human flaws elevated the Portal series to a new level. Before, in the origianl Portal, the game focused more heavily on the puzzles and gradually unraveled the plot with hidden side rooms and the eventual pushback against GLaDOS. Questions of ethics are brought up in Portal 2 as the player sees all of the choices and experimentation that led to the above Aperture Science and their eventual downfall. By walking through the original Aperture facilities and the literal skeletons left behind in the closet, the player experiences first-hand the cost of unimpeded science. Out of all the sacrifices that were made in the name of scientific progress, there was nothing left to show for it other than bones and rust. Portal 2 deeply expands and grows the world of Portal by telling a story more rather than simply justifying gameplay. Improving upon the original by adding characters and lore with additional symbolism and an additional message that warns of human hubris and how our endless curiosity must be checked or else the problems it causes could be catastrophic. In the Half-Life series, the player has to deal with the consequences of various experiments gone wrong and assume the role of a hero aiding the resistance in taking down an alien empire. In sharp contrast to this, many of the themes in the Portal games deal with the direct consequences and effects of blind ambition and devoting one’s self wholly to the pursuit of science and “progress”. This is further emphasized by the role of Aperture’s former CEO, Cave Johnson. The player experiences Johnson’s steady descent into madness through many audio logs and eventually learns about how his former assistant, Caroline, had her consciousness uploaded into the GLaDOS program. (Johnson was far too sick and unhealthy to do so.) Tying all of this back together, Wheatley is a personality core whose role in the story shifts and is eventually undone by his hubris. After waking the player up from cryostasis and attempting to escape the facility following the first game, Wheatley and the player accidentally revive GLaDOS. After managing to plug Wheatley into GLaDOS’ system in an attempt to get rid of GLaDOS, Wheatley takes over and is driven mad with power, forcing GLaDOS (plugged into a potato battery) and the player to join forces and stop the rogue core. During these sequences, the player not only learns about Johnson’s assistant and the previous versions of Aperture, but also about Caroline’s place in GLaDOS, and that Wheatley is an intelligence-dampening-sphere, created to previously inhibit GLaDOS’ intelligence. After working their way through Wheatley’s distorted and mangled “test chambers” and experiments, the player and GLaDOS confront him and manage to defeat him, ejecting him into space. Wheatley is undone by his hubris, perpetuating the cycle of unchecked progress. Built-in the shape of the scientists before him, and sentenced to an eternity of drifting among the stars, the player finally succeeds and GLaDOS regains control of the facility. She then immediately deletes the Caroline part of her system, and ejects the player from the facility, rolling the credits to the song “Want You Gone,” written for the game and sung by GLaDOS.
Overall, Portal 2 includes tons of themes, commentary, and so much more we could delve into, but its sharpest moments come when making remarks on science as a concept, and how much strife could’ve been prevented if questioned along the way. Even after all the trials, tribulations, tests, and triumphs, one question remains... Was it all worth it? By Ian Berndsen & Jake Shumaker In MLB: The Show 22’s version of “Road to the Show,” the gamer constructs a player who they hope will one day make it to the Major League Baseball organization. The user chooses all the vitals and the focused skill set(s) of their player. In this most recent version of the narrative, the user can select their player to be a pitcher, position player, or a newly-added two-way player. The two-way player, implemented in respect to their two-way star Shohei Ohtani, is a baseball player who can play both as a pitcher and as a position player. This new addition to the game has helped draw a much bigger audience than ever before. When you first start creating your ballplayer, you are faced with some decisions. If you choose to be a pitcher, you have to decide what your pitching arsenal, or types of pitches you will have. If you choose to be a position player, you then would have to pick which position, whether it be an outfield, infield, or catching position. The position player route would then have specification options for batting stance, walk-up music, home run celebrations, and more detailed specs like these. Once this is complete, you are assigned to a minor league affiliate of a Major League Baseball team. This is where you can increase your player attributes and make your way through the different levels of minor league baseball, in the hope of eventually getting the call up to the MLB. Every “Road to the Show” player spends multiple seasons in the minor leagues, no matter how well you perform. You can occasionally, however, receive texts or calls from your agent and be able to say you wish you weren’t in the minors, but it hasn’t been proven that this plays a difference in a player’s time in the development leagues. The users make choices during their entire road to the show, which adds to the narrative of this game. Ultimately, player’s should continue to play, increase their ratings, perform well in games, and they’ll eventually get the call up to the majors. We chose MLB: The Show 22’s "Road to the Show" because of how realistic yet how choice-based it can be. The storyline of the game directly correlates to how the MLB and their minor league affiliates work. It is extremely rare to have a baseball prospect jump straight into the majors, so having a game like this really puts it into society’s minds that it truly is a long road to the show becoming a Major League Baseball player. Every year, the developer San Diego Studio re-vamps this game, ensuring that it is up-to-date and that it adds in any new rules or regulations to the minor league systems. The storyline of "Road to the Show" relates to in-class discussions based on its central themes: identity and realism. Similar to other sport-based video games, the "Road to the Show" allows the player to express themselves via the MyPlayer they create. The player has the opportunity to choose from what type of player they want to be, what legend they want to base their game off of, and more on their way to fame. The MyPlayer plays through the Minor Leagues until having a call-up to the Major League. Although the "Road to the Show" story may seem the same as any other sport video game experience, it is different due to the realism that the storyline incorporates. Unlike other sport-based video games, the MyPlayer has a mental performance coach, which is a new feature within the "Road to the Show" experience. The athlete and coach relationship formed throughout the story makes MLB: The Show 22 more than a sport-based video game. The MyPlayer faces mental health issues based on their performance and interaction with the media. The mental performance coach encourages the MyPlayer and helps them along the way throughout the storyline. The realism and identity throughout the experience make MLB: The Show more than a sports game. While other games only show the highlights of being a professional athlete, "Road to the Show" exemplifies to the player how it truly is to be a professional baseball player.
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AuthorWe are the students of "Digital Literatures" at Millikin University. These are some of the digital narratives that entice, inspire, and challenge us. Categories
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