Talking Simulator

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Talking Simulator

Postby Graham » 28 Jun 2016, 00:04

Discussion thread for Talking Simulator
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Bergie » 30 Jun 2016, 06:35

Just wanted to say that my wife LOVES this show. She generally doesn't watch the LRR streams (the occasional Cameron stream, AFK, and some Crossing the Streams were the only ones she'd watch), but this one tickles her fancy.

Good job! :D
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby RoboNixon » 01 Jul 2016, 16:59

I've really enjoyed the show so far. I actually just played through Gone Home and really enjoyed it. Seems like the type of game Alex and Cameron might discuss, in the vein of Dear Esther.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby squaredotcube » 08 Jul 2016, 06:52

I enjoy the series, though there are some suggestions I have to make with the stream:

1. Be thorough for where you are; treat it like a slowplay or 100% completion run. Memory can be fickle, even moreso when a camera is pointed at you, and you may end up missing something small that's actually rather key to what you want to discuss about the game.

2. If you have a game on the waiting list whose average playtime is longer than a stream session, do a pre-playthough first. Not only will it refresh your memory and be useful for taking notes on what to talk about, but (if possible) will also establish a series of saves that you can use to immediately jump to certain segments or mechanics of the game that you do want to talk about, and skip past parts that are bland or add nothing to the discussion. Alternatively, finding and using cheats or console commands to get around also works. (This also makes the prior suggestion much more possible.)

3. I know habits are hard to break, but if the stream is about discussing mechanics, segments, the story, and subjects of the game, it may be best to not play the game on the harder difficulties - Having to additionally struggle against the game's elements and mechanics while having a discussion only works against you.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby My pseudonym is Ix » 11 Jul 2016, 14:23

Dropping by to say a) loving the show guys! In part it's introducing me to a host of games I've not played before and seeing them in a different light, and plus it's just really nice seeing the artistic values of games given consideration. So... just keep on doin' what you're doin', I guess.

b) A couple of game suggestions- firstly, following Cam's suggestion last week, I'd love to see an 'edited highlights' run of Life is Strange. I loved that game to bits, and although you can't quite complete all of it in a 4-hour stream, I reckon that strategically choosing key scenes to play through (based on an existing save) would be quite a good sampler to let you talk about it in some detail.

Secondly, Spec Ops: The Line. I love that game to bits, so much so that I'd actually be totally on board with a two-part or extended stream to play through all of it. That game never runs out of things to talk about.

Feel free to listen or ignore at your leisure- keep it up guys!
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Garwulf » 14 Jul 2016, 20:34

Just a thought for doing something like Civilization or Alpha Centauri on the stream - there is a way it could be done: what you'd need to do is prepare a number of saved games at different points in the game, matching up with what you want to talk about. Then, you jump from the highlights of one saved game to another.

It would be a bit more structured, but it would probably get the job done.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Bergie » 15 Jul 2016, 14:02

Pardon me, but what would they be discussing with such a study? Neither game has a pronounced story (AC far more than Civ, admittedly), and it sounds like this would be little more than a slideshow or lecture than a discussion/game stream.

That said, I would LOVE to have something like this come up as a AskLRR topic in LoadingReadyLive.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Garwulf » 29 Jul 2016, 05:30

Sorry for coming so late to reply...

Civ is a game where you get to play out the whole of human history, including great power politics, trade, colonialism, imperial policy, etc.

There is a LOT to talk about...
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby My pseudonym is Ix » 29 Jul 2016, 06:42

Garwulf wrote:Sorry for coming so late to reply...

Civ is a game where you get to play out the whole of human history, including great power politics, trade, colonialism, imperial policy, etc.

There is a LOT to talk about...


A while back, I wrote an extended essay piece on these very forums comparing Civ to Crusader Kings 2*, both as tactical gameplay experiences and recreations of history. These two paragraphs I find particularly relevant to the discussion of Civ as a comparison to the scope of human history:

I wrote:...what makes CK2 more historical than strategic... is how beautifully Crusader Kings models the ebb and flow of history, and the weird things that can create the rise and fall of empires. Every CK2 game I play... produces a world that could entirely realistically have happened, and I am essentially living my own version of... history. Sometimes it's the big changes one sees as a result of the game mechanics- when Harold wins the Battle of Hastings, when the Second Crusades results in a Scottish Kingdom of Jerusalem (don't ask). More frequently, it's tiny changes that end up cascading into huge consequences, in the way history so often does- the great conqueror does a Henry V and dies on the cusp of great victory, causing an empire to fall about him, or the unremarkable lord who comes to rule a nation through an obscure marriage and someone else's rebellion. In such a way, Crusader Kings 2 shows us a vision of Europe (and the Middle East/Indian subcontinent) where the balance of power is ever-changing, and where the generalised concept of 'nation' always hides the inner turmoil and politics that will drive or destroy it.

It is this, incidentally, that ultimately drove me away from Civilisation. Whilst I can appreciate the mechanics of the game and laud it's goal of being a celebration of civilisation, I think that it fails to execute on this front by viewing the world as something so much more stagnant and, frankly, uninteresting and homogeneous than it ever was. Despite the mechanical differences between the different leaders and nations, the majority of civilisations in a Civ game end up looking rather samey- they found and spread early-game, fight mid-game, and move toward victory conditions late-game. They are all covered in mines and farms, all cities contain the same buildings. I know why- it's to make the game balanced and predictable, and to allow them to use the same mechanics to cover the full breadth of the game, but come on. Where is this breadth of civilisation being talked about? Where are the nomads, the tribal hordes, the civil wars? Where are the entire nations subsisting on foods others had never heard of- where, moreover are the nations that remained woefully technologically under-developed until more developed nations came calling? That Civilisation doesn't explore this kind of thing, and moreover plots a very westernised view of 'normal' development (did the Maori ever have what the game calls a 'classical era'? Did China ever have a 'renaissance era'?) is, I feel, to its detriment. I feel there is a better Civ game than the current iteration of Civ somewhere, and I'd love to see it.


Now, there are excellent reasons for Civ not modelling a more... fluid version of history than it does, a few of which I consider in the full essay. I also recognise I am talking to someone who probably knows far more about history than I do, so is probably willing and able to take me to task on several of my arguments. But I feel that captures my reasoning as to why Civilisation doesn't actually have as much going on between the ears as it first seems, and why (in my view) a Talking Simulator based on it would run out of interesting stuff to talk about fairly quickly.

*DISCLAIMER: I am aware that Cam has already stated his views on the Crusader Kings franchise, and I would like to let it be known that I am not attempting to use this post to push for him to play it on stream; it was merely an existing and useful comparison I had to hand.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Garwulf » 30 Jul 2016, 09:38

So, in preparation for Cam's Civilization V Talking Simulator, I thought this might be of interest to everybody - this is a talk given by Sid Meier at the 2010 Game Developer's Conference about player psychology and how it worked into the design process of the Civ games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY7aRJE-oOY

Really interesting point: there's an entire type of experience that the first game was programmed to create, and most players never experienced. The original game was supposed to be about the rise and FALL of civilizations, and so a period where the player's civ would decline before rising triumphant from the ashes was built into the game...but, as soon as the decline began, players would just reload an earlier save and prevent it.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Lord Hosk » 04 Aug 2016, 12:16

I am enjoying watching this on replays and I wonder, would it be possible to move this stream to another day?

18 games and counting seems to be cut short by games not downloading and then "we have to leave to set up magic"

Magic gets cut off to set up for talking simulator.

In addition frequent outside Magic events such as streamer show down and community super league also seem to be on Thursday which means we are forced to choose between Graham and James (frequently) on Magic or Cameron and Alex on Talking simulator.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby AdmiralMemo » 04 Aug 2016, 17:45

If this is considered, my first thought is Tuesday evening, same time slot.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Bergie » 05 Aug 2016, 08:54

While I always enjoy listening to Cam, after watching the first half-ish of the Civ V Talking Simulator I'm not sure that it was a Talking Simulator as very little of the discussion was relevant to the game (vegetarian restaurants, Culture novels, etc). I don't know if it matters in the long run, but I'd personally prefer to see this tagged as a "Bonus Stream" when it goes to Youtube as (while good) was not the Talking Simulator advertised.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Garwulf » 16 Sep 2016, 20:34

Okay...this is something that has come up a couple of times in the stream and, frankly, it bothers the hell out of me: the bashing of Saving Private Ryan.

The problem is that it's being presented as a simplistic movie relying on violence for shock value for a theme of "war is hell." But that's not what it is at all. The theme is "earn the hell we went through," and it is very powerfully driven home.

(Spoilers follow)

The movie and its theme is defined not by the brutality of the combat, but by the framing scenes in the beginning and the end, both of which are in a war cemetery in Normandy half a century after the war. At the beginning of the movie, the old man who is visiting the graves transitions into Tom Hanks' Captain Miller just before the brutal Omaha beach sequence.

The story proper is set in motion when Miller is given an assignment: a paratrooper named Private James Ryan has to be found and brought home - all three of his brothers have been killed in action, and his mother received all three death notices on the same day. So, Miller leads his squad of rangers on a quest to find this man, during which time almost all of them are killed.

After fighting a desperate action to protect a bridge, Miller is fatally shot, and his last words, spoken to Ryan are: "Earn this." And then the action shifts back to the cemetery, and we discover that grave is actually Miller's and the old man is RYAN, surrounded by his wife and children and grandchildren. The film ends with Ryan desperate to know if he did it - if he was a good man, and if living a good life and raising a family was enough to earn what was done for him - and it is a question that he can never have answered, as the man who saved him has been dead for decades.

Saving Private Ryan is remembered for the violence because it was one of the first war movies to present it in a realistic fashion - before it, war movies were sanitized. But the movie isn't about the violence, or even the horror - it's about the DEBT. And it's one of the most powerful expressions of it that has ever been put on film.

There may be other war movies that are guilty of using brutal gore to traumatize an audience while trying to make a simplistic point that "war = bad," but Saving Private Ryan is NOT among them.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby My pseudonym is Ix » 17 Sep 2016, 02:06

Garwulf wrote:Okay...this is something that has come up a couple of times in the stream and, frankly, it bothers the hell out of me: the bashing of Saving Private Ryan.

The problem is that it's being presented as a simplistic movie relying on violence for shock value for a theme of "war is hell." But that's not what it is at all. The theme is "earn the hell we went through," and it is very powerfully driven home.

(Spoilers follow)

The movie and its theme is defined not by the brutality of the combat, but by the framing scenes in the beginning and the end, both of which are in a war cemetery in Normandy half a century after the war. At the beginning of the movie, the old man who is visiting the graves transitions into Tom Hanks' Captain Miller just before the brutal Omaha beach sequence.

The story proper is set in motion when Miller is given an assignment: a paratrooper named Private James Ryan has to be found and brought home - all three of his brothers have been killed in action, and his mother received all three death notices on the same day. So, Miller leads his squad of rangers on a quest to find this man, during which time almost all of them are killed.

After fighting a desperate action to protect a bridge, Miller is fatally shot, and his last words, spoken to Ryan are: "Earn this." And then the action shifts back to the cemetery, and we discover that grave is actually Miller's and the old man is RYAN, surrounded by his wife and children and grandchildren. The film ends with Ryan desperate to know if he did it - if he was a good man, and if living a good life and raising a family was enough to earn what was done for him - and it is a question that he can never have answered, as the man who saved him has been dead for decades.

Saving Private Ryan is remembered for the violence because it was one of the first war movies to present it in a realistic fashion - before it, war movies were sanitized. But the movie isn't about the violence, or even the horror - it's about the DEBT. And it's one of the most powerful expressions of it that has ever been put on film.

There may be other war movies that are guilty of using brutal gore to traumatize an audience while trying to make a simplistic point that "war = bad," but Saving Private Ryan is NOT among them.


Whilst I haven't seen the stream so can't comment on what was originally said, I'm inclined to at least partially agree with you. I really like Saving Private Ryan, mostly for having some of the most realistic military characters and manoeuvres of any film I've ever seen (some WW2 history geeks I know take issue with the specifics, but at no point does one feel that what the people are doing is stupid). And it is doubtless true that the hellishness of war is an omnipresent theme- the pivotal scene where Cpt. Miller talks about how he's 'only here to get back home to his wife' is an obvious example, as is the entire character of Upham (a translator deployed into an infantry platoon, in many ways acting as the eyes of the audience into the hellscape of WW2).

However, beyond that the theme doesn't really... go anywhere. The film doesn't particularly condemn the war, and certainly it's not exactly anti-war propaganda. Similarly, there are no scenes of mass graves, nobody commenting on how their generals are idiots, nobody even particularly complaining about the deaths of their comrades- the team take it as a punch to the gut, but there's this unspoken acceptance that they have to keep going.

To me, the scene that delivers the most resonant message of the film occurs when Sgt. Hovarth and Cpt. Miller talk before the battle of Ramelle, about all they've been through and all they've lost to rescue this one young private- when even he wants to stay. It's a summation of a constant argument the platoon have throughout the film, about whether their mission is valuable or even worthwhile. To quote Hovarth:

Sgt. Hovarth wrote:Part of me thinks the kid's right. He asks what he's done to deserve this. He wants to stay here, fine. Let's leave him and go home. But then another part of me thinks, what if by some miracle we stay, then actually make it out of here. Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess.


Notice how neutral this summation is, how it deliberately gives credence to both sides of the situation. It acknowledges that the war is a "godawful, shitty mess"- to be honest, I'm not sure you can make an even vaguely realistic war film nowadays without acknowledging this, because war is in fact a fairly crappy thing a lot of the time. But the focus of the speech is still on the little moments of hope, the potential for salvation, that keeps the soldiers going. "War is hell" is very much a theme at play, but it's not the film's endgame; to me, the film's real purpose is to both question the value of war, and crucially leave the answer to that question open to interpretation. This is particularly resonant given that the conflict is WW2, one of the few wars where a modern, democratic viewpoint is able to pick fairly clear good guys and bad guys. The war might have been hellish, but was it worthwhile hell?

I think that to dismiss the idea that "war is hell" is a theme at play in Saving Private Ryan is rather short-sighted, but equally that to dismiss it as an over-simplistic film using only that theme is to rather short-change it. I also feel that to say any particular view is "right" is to ignore one of the other major themes of Talking Simulator (the subjectivity and open-to-interpretation-ness of art). But I guess this counts as my tuppence.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Garwulf » 17 Sep 2016, 07:22

I didn't mean to dismiss that "war is hell" is a theme (and I'm sorry if I gave that impression), but I don't think it is the primary theme at all. It's rather like Dark Souls - the game is about triumph, but you can't experience that triumph without first experiencing the adversity (hence, "get good" actually being meaningful when talking about the game). Likewise, the theme of "earn the hell we went through," doesn't work unless you actually show the audience the hell in question.

At that's something that the movie does admirably. And, as you said, it doesn't cast judgement on the hell that is war. It's presented as a necessary hell, and all the soldiers can do is put their heads down and keep going until they're through it.

I think it's also notable that the plot does NOT revolve around a combat mission. Miller and his squad aren't sent out to kill enemy soldiers - their mission in the end involves violence, but its nature is entirely humanitarian: their task is to bring somebody out of the violence so that a civilian who has already lost most of her children will not suffer any further loss.

And, as I think of it, this actually serves as a metaphor for the war as a whole - World War II was fought to bring people out of the violence that was the Axis powers. And, in the end, as the movie so powerfully states, there's an obligation on those of us who it was fought for to be worthy of it. That the ending leaves the question hanging of if Ryan succeeded just makes it all the more powerful - we can never know if those who sacrificed their lives would consider us worthy of their sacrifice...we can never know if our debt to them was paid.
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Re: Thief Talking Simulator

Postby SopranoCat » 02 Oct 2016, 21:28

I just saw the Thief episode, and I have to say: I am deeply disappointed in you two, Cam and Alex. Steampunk, don't know anything about it, but it's just an aesthic thing and it's twee and awful? Really?

Normally, you discuss subjects that are done well, or not done well, topics/styels/techniques of various sorts that you like or dislike and why. And you are usually logical, fair, thought-out. Even when I disagree with you (like on body horror and its effectiveness) they are discussions that I enjoy listening to. Rational, non-offensive discussions. This? Was offensive, dismissive, completely uninformed (as you admitted) hateful spew.

And if I hadn't expected better of you two, I wouldn't be so upset.

I've heard it before. I like steampunk, and I'm certainly not an expert, but it's not that you attacked something I like. I don't care for Gothic anything, and I'd be up in arms if you'd had the same dismissive stab at Gothic style. Whch, by the way, is frequent and the exact same argument from a lot of people, both in the past and now, that you gave for disliking steampunk. But I bet you wouldn't dismiss Gothic as 'only aesthetic' because that's obviously not true? We have tons of novels just to start that are truly in the Gothic sphere, and it's not just about wearing black, reading morbid peotry, and saying how much death would be cool.

If you don't understand steampunk, try reading something by Jules Verne for a start. It's not -technically- steampunk in my book, because steam was still the big technology. But steampunk started as a branch of science fiction, imagining what the world would be like if Victorian-era technology was how all current technology ran, steam and clockwork instead of electricity. Verne looks more like a predictive novel in that world than historical science fiction.

And what exactly is wrong if some people like only one aspect, say the fashion style, of any group? I'm not judging Cam on his love of turtleneck sweaters or Alex because of his T-shirts. That's pretty shitty, right? As long as people aren't using their particular fashion preferences to crap on everyone else, who cares what they like?

You want to complain about the people who use a cobbled "Steampunk-ish" aesthetic as spackle to cover up a lack of character, story, plot, or just imply that they're superior to others because of their style? Fine. That's valid. As valid as most horror movies incorporating a "Goth" look without a Gothic story, or using "retro 8-bit art" to just be lazy artists. Or Thief using off-the-shelf characters tropes for the main characters. Don't like the steampunk aesthetic? Also fine. Different opinions are healthy.

But bad-mouthing a genre you admitted you know nothing about, just because? No. And I expected better of both of you.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Graham » 03 Oct 2016, 23:04

I'm not Alex or Cameron, so regardless of me also being LRR crew I am not speaking for them, but I was also watching that stream, and I'd like to discuss this for personal interest.


I did not feel at all that they were badmouthing steampunk out of hand, they said—as you quoted—that steampunk is an aesthetic.
I don't see anything that you've said to refute that.

The genre that shares a namesake, cyberpunk, is exemplified by its aesthetic, but also by its narratives that often deal with dystopias, transhumanism, or the pervasion of technology creeping into our human lives (as broad examples).

Steampunk is an aesthetic, inspired by applying modern technology to a Victorian era... it is a science-fiction setting. But what are steampunk stories saying?

I would argue that I have never seen/read a story that I could point to as "a steampunk narrative", because it is simply an aesthetic (and one that I think is kinda rad, if often overdone) that is applied to general sci-fi narratives.

That is fine, and does not make steampunk bad or wrong, but I argue that is all it is.

(they were also clear that were not using the word "twee" derisively)
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Garwulf » 04 Oct 2016, 11:14

Just adding a couple of cents' worth of my own in, I have my own mixed feelings about Steampunk. Specifically, I think a lot of it is just done WRONG.

(Fair warning: I'm somewhat sleep deprived right now, so this may not be the best quality post.)

The worst offenders are those Steampunk artists who are taking apart antique watches - AKA actual pieces of history - so that they can use the gears to decorate things that were never decorated that way (and as a collector of antique pocket watches, that is really infuriating). There's this complete misunderstanding of the 19th and early 20th century aesthetic that gets proudly displayed with little or no understanding of how technology was used or integrated into people's lives.

Done right, though, good steampunk should (at least, in theory), deal with issues of class struggle, empire and racism. It's almost alternate history, allowing the author to take a period before modern labour laws and civil rights movements, and explore the human cost of technology in a setting without the safeguards we have today.

Michael Moorcock did this very well in stories like his Oswald Bastable trilogy.

Done badly, unfortunately, it really is empty storytelling using the trappings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries without any understanding of those years. But, it CAN, and has been, much more than that in the right hands.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby SopranoCat » 04 Oct 2016, 13:20

Graham, you're right, they weren't bad-mouthing steampunk. But they were dismissive, and I was upset by what seemed out of character for them, and let that carry into my language.

I'm not an expert, and I'm not good at explaining narrative trends and such. I also find a lot of the subgenre classifications a bit blurry, which is why I let other people explain what makes a story stemapunk or gothic or dystopian or whatever.

I'd argue that Garwulf is right about empirism etc. But I'd also argue that steampunk often explores technology creeping into lives, transhumanism, and dystopias as cyberpunk does. Different techs, different worlds, but same ideas behind the stories. There's a lot of fuzz and crossover in my mind in the science fiction subgenres, and from that perspective it is aesthetic world building whether you choose clockwork automatons and a guy who's replaced his hand with a aetheric disruptor versus people with robot eyes and a detective who used to be a child-genius hacker.

And yeah, Garwulf, the "glue gears on it and it's steampunk" is considered offensive by a lot of steampunkers. But I've also met and talked with plenty of people who seek out and restore antique watches (and other things) who only got exposed to that world from liking steampunk. Or the guy who builds and sells telegraph kits and goes around conventions and to grade school science classes showing what telegraphs are and how to do Morse code and letting kids get interested in science and history because "I got to touch the bleeping machine!" (actual kid quote).

There's more to a lot of things than we see, and usually you guys get that, so I took it a bit personally. But I also am used to being crap socially awkward and saying stuff that comes out totally different than what I meant, and the only way I ever learn is if someone calls me on it. So I thought it was worth pointing out that what Cam and Alex said sounded dismissive and not good. I'm very happy if how I heard it is totally different than what they meant.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Lord Hosk » 06 Oct 2016, 21:13

Watching firewatch again tonight I feel so... dissatisfied with the game. Its beautiful, it has a interesting story and the characters have depth, but it feels less game than other games. Im not in any way trying to imply that "walking simulators arent games" and im not dismissive of the genera or the great work that is being done there to push the boundaries of games. I really enjoyed the gone home (more watching others play it than my own playthrough) and oxenfree and I understand that to a certain extent narrative games have to keep you on track but firewatch just feels so on rails, it certainly feels like your choices dont matter. I know that there are slight tweaks the story can take but they all feel superficial to the main impact of the story.

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With Gone home, you start the game getting home and you end the game finding out that your sister ran away with her girlfriend. In firewatch you start the game getting to the tower and you end the game with the chopper pick up and going back to your wife Those are the main points and you are walking between them. However.

In Gone home, there are a lot of details and clues that not only do you not have to discover but there are whole areas of the map that dont have to be explored. You can hop from A to D to B to E to H which is go upstairs along the way you can completely miss your mothers pursuit of another man, miss her promotion at work, and miss your parents reconciling. You can miss your fathers whole career, the failure, the reboot, miss that he was abused as a child, and miss both him and the uncles addictions. You can miss your sisters magazine, and mix tape trading, you can skip your sisters whole writing sub plot.

By comparison in Firewatch, you have to go to the lake, have to discover the teens camp, and the message on the cut telephone line. You have to have your place trashed, and discover the camp with the clipboard, you have to find brian, you have to find neds camp and read his notes. Your choices are minor take or leave the fireworks, how much you want to interact with Delilah and how harsh you want to be with her. but in the end you still have to hit A B C D E F G and the H on the helicopter alone.


I dont think that firewatch isnt a game, but it certainly feels like the player doesnt have agency. At the very start you see the fireworks and are given three responses "go take action" "its not my job" and "no response" all three of those lead to you leaving the tower and going down to the lake. Most of the decision points are akin to "do you want to take the stairs or the elevator to get to the lobby" to be clear you are going to the lobby and the story wont proceed until you are down there but you can choose elevator button or stairwell door.

Firewatch tells a very compelling story but it feels much more like a interactive novel rather than a game.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby AdmiralMemo » 06 Oct 2016, 22:38

So in the genre of narrative-based story-telling, Firewatch is more "novel" and Gone Home is more "Choose Your Own Adventure" (but only if the second had a single ending)?
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby AdmiralMemo » 13 Oct 2016, 18:54

https://firewatch.camera/HalfKlondikeVista/

There's Cam's pictures from the game, if anyone wants to download them for themselves.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby My pseudonym is Ix » 14 Oct 2016, 11:47

Personally, I don't have much (if any stake) in the 'Is this a game?' stakes, but I'd just like to add one of my own experiences connected to the idea of 'defining what is and is not a game can be a rather unhelpful definition'.

The first time I ever played Spec Ops: The Line was back in 2013, and my goodness did it hit then-teenage me like a freight train to the gut. It was powerful and compelling and carried emotional weight like only one or two things I'd ever experienced by that point. At the time I watched a lot of Extra Credits and had been reading some of Roger Ebert's thoughts about gaming as an art form, and came to my own personal revelation: the debate about what makes something art or not is an interesting one, but anything that could make me FEEL like that counted as art in my book.

It is a perfectly valid observation to state that Firewatch feels as though it lacks agency- it is equally valid to suggest that is to its detriment as a game or otherwise as a piece of artwork. I also know, Hosk, that you are not trying to denegrate Firewatch's value as a piece of art by your own personal redefinition process- please do not think that I mean this as any kind of personal attack on your opinions. But I figure that what medium it fits into is kinda immaterial compared to whether and how it made you feel.
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Re: Talking Simulator

Postby Garwulf » 20 Oct 2016, 20:44

Relating to this most recent Talking Simulator, a very good article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magaz ... ation.html
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