Gone Home 4 corner exercise (group 3)
Here, the authors seek to address preconceived notion of what a game is. What they are saying is that the entire medium of games does not have to involve an actual challenge or player influence on outcomes, so long as a game is not passively watched like a movie. Indeed, the ending to Gone Home is always the same, but we are moving with WASD and clicking on objects. The comparison to calling a novel a “page-turning simulator” is funny, but you can also relate the entire whole walking simulators vs. real games debate to a comparison between a children’s book vs. a famous novel you might read in an English class, like The Great Gatsby. Obviously, an inexperienced reader, such as a child, won’t want, need, or be able to grasp the complex layers of storytelling and effort put into The Great Gatsby. However, they can read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But no one is about to gatekeep children’s books from being called books.
Gone Home puts more emphasis on the narrative as opposed to the gameplay. Instead of engaging with gameplay through puzzles or more interactive methods, the creators of the game chose to simply disclose the locations of the keys and codes needed to progress through the game using journal entries and audio messages (verbally telling the players). This is not to say that Gone Home does not qualify as a game in itself, but instead shows that this "walking simulator" is just a different type of game. KJ
Below is a screenshot from Gone Home showing the player holding a cassette tape. This displays how the player is able to interact with the environment.
Gone Home is a game that promotes interactivity between the players and their surroundings, allowing players to pick up items, to read notes that are lying around, and even crouch down to reach things in low places.
