In her conclusion of the chapter we discussed in class this week, Fullerton wrote an interesting paragraph on the future of dramatic elements in games, saying “Although the media palette of game design has grown to rival film and television, in general the emotional impact of games still has not achieved the depths it is capable of and that will make it recognized as an important dramatic art form. We are only now seeing game designers reach for more sophisticated goals in terms of their narrative tone, significance of theme, character depth, and overall dramatic intent” (Fullerton pg 122). I find this particularly interesting considering the seemingly large array of emotional, dramatic games that already exist. It leaves me to wonder what types of depth and emotional impact she was picturing when writing this conclusion. Personally, it is difficult to picture something with more emotional impact than some of the narrative driven games I have played. This list includes The Walking Dead, Detroit: Become Human, The Last of Us, and many other tear jerkers that exist in the gaming space.
I thought the game we played in class, Virginia, was a particularly interesting example of a dramatic game. It was intriguing because with narrative games that have mechanics and storylines similar to Virginia, there are very detailed and realistic (and expensive) graphics to portray the story, sometimes making it feel more like a movie. However, in Virginia, there were very simplistic graphics we might expect from a mobile or online game. Regardless, the game still provided a very beautiful scene and an intriguing story despite its differences from similarly story-driven games. On top of this, the lack of dialogue was a very brave and artful decision in the development of the game because it adds elements that make its simple yet not-so-simple style work in many different ways. The way the game is set up leaves the perfect amount of confusion for a layer, creating a trail to follow on a journey to find out what is going on, even without the use of fancy graphics and dialogue.
Works Cited:
Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th Edition. 2019.
Virginia. Variable State. Published by 505 Games. 2016.
I feel the quote from Fullerton does address that games are growing to meet that “depth” in recent years, and that the games she is targeting are those during the infancy of video games, such as those of early handhelds. Even then there are exceptions, there are always exceptions in every subject. For instance, I think we can all agree that early Mario had no real substance to it, nor did early Kirby, Zelda, and while a poor example, the Original Doom. This much is true, as no matter how good our nostalgia is, those games simply did not have the level of depth, detail, nor richness to really be a “dramatic art form.” I feel games only really began to flourish somewhere between 2005-2008, and that may be due to my own biases.
LikeLike