| Jaicee said: I discovered this article just now in scrounging through my daily Digg emails from last month and it just...it just captured exactly where I am so well. Let me quote a key excerpt: Spoiler! When the first episodes of Life is Strange were released in 2015, reviewers likened them to a Stephen King novel and to “Twin Peaks.” The series was widely embraced, and video game researchers say it is indicative of a shift in the industry. Historically, video games have focused on what characters do below the neck — things like kicking, running, and shooting, Jesse Schell, a game designer and gaming professor at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote in an email to Undark. Movies and books, meanwhile, were more likely to explore the inner workings of characters’ minds. But more recently, game designers have turned their attention above the neck, too, creating games with complicated plots and emotionally nuanced characters. That's probably not surprising. Research indicates that many players, particularly longtime gamers who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, now crave games that make them feel something — not just happiness and excitement, but also sadness, guilt, shame, and remorse, said Nick Bowman, a gaming researcher at Texas Tech University. In short, they want the kind of meaningful experience more commonly associated with novels and film. Thanks to technological advancements in graphics and sounds, developers are creating games to meet that demand.
The article highlights games like Life is Strange, Shadow of the Colossus, and Red Dead Redemption II as examples of art-oriented games and, you know, I don't think all of those are really on the same tier of impact for me, but it captures the crux of what I value the most in games these days. When I first start playing in 1987 my value system was like... Well, it's not too often that research about video game players captures where someone like me is, so I just wanted to highlight this research because it's interesting to me. Does anyone else here feel like this? |
), but I just wanted to show that I am not totally alone in my current approach to this medium.This one is actually pretty interesting due to the review I'm currently writing. Not going to spoil what it is, but I was pretty torn between how much I enjoyed the game based on the feelings I received and how much I enjoyed the game from a gameplay standpoint.
I think this is why I enjoyed TLoU so much. As a game, it's serviceable. It's not great but it's not mediocre. It's good. But the story is just so well done that I'm absolutely enthralled. I don't think I'm quite at a Connection: 6 and Entertainment: 4, as I still think that gameplay overall is more important, but I could see it being a Connection: 4 Entertainment: 6 depending on the direction of the game.
