{"id":14800180,"date":"2018-05-17T06:28:26","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T06:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800180"},"modified":"2018-05-17T06:28:26","modified_gmt":"2018-05-17T06:28:26","slug":"finding-the-path-through-walking-simulators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800180","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Path Through Walking Simulators"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wonder, did they assign chapter and verse to the stones and grasses, marking the geography with a superimposed significance; that they could actually walk the bible and inhabit its contradictions?
\n– Dear Esther<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a game developer interested in the mechanics of storytelling within my chosen medium, I have found myself fascinated with the genre known, somewhat pejoratively, as\u00a0walking simulators.<\/em> \u00a0These are titles that have traded away nearly all of the inner mechanisms of video games, the cranks\u00a0and belts and springs, to focus on story above all else. \u00a0These are vehicles for narrative, although as vehicles they are more like the cab of a roller coaster than an automobile. \u00a0There is no gear to engage, no gas pedal to depress, and certainly no race to win. \u00a0In a walking simulator you simply move forward through the story until you reach the end. \u00a0The folks who coined the term by which the genre is now named intended it to sound boring, as if walking is the most mundane activity\u00a0you could possibly engage in. \u00a0But the term has stuck, probably because it captures the core design tenet of this genre: it’s not what you\u00a0do<\/em>, it’s\u00a0where<\/em> you do it.<\/p>\n

A more accurate (but less punchy) label for this genre might be “exploring characters as space.” \u00a0Most of the titles I’ve played in this genre present a beautiful environment for the player to explore, but the real topic of investigation is the inner lives of the characters in the story. \u00a0The environment is a 3D interactive expression of those characters and their relationships, though at a glance it might look like Ye Olde Haunted House, The Abandoned Space Station, The Destroyed City, or any number of other common video game locales. \u00a0In\u00a0Gone Home<\/em>, the unlocking of an\u00a0abandoned Oregon home is also an unearthing of the lives of its residents. \u00a0In\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em>, we are perhaps threading our way not through a bombed-out city, but through a ruined consciousness. \u00a0What Remains of Edith Finch<\/em> goes as far as to assign unique rooms to each of its mysteriously missing characters.<\/p>\n

The mapping of physical space to narrative space is easy to understand. \u00a0Video games have good, mature systems for navigating physical spaces. \u00a0We all know how to WASD our way through a first-person doorway, or drive our perspective through a landscape by rotating the right analog stick. \u00a0The idea of the walking simulator is to use the systems of navigation originally built for shooters to deliver narrative. \u00a0In a book you read a sentence, in a game you walk down a hallway. \u00a0In virtual space, what’s the difference?<\/p>\n

The problem that these titles face is pacing. \u00a0An author writing a book knows that their work will be consumed linearly, starting at the first page\u00a0and ending at the last, and it’s up to them to decide how quickly the events of the story unfold. \u00a0Less than four paragraphs ago I described walking simulators as roller coasters, but a book or short story is actually a better fit for that metaphor. \u00a0There are ups and downs, anticipation and thrills, but ultimately the reader is not in control. \u00a0They are traversing a track that the author has laid.<\/p>\n

Choice is a fundamental aspect of modern video games. \u00a0Not all games have meaningful choices, but most at least attempt to give the illusion of choice. \u00a0It might be as simple as deciding\u00a0to visit the room on the left before the room on the right, even if both must eventually be visited for the story to continue. \u00a0One of the key challenges of the walking simulator is deciding\u00a0how much flexibility to give the player.<\/p>\n

Many titles deal with dilemma\u00a0by trying to separate choices from traversal. \u00a0If the story has been mapped to 3D space and, in the interest of drama, we want to control its pacing, the traversable field must be narrow. \u00a0Firewatch<\/em> has a (fantastic) dialog system that presents interesting choices that are mostly decoupled from the space. \u00a0Tacoma<\/em> integrates dialog directly into traversal\u00a0by providing the player with recordings of conversations that move through space. \u00a0Asemblance<\/em> features a small set of memories that the player visits over and over, finding new ways to interact with them at each visit. \u00a0SOMA<\/em>,\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em>, and\u00a0Silent Hill: Shattered Memories\u00a0<\/em>(arguably the forefather of the modern walking simulator genre) all include stealth and escape\u00a0sequences. \u00a0Still, these titles are traversal-heavy and activity-light.<\/p>\n

I think this is a very delicate balance for these games to tread. \u00a0On the one hand, walking simulators are built on the theory that the narrative can carry the player though to the end. \u00a0On the other hand, the medium that has been chosen to express this narrative is one that is intrinsically interactive. \u00a0There’s a sliding scale of interaction here, where increasing the player’s ability to affect the world decreases the author’s ability to control the delivery of the narrative (and, consequently, its impact). \u00a0This approach also puts all of the engagement weight on the story. \u00a0While other genres can supplement game mechanics for story to keep a player engaged, walking simulators\u00a0cannot. \u00a0What Remains of Edith Finch<\/em>\u00a0tries to solve this by changing the traversal (and therefore narrative expression) mechanics with a series of vignettes, but most games in this genre live and die by their narrative’s hook.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to compare the walking simulator genre to other narrative-first genres, such as the visual novel genre. \u00a0Most visual novels are really just Choose Your Own Adventure<\/em> affairs, with dialog and branching story options and little\u00a0else. \u00a0But recently titles like\u00a0Danganronpa\u00a0<\/em>and the\u00a0Zero Escape<\/em> series have shown how this model can be used for something more complicated. \u00a0The\u00a0Zero Escape<\/em> games, particularly\u00a0Virtue’s Last Reward<\/em> and\u00a0Zero Time\u00a0<\/em>Dilemma<\/i>, are just a series of dialog sequences that are glued together with escape rooms. \u00a0You listen to a lot of characters talk for a while, then solve some light escape room puzzles, then make a decision. \u00a0These titles are just as narrative-focused as the walking simulators, but instead of 3D traversal they’ve put their energy into activities. \u00a0What makes them so special is that they explicitly, in the course of the narrative, address the structural requirements of video games: dying and restarting, going back and changing a decision, the illusion of real choice. \u00a0This activity-heavy\/traversal-light model is also be able to sustain attention for longer: these titles clock in at 20 or 30 hours of play, compared to the 2 ~ 5 hour terms of most walking simulators.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in between the walking simulators and the\u00a0Zero Escape<\/em> titles are the traversal-heavy\/activity-heavy games. \u00a0Shenmue<\/em> is probably the root of this genre, although classic Adventure games and golden age horror games also seem like related influencers. \u00a0David Cage’s games fall into this category, as does\u00a0Until Dawn<\/em> and\u00a0Life is Strange<\/em>. \u00a0These are titles with lots of story, lots of dialog, and lots of detailed spaces to explore. \u00a0But they also have activities to perform, puzzles to solve, and (occasionally) enemies to defeat. \u00a0When they work, these games are amazing. \u00a0But they are also exceptionally complicated and expensive, in many ways the antithesis of the simplicity that walking sims value.<\/p>\n

I wonder about the space in the middle of this triangle, an area that blends these three extremes. \u00a0A linear (?) story, expressed as traversable space, with some sort of activity structure bolted onto it. \u00a0Virginia<\/em> but with escape rooms? \u00a0Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture\u00a0<\/em>but with puzzles and an inventory? \u00a0Would the addition of more activities to the standard walking sim structure devalue the narrative itself, or produce a more engaging result? \u00a0Is there a way to balance these competing ideas that doesn’t involve the massive investment required to build something like\u00a0Until Dawn<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I don’t know the answer, but this is the type of game I’d like to try to make. \u00a0I guess you could see Dead Secret Circle<\/a> as my latest attempt at finding that balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wonder, did they assign chapter and verse to the stones and grasses, marking the geography with a superimposed significance; that they could actually walk the bible and inhabit its contradictions? – Dear Esther As a game developer interested in the mechanics of storytelling within my chosen medium, I have found myself fascinated with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14800180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14800180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14800185,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800180\/revisions\/14800185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14800180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14800180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14800180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}