Yet this has only produced a tiny number of mildly suc-cessful games. But people still bitch and moan when the term gets applied to their work, or work they personally enjoy.
Outlandish - Personally, I think I would react the same if a game I spent hundreds of hours making got grouped into a category of games that's considered to be trash by the general public.
in adventure games specifically, it provides a space for thinking and reflecting, a necessary precursor to successfully overcoming obstacles. Walking “leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking: “The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts… one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it” (2001). Every walk is a chance “to assimilate the new into the known,” the fundamental precursor to that new perspective on the world that adventure games strive to induce.
I do get what they’re saying, but I’m not fully convinced that walking is automatically grounds for reflection. Although slowing down can create space to think, it just ends up becoming boring for the player if there is nothing big happening. If the slowness of a game is intentional, like it is in walking simulators, then the world has to carry a lot of weight and substance.
Games scholar Bonnie Ruberg has called this notion “permalife,” for games which not only include but center the notion of making death impossible (2017). She notes that permalife games are often made by queer designers, positing that “permanent living represents a particularly potent trope for expressing both hopes and concerns about contemporary queer life in the face of an uncertain future.”
I think this idea of Permalife is the most interesting idea in this chapter. Most games are focused on survival mechanics where death is the reset button. But permalife suggests that the challenge isn’t dying by continuing. It mirrors life, and that allows for emotional issues to really stand out through these games. But I also think that there needs to be something to keep the player moving forward. Sure some people may go on without a failure condition, but others would feel unmotivated to do so. They would need to nail down aspects like emotional weight, narrative curiosity and more for the game to really work.
As we navigate its tangled, anxiety-laden paths, enclosed within its shape-fitting borders, we are both the exasperated parent longing for closure and separation and the enthralled child, lingering forever in an unfolding process that is deeply comforting because it can never end.
I believe that this depends on your perspective. I don't think that one can be evenly split 50/50 in this. Sometimes you could be the parent, but other times you could end up being the child. Eventually though, I do believe you will be bored out.