Walking Simulators

Why do faggots defend this? Why do they defend it so poorly?

Basically, every defense of this boils down to them asking you about simulator games.
When you tell them that simulator games have a clear losing condition they completely ignore that and ask you what the winning condition of something like Sim City is.

And then they proceed to ignore completely that the winning condition of simulation games like Sim City is being able to rise above the losing condition without your further input.

So what the fuck? is it just people who are really hardcore SJW ninnies that want walking simulators to be considered real games? Because at this point it seems very much like that.

As sad as it is that we've reached this point, I still have to ask anyways

Is that an actual game?

I hope not.

Yes, pretty much. There's only two kinds of people who like walking simulators:

The latter makes walking simulators, which are played by the former, who in turn gradually turn into the latter.

Good "walking simulators" are about using space to tell a branching story, rather than VNs' dialogue trees. You select an option by going to a place or interacting with a specific thing which changes the space, and the change in location tells the story. Stanley Parable is a good example of this: player=Stanley makes decisions which have results, and the narrator tells the story of how player=Stanley's actions changed things. Gone Home also does a good job, where exploring the house tells the story through immersion rather than dictation.

Bad "walking simulators" like Sunset and Dragon are dictated stories with the freedom of movement - essentially a museum or amusement ride. While there is 'choice' in choosing where to walk or what to look at, it has no effect other than progressing the narration in a fixed manner.

I don't actually see how that's different from Gone Home, which is just a lame story about oppressed lesbians who rob their parents that is told almost exclusively through notes.

Gone Homo isn't a story its beatable in half a minute

Myst is beatable in half a minute. Is Myst shit?

Yes

Gone Home had good execution, but the story was complete shit. Just Romeo and Juliet but without the benefit of mutual suicide at the end. And with lesbians.

Story's lame, totally agreed.

The difference between the lame story in Gone Home and the lame story in Sunset is that Gone Home lets you choose how you you uncover the lame story. Sunset has a series of triggers that you need to activate in sequence, like needing to turn a page to continue reading a book. Gone Home is a space filled with information that provides anecdotes from the greater story, like information plaques in a historic site.


Basically my thoughts. Except that R&J was a parody of (opera) romance, with the double suicide showing that 'I'd die for you' is idiotic tragedy rather than sappy romance.

You are mistaken in your assessment of Gone Home. Your analogy of the bad walking simulator as a museum is perfect. There is story there but the only option is to look around or go to next exhibit. This is no different from Gone Home. Just because there are extra tidbits of information in the environment doesn't change that its still the same museum ride.


Walking simulators are more involved VNs. The good ones are Stanley Parable and Telltale The Walking Dead S1. Both have a strong emphasis on choice and involving the player's choice in the overarching story. I don't know if this is the only way to do these types of game but it is at least one way it works. I was really excited for the potential that TWD S1 had, but then Telltale went to complete shit and stopped even trying.

If the exhibits didn't fit together into something bigger, I'd agree. It'd be like Proteus or The Graveyard, a setting which exists solely to be an interesting setting.

The tidbits found throughout Gone Home's house are like a puzzle made of short stories, where the challenge is finding something in one note that hints at another's location, either directly or by providing additional meaning to another note. Similar to how Her Story is about making a series of testimonies fit together, dispelling the lies to find truth.

Hey man, I'm defending the delivery. The story can fall off its horse.

I don't totally agree but I see where you are coming from. I think even its implementation in both cases is done poorly but that the idea has potential. Her Story especially is a load of shit.

You should check out Analogue: A Hate Story. I think it will be right up your alley.

I'll add it to the list. Thanks for the recommendation.

But that's just another story about lesbians made by a hardcore Kool-Aid chugger.

Um… what?

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Well one of the major stories is about an oppressed lesbian couple, and it's possible to make the female AIs turn lesbian for you if you say you're a girl. And the whole thing is about OPPRESSIVE SEXIST RAPIST PATRIARCHY.

The lesbian thing is in the sequel, which is worse in generally every respect.

As to the oppressive patriarchy, the game actually does a good job of presenting the traditional perspective in a sympathetic light and gives you the option to agree with it. In fact the supposedly progressive character from a more enlightened time comes across as childish and malicious.

(Then I read wikipedia)

Ok well I can certainly understand the dismissal but I still think it stands well enough on its own away from the usual SJW crap, whether that was the authors intention or not.

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It's a double edged sword, Yume Nikki may have faded into obsurity in the popular eye, but at least the cancer assosiated with modern video games that have any depth won't touch it.
It's fine not seeing 500 milion gay theory and 50 facts videos.

Many walking simulators have puzzles & collectibles that improve interactivity & introduce goals,
but even with that they're still called walking simulators when there's arguably more to do than most visual novels.

All in all, since these are "games" that require very little from the player & mostly involve just walking around
the saving grace has got to be the scenery; the shit you see while walking, the aesthetic style, muh graphics.

Nah, that's bullshit.

A good walking simulator is like taking a nice hike around a park. In the park, you see so many diverse people minding their own businesses and/or interacting with each other. Bonus point if they can notice you and if you can have a conversation with them. More lively details should be put into the environment, like birds chipping, water in a pond rippling, grass and leaves being moved by the wind, etc.

You know, imagine towns and NPC's in Morrowind, Oblivion, STALKER, and Gothic 2, but with more details put into them. The NPC's do their own business, talk with each other, greet you, and sometimes travel to specific places to fulfill their goals.

This is the kind of thing that should be in walking simulators. Gameplay should be substituted by the showing the players the dynamics and conflicts of life they can immerse themselves into. Have you ever observed the cinematography of Aleksey German's Hard to be a God and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and Ivan's Childhood? That's how a walking simulator should work and feel like. They have no focus on story, but on the dynamics of life itself.

Life, it is what a walking simulator should create. If video game creates a game, then walking simulator, like cinema and other forms of art, should create life.

No you imbecile pleb cuckold faggot.

Walking simulator is NOT a game. Walking simulator SHOULD NOT be a game. Walking simulator SHOULD BE a form of interactive motion picture rather than video game. Puzzles add a game.

The highest purpose of motion picture is to show the audience a pure audio visual experience. The goals put in the game should be much less empirical than puzzle. The goals should involve a more spiritual and emotional judgement. The intuition should come from and be equal to faith rather than coming out of logic. Aesthetic creates the experience while the intuition creates the goals.

Have you ever watched Stalker? The goal, as defined by the Writer and the Scientist, is to uncover the mystery of the Zone. The Stalker has an entirely different goal, goal regarding faith and reasons for sacrifice that are not so articulable by words, that the Writer and Scientist will never, ever understand.

That's how goal should work in a walking sim.

No, you should only walk around empty places with nobody around, read signs, listen to shitty records and pick up rocks and shit.

This is Hard To Be A God. The movie that I was talking about. This is good example of films whose structure resemble walking simulator. So much details on the movements of background characters in this film, just to immerse your soul into the experience the director tried to convey.

Notice the eye contact in 3:06 and the interaction towards the cameraman in 3:25. They make you feel like you're the witness of the scenarios in these movies, they make you feel like you are being there and being noticed.

These are some of the things that should be implemented in walking simulators. Make the player feel like this is where they are, in this game, here and now. This is the kind of immersion that has never existed in video games, save for a few exception like Morrowind and Gothic, but even they couldn't do it remotely right.


kay, redditblr

It's not us you have to convince, but the hipsters and journos who love the genre and are desperate for them to be considered games.

For what purpose though? Walking simulator should be it's own medium. If they truly love the genre, why don't they want it to be a breakthrough in art?

what are point and click adventure games
what are visual novels
what are rpgs

They're puzzle games.

They have neither walking or game.

games

Yeah, Love might be a rabid SJW but the game is good and doesn't really contain that much hand -wringing. Also, the game is criticising the values of like ancient Korea, not the modern world (whether it thinks it is or not). It's just absurd to say, well, actually, because SJWs exist, that means there was no oppression of women in history.

They're in it for the intellectual grandiosity, and they only look smart when they sit at the videogames table. They'd look fucking dumb at the film table.

they are a bunch of games that essentially play themselves

Why would a purple haired canuck write a game in korean?


Oh, you mean like focusing themselves on making the player feel they want to be immersed? As I have explained, walking simulator should take this thing into a whole new level.

i dont know man im just shit posting, but i appreciate how you have an open mind about things

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This is the key for me, they gotta be real easy on the eyes. As long as it's a pretty walk, I can tolerate them. Still wouldn't call them games, but I won't call what they are doing inherently wrong either.

With that said though, I'd really prefer they went with more fantastic scenery than just pretty scenery. You know, stuff you wouldn't see in real life. Those pics are pretty, but unfortunately mundane as well.

Fuck you OP. I got permabanned on halfchan back in 2009 for talking shit about this and if I was a namefag I would be the namefag that talks shit about this garbage that has ruined my hobby. Fuck you OP, don't lump in the weekend trash with all of Holla Forums.

you probably got permabanned for annoying the mods by repetitively complaining about Gone Home tbh

thats okay fam, thanks.


I don't know, that scenery looks okay to me, not really boring to look at. It doesn't have to be out of this world to be good. Sometimes, nature just leaves more impression than pompous recreation of nature, it's just because we're more familiar with it.

Does anyone have that webm of the creator of "The Binding of Isaac" talking about how the indie SJW scene is full of losers who can't make good games and just jerk eachother off?

Can we all agree that gone home is the best interactive video game in this era the Deep emotional aspect of the game is unheard of in any other game. it's hard to believe that the Developers were able to make such a masterpiece with low budget and continuous harassment from basement dwellers

Now that's some bait

Why should devs care about sjews at all? smh


There is nothing really deep about movies that are focused on story. Was there even a poetry in Gone Home's narration?

games are dogshit for manchildren and people don't want stories in games because games are what they're doing instead of taking heroin

It depends. Yume Nikki and .flow are nice and relaxing things to come home to after a day at school or work. For the longest time, I would come home and boot up both of the games even after I'd found everything and just aimlessly explore. Sans the (lack of) gameplay in Yume Nikki, I got a similar feeling from playing La-Mulana 2005 for the first time. Exploring a new world and working things out yourself simply has no substitute.

Those games are about the journey. Indies do not care about the journey. When they make fangames, or heaven forbid they attempt their own original products, they try to interject drama and lore into a setting best suited for exploration and interpretation. They aim for a message, or to try to recapture the experience of Yume Nikki while failing miserably at the task. Even worse, they'll make a game in a genre that's supposed to support exploration as linear as possible. There is no limit to how much it sickens me when people do that shit.

the emperor has no clothes

I was actually following Ethan Carter because of their posts on photogrammetry. was going to buy it just to dissect the art.
then I watched a stream.
the "gameplay" is walking around the map in a big circle and solving puzzles easier than newspaper crosswords. and holy fuck the story is highschool level writing.

Have you heard the good word of Yume 2kki?
If you liked the exploration aspects, 2kki is Nikki on steroids.

The David jaffe thread gave me an idea for a walking simulator. Essentially you walk around and interact with stuff, you never use guns but basically go around doing micro aggressions to piss people off.

Fucking kill yourself OP.

Not just because you're still bringing that fucking argument up, but also because you have a nerve to talk about what it "boils down to" as if this hasn't already been over-discussed to death and made painfully apparent how much of a dead end that fucking argument is.

Learn to read.

I saw a story creepily similar to Gone Home play out when I was is High School. Both dropped out. One girl is now depressingly obese lives with her parents and looks hideous because of some body mods on her face. Other one left her for army or something, got a GED apperently.

No you fucking mook. A walking sim would be way more detailed. You'd eventually get tuckered out, it'd require VR, and you'd have a fatigue rating.

Dumb retards on this board start thinking

I don't know what kind of VNs you've played, but most VNs don't consist of staring at scenery for 3 hours while listening to boring exposition from a disembodied narrator. A VN provides narrative, characters, story, action, drama, choices… A walking simulator provides a scavenger hunt for a bunch expository dialogue clues in an empty environment to piece together some shit you never saw involving characters you will never meet.

The problem is not linearity or IT'S NOT A GAME, but in the premise being utterly disinteresting: Imagine if Titanic consisted of nothing but the submarine pilot from the beginning of the film rummaging through sunken cabins for personal belongings while talking to himself, or if Rocky consisted of some guy silently rifling through the titular boxer's stuff while random dialogue plays for no reason. It doesn't matter how big and detailed the environments are or how much stuff you can look at, it's just fucking boring. There are hidden object games more narratively engaging than fucking Stanley Parable.

Contrary to what the name might suggest The Walking Dead is not a walking simulator, it's an adventure game. It may be quite linear, but there are characters to talk to, items to obtain and interact with, (corollary) choices to make, action to see, failure/success states and a story to advance.

Done a flowchart cause I don't like you movie, comic or novel suckers in my video game business. This is based of Chris Crawford definition, he is a SJW so bother him or not, I don't care.


The SJWs were getting desperate. Found out that they were trying to manipulate the term game on wiki.

God Hand = Puzzle

Okay

For the same reason that people defend "visual novels," namely what happens when a video game gets double-teamed by an anime and a manga.