Month: March 2017

The Nature of Video Games

In a game, you are in control of your character:

Artist Unknown. If anyone has any information about the artist/copyright holder of this image, please contact the author. <https://mulpix.com/post/986353982508289126.html>

which direction they go,

who they talk to,

what actions you choose for them.

There is a sense of controlling your character or avatar as if they are a puppet on a string, and you their master.

But by controlling them, they in turn are embodying you as the player and immersing you in the game with them.

But…

Are you truly in control?

Inside [video game] Playdead. June 29, 2016. Digital Imagery. Pinterest. Web. May 2017.
In the video game, Inside, not only are you as the player NOT in control of the character, though seemingly you are the one pressing buttons for the main character’s actions. You are playing a game, a game that is governed with input and output, a game that no matter what you do, will end and culminate inevitably in one way.

https://www.wired.com/2016/06/inside-review/

Kohler, Chris. “Inside‘s Tense Horror Is a Worthy Successor to Limbo.” Wired. Conde Nast, 28 June 2016. Web. May 2017. <https://www.wired.com/2016/06/inside-review/>

http://www.craveonline.ca/entertainment/1005759-insides-ending-explained-theory-limbo-sequels-brain-bending-conclusion

Tamburro, Paul. “Inside’s Ending Explained: Our Theory On The Limbo Sequel’s Brain-Bending Conclusion”. CraveOnline. July 1, 2016. Web. May 2017. <www.craveonline.ca/entertainment/1005759-insides-ending-explained-theory-limbo-sequels-brain-bending-conclusion>

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gaming/what-to-play/playdeads-inside-review/

Hoggins, Tom. “Playdead’s Inside is fiercely intelligent, exquisitely grotesque – and one of the best video games of the year .” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 30 June 2016. Web. 10 May 2017.

More so, there is some discussion among fans that the boy himself (and so too along with the player) is also being controlled to the same level as the zombified humans surrounding him: that the gamer isn’t in control of him at all, but that the character’s fate, his inevitable destiny within the game, is in fact, inevitable. No matter what the gamer does with the character, no matter where the gamer takes the character, it is pre-destined that he will end up exactly where the game itself wants him.

to be continued.