This game has randomized elements, making each playthrough a bit different.
Anyway, I pirated it, played through it, enjoyed it and will buy it later this month.
That whole ranting about this game being too artsy and linear for a videogame while has its merits, it’s also kinda retrograde. Shouldn’t gamers in general be enough forward thinking to view this kind of game experience as acceptable on its own merits? Just because Dear Esther exists and does this kinda thing, doesn’t mean it will negate the existence of proper interactive games.
I understand how one would think that this is an anti-game; a pretentious attempt to cash-in on the artsy indie videogame craze; an ego-stroking project, perhaps, but maybe also a precursor to something greater down the line.
Who knows, it is possible that in a few years you’ll be playing a great story driven exploration game with interactive elements that was greatly inspired by Dear Esther, that same game you accused of being too artsy for its own medium and that should’ve been a movie instead.
Besides, this game is the single most beautiful thing I’ve ever interacted with in real time with a mouse and keyboard and that should invalidate all your arguments.
That doesn’t excuse it in any way. No matter how many people are inexplicably inspired by it, at the end of the day it is a totally unacceptable way to tell a story in an interactive medium.
well darn, I just bought it for no other reason than people here have been going on and on about it for years. but story is of #1 importance to me, and now this guy is saying the story is fail?
Why is it unacceptable? Because it was done in a medium you love and use everyday, and it falls from the norm that medium is usually used for?
That or “BAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW WHY SHOULD I PAY FOR SOMETHING THAT USED TO BE FREE?!”
I understand the whole “Why the fuck is this excuse for a game selling for $10? It’s so short and slow and boring and nothing happens in it, I mean, I can’t even jump for fuck’s sake, this should’ve been a machinima at best.”
I mean, you’re probably right in your arguments but let’s take a look at another visual medium: the moving pictures.
It’s used for far more than telling fictional stories with fictional characters using specific methods for filming those same things.
It’s also used to inform people, to show real stuff that actually happens, to explain how real things work, to tell them who to vote for, among a million other things.
Moving pictures don’t confine themselves to a single use, why should videogames do the same?
So what if you only walk around in Dear Esther? Is that so great an anomaly in the medium of videogames that it should be considered unacceptable or inexcusable? Aren’t the production values good enough that it compels the player to walk around and enjoy the gorgeous vistas?
It tells a simple story of a tragic event and how it affected the little world you walk on but instead of being a book, movie or song, it’s a videogame.
Is that so bad a thing that you must go out of your way to specifically criticize that fact?
I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I see no reason to shell out cash for it - especially if the story is unchanged from the free version.
I’d be just as satisfied youtubing it even if it’s the most amazing story ever written. The only possible reason I could find myself playing it for is the fact that it’s the source engine powering the graphics.
I honestly believe that at least the mapper should be physically rewarded for this. I can’t even imagine the pain and endless hours that involve making maps that detailed and photorealistic in an engine that the president of the company that made it called a “pain in the ass” to make maps for.
The problem here is it isn’t doing something new, its doing something old. Its showing you a movie, only instead of playing it for you, its asking you to hold down the play button. Its like buying a movie, and getting an hour and a half of scrolling text.
By choosing to make their story into a video game, the devs opened up a whole world of possibilities. They could have branching stories, open environments, a non-linear delivery, a bare minimum of interaction, but no, they didn’t. They made a movie, and called it a game. And that is inexcusable.
I still can’t see what’s so intrinsically wrong about it.
You’re just being snobbish about it because it doesn’t play like videogames are supposed to play.
So yeah, it’s a movie they called a game and so what? It’s a movie that you can watch at your own leisure. You choose the way you want to watch it and for how long.
It’s better than a movie because you can walk around in the scenery and make your own viewing rules but worse than a videogame because you can’t do anything in it.
It’s a middle ground that you call inexcusable.
I say it’s a middle ground that has the right to exist and doesn’t affect neither movies nor videogames.
I ask again, what’s so intrinsically wrong about that?
I’m not saying its somehow harmful to gaming, or doesn’t have the right to exist, I’m just saying its a terrible use of the video game medium, and calling it a video game is an insult to gaming as a whole. I suppose we could make up a new genre for it, I do like the sound of un-game, but it is a genre I can’t see any value in.
I liked the “game”/interactive movie.
The story is really good and even if it’s the same as in the free version, the assets aren’t.
All the work on those assets needs to be rewarded imo.
So the game is more like an interavtive movie, what’s so about it?
I always liked the idea of a movie in which you choose the perspective.
An insult? Really, now? I consider many proper videogames more of an insult to videogames than Dear Esther will ever be.
I’m more offended by games that use the potential of videogames in completely deficient or wrong ways than a game that only uses the bare basics of movement in an FPS to tell a story in a beautifully and masterfully rendered world.
If anything, it could be doing gaming a favor by not being one more game that stains its reputation by being a cash grabbing sequel; or an immature, violent and sexist bloody rampage; or just being completely bad and amateurish in every single way.
The only argument you present against it is that it’s not a “real game” based on the reasoning that the concept behind its existence does not warrant it to be a game.
As valid an argument as that may be, it’s still not basis to consider Dear Esther an insult to gaming as a whole, specially considering how objectively well done this game is on a technical level and how limited the engine it uses is.
“Dear Esther was created by Dan Pinchbeck, a researcher based at the University of Portsmouth (UK) in 2007, as part of a project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council to explore experimental game play and storytelling.”
they’ve developed a game that interacts with storytelling.
the whole premise is of the game is to involve the player like a novel does. its always going to be linear, there’s no avoiding that.
so saying they should of made it non-linear is a cop out. if you want something non linear go play Skyrim or any other RPG where you have free choice.
this is a story told threw interactive play. where a novel would approach your imagination to create the visuals, Dear esther is providing you with the writers vision on how the visual should perceive.
like the quote says “experimental”, the dev’s are trying to provide you with a completely out of the box way to use a video game.
so how you find this title to be inexcusable for a game is strikingly bazaar to me.
Video Game
“any of various games that can be played by using an electronic control to move points of light or graphical symbols on the screen of a visual display unit”
Film a. a sequence of images of moving objects photographed by a camera and providing the optical illusion of continuous movement when projected onto a screen
b. a form of entertainment, information, etc, composed of such a sequence of images and shown in a cinema, etc
if your opinion is still somehow fixed that this is movie called a game then you need to call comander keen a movie, bioshock a movie, half life a movie, shit. every game that isn’t or doesn’t somehow provide a role playing aspect to it, a movie.
It’s not ‘unacceptable’ by any stretch of the word, and saying it over and over won’t change that. It’s different and pioneering in terms of video gaming. You might not think it a success, but it’s challenging people’s ideas of what gaming is and pushing the stereotype.
What you seem to be getting annoyed over is the fact that, for whatever reason, you don’t think this is a game. In some ways I’d agree - it’s more of a work of art than a game, but this doesn’t detract from the basic facts that it is an interactive piece of art, and therefore a game.
There have been moments in countless games I’ve played, where I forget entirely about the game and am simply lost in the environment, sounds, music, graphics and more, and simply appreciate the beauty of it. These moments don’t make the game I’m playing any less so, but what Dear Esther has done has taken all of these individual moments and made something incredible out of them. Call it what you will, but this is still a game. Perhaps you lack the right frame of mind to appreciate it. It’s not something you can just turn on and off, but needs more time to understand.
I’ve just finished it though. I thought it was short, too vague and not interactive to the degree that I’d hoped. And yet I’ll remember it tenfold over most of the supposedly good games around these days. Not only is it staggeringly beautiful, but it also has the most painstakingly detailed environments I’ve ever seen in a game. The unique method of storytelling was riveting and this is one game that I can safely say that I’m not disappointed by. It was expensive for what it is, but hell, the guy deserves it far more than most of the other game developers out there.
Most gamers probably won’t like it. It’s slow and you can’t kill people. But I can think of dozens of people who don’t play video games that I’d love to show this to. It’s a stunningly presented interactive work of art, and who can refuse that?
In no way do I say that this game is harmful to the industry proving that as an industry gaming is still learning and developing is nothing bad. Experments happen and they can have all sorts of results. (I know you are talking to someone else but this is for the record)
Dear Esther is an experiment. It failed however, it didn’t prove that video games can tell stories while abandoning tradition gameplay. You see in the process of stripping the game tradition gameplay they also stripped it of what makes games in some ways a superior medium for conveying a story (when I say story I do not specifically refer to narrative, a film makers definition of story is a lot different than what is generally connotated and this statement will be important later).
This is completely and utterly unrelated to the current debate. This is about the subject matter of the story being different. We have not discussed the subject matter of Dear Esther, we are discussing its use as a medium for stories not the specific nature of the story.
You state that there is nothing wrong with Dear Esther not doing what games do and this is true to an extent. There is nothing morally wrong with Dear Esther being like it is but its not common that an entertainment product finds itself doing morally wrong things.
There is however on the basis of function something wrong with Dear Esther. Games as a medium have several advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
-Interactive
-Can succeed with no or poor story
-Can be more social than other mediums
-Consumer will frequently tolerate longer run times than movies (allows for more detail and longer stories)
-Visual, an array of information can be shown in seconds
Disadvantages
-Hard to control, the variation in each way a player plays the game leaves it open for flaws in the experience unforeseen by the artist (this applies to more than you might think because things like pacing can often be disrupted by the fact that players can save and come back days later)
-Dependent on gameplay a games story
-Expectation is for longer run times
There are a lot I missed and really its a shame I don’t go into more detail but you get it and theres really only two things I need to touch on from there.
You suggest that gamers change the way they think of games and the expectations of games, however this also removes some of the advantages games have as medium. A lot of the advantages it has are also disadvantages and such.
The other thing is you say it is an strait upgrade from movies in that you can explore the environment of your own accord. You must remember that this comes at the sacrifice of control of the viewer. Control is the only really valid argument proponents of other mediums over video games have that they don’t count as art. Loss of control is a lot more of a disadvantages that being able to look up close at the scenery of the game. In fact the only real reason Dear Esther’s scenery is so impressive is because of the limitations of video games graphics, ironic no?
Dear Esther isn’t just a movie, its a movie with a gimmick. A gimmick that detracts from the story in the same way that poorly implemented 3D detracts from a movie.
Video games with innovative story telling explore the advantages of video games as a medium, they do not strip it of what individuality it has. As an artist you have to understand the medium you are working with.
my 2 cents after playing:
it looked like it took a lot of work, and was maybe worth the $10 for that alone. but the story was almost nonexistent and the delivery method was arbitrarily vague, veiled, or whatever.
it was basically a demo of Source’s capabilities with some “poetry” thrown in, which would have been really impressive back when source was new and cutting edge
The thing is, if we are strictly adhering to the straight definition of a videogame, then, yes, Dear Esther can’t really be considered one, since it fails to be a game at all, as there doesn’t exist a game to play there.
There isn’t an objective nor any rules to achieve said objective.
There are are no elements of losing or winning.
There are no rewards to gain from playing it and reaching the end.
And games require no story to work.
Yet it uses a real time 3D rendering engine used for videogames.
And a point of view and method of control used for videogames.
And a world that would be no strange in a typical videogame world.
And that’s where this controversy comes from, it’s a videogame that has no business being a videogame and that can make people uncomfortable about it.
Maybe we should stop referring to it as a videogame then.
If we look at it as a work of artistic craftsmanship where the artist(s) chose a videogame engine instead of a sheet of paper or a roll of celluloid, maybe we will stop confusing it for a videogame and feel better about it in the process.
wow its taken 2 pages to come up with a paragraph that sums up how i think about this game. and it wasn’t even my paragraph.
(its still a game, i control the player, game.)
Sometimes conventions need to be questioned and shaken at its core for us to see that only their sum make a specific whole while individually they mean nothing.
I control my car, yet driving a car is not a game.
Just because you control a character in Dear Esther still doesn’t make it a game. It need rules and goals before the sum of its parts turns it into a game.
As it stands, Dear Esther is a short interactive story/experience using a videogame engine.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
