Its story is emotional but some players may wonder why they have to bother controlling the protagonist. Emotion in such games must be experienced directly by the player as a result of their actions, and Gone Home doesn’t do this. It is necessary for writers of story exploration games to go beyond the level of emotion felt when watching a favourite TV show or reading a book. If the player only finds a few of the endings or is not interested in big philosophical topics, though, they may just be confused by the game rather than involved. This can invoke genuine existential questioning in the player about the choices they make in real life. You can make your own choices about what path to follow through the game, but are simultaneously told that you have no free will. The Stanley Parable creates emotion using the player’s own mind. The emotions caused are on level with those you might feel watching a sad movie, but your involvement doesn’t contribute to them at all. You are playing as a character who already has set values and interests and relationships that the player doesn’t share. Many moments are relatable and very touching, but you still witness them as a bystander. Playing through the game reveals the problems her family has been struggling with in secret for a long time. It begins when the protagonist returns home from a summer vacation to find her house empty and her parents and sister gone. Gone Home uses plot effectively to induce emotion. One of the goals of games in the story exploration genre is to invoke emotional or personal reflection via the story itself. The Stanley Parable allows the player to shape the experiences of their playthrough in a way that doesn’t strictly relate to completionism, and this makes for a truly interactive game. Gone Home has a moving plot, but the player can become impatient when they don’t discover anything of interest for a long time and the game can feel like a chore, something that could easily be viewed on a screen instead. This affects the perception of the game – if you obey the narrator your first time through, you get a boring but positive ending, and this will shape your interpretation of the rest of the game differently than if you completely disobey the narrator at first and end up in one of many surreal, existential positions you will experience. If you deviate from what the narrator tells you to do, the narrator becomes frustrated but must follow you as you choose your own path. The storyline follows the protagonist, Stanley, around as a narrator attempts to guide him through the story. It comes with multiple possible endings, some of which a player might not even discover until they’ve played the game a few times through. The order in which you discover the various ‘endings’ it supplies is entirely up to the choices you make throughout the game. The Stanley Parable, on the other hand, has an entirely nonlinear plot. If you miss a hidden item, you will learn less about the story, but there is nothing you can do to change its outcome. You can explore any room you choose but in many cases a key or code that will take you to the next section of the house is in the last room you visit. This is where many criticisms of Gone Home come in – you move through the story in a linear way (which is of course not unheard of in video games, but it creates a weakness when you are doing little else but move through a story). The player must have some control over story progression or else it ceases to be an interactive experience. For a lot of players, this means the experience is no different from sitting back and watching a movie this is why it’s important that the plot be immersive. PlotĪlmost every game in existence has a plot, and the plot is the entire point of story exploration games. Rather than deciding whether or not story exploration games are ‘real games,’ it could be more interesting to figure out what differentiates story exploration games from movies or TV shows. This brings attention to a different question about these games. The Stanley Parable has not dealt with the same criticisms – perhaps because it didn’t reach the same level of popularity as Gone Home did, but also perhaps because of its features. However, Gone Home has faced scrutiny from the more hardcore crowd who don’t think it’s a real game. More like interactive stories than action-packed RPGs, story exploration games like Gone Home and The Stanley Parable have captured the hearts of casual gamers across the world. Recently, story exploration has emerged as a fully fledged genre. Games such as Phoenix Wright and LA Noire where gameplay takes a backseat to story have existed for a while – games where there is no real punishment for losing and you only complete minor challenges to move forward in the story. Gone Home and The Stanley Parable: Story Exploration and Agency
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