If I had to write a review of Gone Home today, I'd probably mention the moment the person I played it with tried to put ice-cream into the microwave.
If I had to rate Gone Home today, I would probably give it a bonus point for that scene. It's not something intended by the developers, but it made me laugh. It improved my experience.
I may not be good at it, but each time I tried to write a movie review, I succeeded.
When I say 'I succeeded', I mean that I had a clear idea of what should be in it and that I succeeded in writing it, the way I wanted to write it. The review may not be a good one, but I wrote it successfully.
So, when I first tried to write a videogame review, I thought it'd be easy. As easy as it was for movies.
And guess what : It wasn't.
I can take notes easily. I can make a draft with ideas. But it seems that I can't write an actual article or review about a videogame. The first time it happened, I wanted to write about starseed pilgrim, which is an exploration platform game about gardening. In this game, you plant seeds, and as they grow, you can climb on them to discover the world. I deeply wanted to talk about it, but everytime I started to write something down, I felt like I didn't play the game enough to write about about it.
And maybe it was true ? The way Starseed pilgrim works is that you have to explore the world to discover new levels in the order you want, and each level has a small (and hard) objective. And so, I felt like I discovered all the levels. But how could I be sure ?
I definitely knew I didn't finish the game yet, because some objectives were too hard for me. But I was thinking that « if I played every levels, I should be able to write about the game ».
But what if by completing the missing objectives, something would be unlocked.. A new level maybe ? Something that could change the whole game possibly ? Also, although I explored the world without finding a new level for hours, maybe there is a level hiding somewhere that just I didn't find yet...
Unlikely ? Yes ! But possible. How to be sure ? You can't be sure.
And it's not just Starseed pilgrim (although the exploration side of the game where you're just looking around for new levels makes it even more explicit, I think). How can you be sure that you finished a game in general ? What is « finishing a game » ? Is it even possible ? Of course, you don't need to finish a game to talk about it but... Do you know what you played yet though ?
Of course some games have an ending screen with « THE END » written in capital letters. But that's not the case for all games. Luftrausers, for example, is an arcade shooter game in which, each time you die, you can rebuild your ship by assemblating its three parts, which changes the gameplay. How do you finish this game ? By unlocking every possible part of the ship ? So... You don't need to actuallly play with the final part you unlock ? Or Playing with every possible combinaison (they all have their own name, which is kinda cool) ? But how much time ? Sometime in this game, you die in less than 15 seconds.. Would 15 seconds per combinaison be enough to say « I've played the whole game » ?
And, for games that does have a propper ending : seeing « THE END » written in capital letters doesn't necessarily mean you've seen everything the game has to show. What about alternative endings ? What about secrets ? Games have secrets ! And even if you've seen all the endings and all the secrets, how can you be sure there's not one that you didn't see ? You didn't make the game, you don't know what is in it exactly.
And even if you did make the game : Do you know all the bugs and glitches your game has ? What if a bug changes the whole game ? I mean : okay, it's unlikely, but it happened before, Quake developpers didn't expect to create a rocket-jump mechanic that would inspire other creators.
And EVEN if you KNEW that you discovered everything in the game. You didn't see every possible thing that the game can show. You didn't see every screenshot the game can create, because games are interactive. In a 3D game with freely movable camera, you can create an infinite number of images. What if there's something interresting point of view to discover ? Maybe you can superpose two objects by being in a particular position with a particular camera angle and create something interesting or fun ?
Plus you have action to do, in any order you want, with the point of view of your choice... Can you say you finished Gone Home if you didn't throw the ice cream into the microwave to see if it does something ? (It does not.)
And I guess that may be why so many people argue that text-based games are 'not really games'. In those games (or most of them), you can see everything the game has to show. You can store every possible screenshot on your computer, because those games are limited to basic choices and static screens or cinematics.
But, does it matter to see everything in a game ?
Actually, I played a game that tried to awnser my question.
Her story is a bit like a text-based game. It's a well dressed text-based game, but if you observe the mechanics closely, it feels a lot like a text-based game. Except it's videos, not texts. Of course.
If you didn't play it : Her story is a game that let you the access to a database of video clips from fictional police interviews. You type words in a program to search videos, and at each research, you only get the 5 first videos in the chronological order, so you have to make more and more precise researchs to find videos you didn't see yet. And as you see more and more videos of hannah Smith speaking, you will get to know her and to know her story.
What's interresting for us with this game is the way it ends. The game basically tells you « the game will be finished when you'll feel you know enough about Hannah Smith ». And, although there is a point where the game says « I think you know enough now, you can quit », it also says « but if you wanna know a little more, just keep watching videos ».
And this made me kind of crazy, actually. « Do I know enough » ? What is « enough » ?
I just kept researching videos, trying to know more. I wanted to play until I finally watched all the videos. Until I've seen all the photograms. Because.. Hey ! It's a text-based game, mechanically, and if I can see every screenshot possible for the game to create, so maybe I should ?
But you can't actually see every screenshot posible. You can't find every video in the database. Or at least the game is made so that if you do so, you feel like an idiot. (I did so.)
If you want to see all the 271 videos of Her story, you have to cheat. The game has a feature when you ''finish'' the game'' : you can make a random research by typing a command in the program.
So, if you want to see the last videos, you have to type the random research command enough time to find those last videos, where annah says pretty much nothing, or a few words, which made it impossible to search without cheating, because of the 5 first results rule.
For me, who just wanted to see everything the game could show, this just sounded like « Bravo. You've seen it all. Happy ? ». And I wasn't happy, I wasted my time, I didn't know anything more, Hannah smith litterally said nothing in those videos. I shoud have quit the game when I felt I knew enough.
So, can someone write about Her story if he didn't look for all the videos and stopped looking when he knew enough ? Of course. And of course you can write about a game without even finishing it.
But no matter what, your writitngs will be based on your experience on the game. I'd write about Her Story differently if I stopped playing it at the moment the game told me I knew enough. I have a special relationship with the game, now. I would not have known that the last videos are impossible to see without cheating if I didn't look for those videos. That's a part of the game, it's an interresting choice actually. It's worth talking about it. But few people experienced it.
Knowing that, it's difficult to even write about a game : What if you write about a game, saying it's extremely feminist, while actually you didn't play that secret super sexist ending that turns everything in the game said before into sexism bullshit for some reason ? No matter what you do, you can't know everything a game has to offer.
Let's picture a very theorical thing : Suppose that I give you a controller and put you in front of a TV. Eventually you'll end up doing stuff with the controller. Suppose that each time you make an input with the controller, something happens on the screen. Suppose that what's on the screen looks super realistic and you think it's an amazing game and will probably write about it, or talk about it to everyone.
And finally, suppose that the controller was actually unplugged without you knowing it. Suppose that it was actually a movie and everytime you thought the movement on the screen was a feedback for your inputs, but in fact it was a pure conïncidence ?
Okay, it's unlikely... But still, possibile.
So, would you be wrong to think it was an amazing experience ? Of course not ! You enjoyed it ? That's a good experience then.
Would you be wrong to think it's a good game ? I guess so. I mean, anyone who will play the game after you will make different inputs and notice that there's no link between what they do and what happens on screen. They'll just experience it as a movie while you experienced it as a great game. And if you play again you'll realise that either. But still, when you played it the first time, you experienced it as a game.
This « experience of the player vs actual game» thing has been discussed already of course. It comes really often in the debate about games like heavy rain, walking dead series or actually anything with multiple ending and moral choices. The thing with those games is that, really often, the choices you make doesn't really have much repercussion on the game story. So once again people would argue that it's « not a real game », Which basically means « It's not infinite enough ».
But what those games do in reality is that they focus mostly on the first time experience of the player. If you play the game again, you might discover the tricks and it might destroy your first experience. But the first time you play, you can't know what happens when you make other choices. You trust the creator and think the choices must be meaningful. And for those games it's actually all that matters. Wheather or not they are meaningful is not important, what's important is that the player think it is meaningful. Just like the theorical thing I mentioned earlier : if you don't know it's a movie, then it's a game.
Those multiple endings games, those « movies with unplugged controller ». They make you feel super good the first time you play. The first time you « finish » them.
And so : can you write about those game if you don't know « the controller is unplugged », if you don't know some choices are not meaningful ?
Yes you can !
Actually what all this non-sense article means is that, while it's super hard to write about a game, because you can't, because you will only talk about your relationship with that game...
...It's really interresting to read someone writing about a game. Every article about a game will talk about a specific experience of that game that the writter happened to enjoy. You won't have the same and it will be worth to talk about your experience, which will be different. Maybe slightly different, but different.
I'd love you all to talk to me about the games you love and the special relationship you had with them. I'd love game journalist to not only rate the games for what they are, but for what the felt like. Because every game is special for every special person. Nobody experienced games the same way and every bad game is one player away to be experienced as best game ever.
Every game is one ice-cream and microwave away to become a special memory.