Author: danicae

Storytelling to End Stereotyping

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Storytelling to End Stereotyping:

The Importance of Choice and Strong Narrative in Oxenfree

By: Danica Ebel

Making Choices Matter

Released in 2015, Oxenfree is a narrative driven, interactive storytelling experience created by independent developer Night School Studios. Similar to other recent indie hits such as Gone Home, Dear Esther, and Firewatch, Oxenfree is a highly-stylized piece of interactive fiction experienced through the perspective of a young woman; in this case, Alex. There is no combat, no puzzle-solving, and the storyline is relatively linear; Oxenfree is all about choices. While you play as Alex, the choices you make through her interactions with the other characters shape who she is as a character, or rather who the player believes she is. Not only that, but the choices the player makes through Alex significantly influence the not-so-final outcome of the game. Later in this post, I will address how the choices presented in Oxenfree lead the titular characters past their initial stereotyped presentations, creating well-rounded and fully developed characters; this is essential especially for the female characters, considering the historical tendency of representations of women in video games to be disappointingly flat and one-dimensional.

But first, choice: what exactly, in a video game, makes player choices significant? Or rather, what makes players believe their choices are significant, and does it matter if they really are or are not? In Narrating Futures: Storyplaying, Agency and Narrative in Video Games Sebastion Domsch focuses on choice and its relationship to narrative in the chapter “Choice and Narrative in Video Games”. Through analysis taken from Salen and Zimmerman, he poses five questions relating to choices in games:

He also adds his own question: “What information does the player have about the effect of her choices?” (Domsch 113). All of these questions and factors make up the anatomy of a player choice, and are often determiners in whether or not a choice is significant, especially that concerning the result of the choice. If a player makes a choice about dialogue—as is often the case in Oxenfree—that appears to have no immediate effect, it feels less impactful than one that has obvious consequences right away (although, this does not mean the choice will not have far-reaching effects later in the game). Choice-based narratives also tend to have player choices build on one another—so a misstep here and there may not completely change the course of the narrative.

In this chapter, Domsch also discusses the different types of choices games often present, and why only certain ones tend to be compelling. He claims, “the choice situations that are perceived as interesting in a structural sense provide only incomplete information…there are conflicting arguments for and against each choice that might have probabilities, but no certainties attached to them” (Domsch 115). If a player knows a choice will not impact their gameplay or if the “correct” choice is evident, that choice is less compelling than one with an air of uncertainty around it. As Brenda Brathwaite points out in Challenges for Game Designers “whenever a player is allowed to exercise choice in a game and that choice affects the outcome of the game, then designers are creating meaning. In order to create choice, there has to be another option that has meaning as well” (Brathwaite 3). This can be extended for choices that have no certain positive or negative outcome—situations where none of the options are necessarily right or wrong, just different with various outcomes.

Choice as the Game Mechanic in Oxenfree

According to Brathwaite, game mechanics work in tandem with game dynamics and aesthetics; she explains:
if mechanics are the rules and dynamics are the play of the game, then aesthetics are typically the fun…designers ask themselves which aesthetic they hope to achieve, define the dynamics that would lead to this feeling, and then create the mechanics to produce the desired dynamics.

(Braithwaite 17)

In Oxenfree, choice is the core mechanic that influences both the dynamics and the aesthetics of the overall gameplay. There is not much else to the game besides walking around the environments, clicking on areas of interest (to examine, or jump if it’s a ledge), and tuning the radio (an interesting aspect of the game, but one that does not relate to choice). The choices the player makes through Alex contribute to an air of uncertainty to the game; some seem insignificant, but as the narrative goes on it becomes less clear which choices do and do not matter. That these choices must all be made in real-time adds an added layer of urgency to gameplay, emphasized by the atmosphere of the gameworld.

Choice is made in Oxenfree entirely through dialogue; some conversations obviously move the narrative along; others seem like filler during long sections of walking, but actually reveal characters’ underlying personalities and influence the results of the narrative. As Alex, the player decides how to respond to dialogue from the other characters. As previously mentioned, in Oxenfree the dialogue choices build on one another towards various narrative outcomes; thus, all choices are important even when it is not evident to the player, but making mistakes every once in a while will not ruin the end result of the game if the player is aiming for a specific outcome.

Five Teenagers Camp Out on an Island

           

           

(A brief summary: Alex and her friends head out to Edward’s Island for a traditional junior class overnight party. Alex brings a radio to tune into strange frequencies rumored to be present on the island. Tuning into these frequencies rips open a time loop that allows the ghosts of people who died on the island years before to possess the teenagers. Alex must find a way to close the time loop and save her friends.) Trailers for Oxenfree can be viewed here.

Besides Alex, there are five major characters in Oxenfree that are influenced by player choice. These are: Jonah (Alex’s step-brother), Michael (Alex’s dead brother), Ren (Alex’s best friend), Clarissa (Alex’s dead brother’s girlfriend), and Nona (Clarissa’s friend).

From left to right: Jonah, Alex, Ren, Nona, Michael, and Clarissa

Michael is dead at the beginning of the game, but the player as Alex can interact with him through flashbacks; these glimpses into Alex’s past not only reveal character backstory, but also allow the player to change the scenarios the led to Michael’s death. The player can only change past events that Alex was actually present for; she cannot influence the events that led to the death of the people who now haunt the island, or save characters she has never met such as Maggie Adler and her friend.

The developers of Oxenfree utilized “environmental storytelling” to place players in the context of the game without having to explain every little detail through dialogue; essentially, they used the game environments to “evoke pre-existing narrative associations” through color palette choices and location design; they also used the environment to “embed narrative information” through the radio anomalies, letters, and plaques scattered throughout the island (Jenkins 178).

Tuning into plaques such as the one above gives the player information about Edward’s Island

These design elements allow the choices and dialogue in Oxenfree to focus on character development and moving the plot forward rather than imparting backstory about the island. While there are elements of backstory present in the dialogue between characters, these all relate to the characters themselves; the player is not forced to sit through backstory dialogue, and they do not have to listen to or seek out the information about the island—although it does behoove them to do so.

How Choice Subverts Stereotypes in Oxenfree

Alex, Jonah, Ren, Nona, Clarissa, and Michael all fulfill traditional high school stereotypes when the player initially meets each of them: Alex is the quirky, nerdy girl; Jonah is the new kid; Ren is the burn-out; Nona is the cool girl; Michael is the all-around golden boy (smart, good at sports, charming); and Clarissa is cast as the resident mean-girl.

There are—of course—events that happen before the beginning of the game that influence the way the characters behave at the start: Michael drowns and Clarissa blames Alex; Jonas’ mom dies and his dad marries Alex’s mom; etc. These are all events the player is unaware of as they begin the game, but as they are revealed through gameplay the player gains a better understanding of each character and why they behave towards Alex in certain ways.

So where does the player exert influence? It’s easy to write the non-playable character off as their initially presented stereotypes, and to play Alex as the “angsty” girl with a dead brother being treated unfairly; these options are available to the player. But the more interesting choices transform the major tropes in the game (a junior class tradition of spending the night on Edward’s Island partying, or a horror story about ghosts trying to possess a bunch of teenagers, among others) into a unique coming-of-age story that turns player expectations on their heads. There are multiple possible endings for each character that allow the player’s choices as Alex to change the outcome of the narrative.

These are limited, of course. Alex cannot die and Clarissa is the only character that can be left behind on the island, for instance. As explained by Gonzalo Frasca in Simulation vs. Narrative “the biggest fallacy of “interactive narrative” is that it pretends to give freedom to the player while maintaining narrative coherence” (Frasca 229). As explained earlier, having actual choice is not nearly as important as giving the illusion of meaningful decisions. Oxenfree allows players to have it both ways; whereas “traditional storytelling normally deals with endings in a binary way”, storytelling in Oxenfree and in video games at large allows for more options for the player (Frasca 226). The storyline and dialogue are carefully constructed to allow for player choice that influences the end of the game while simultaneously maintaining narrative coherence. This dynamic goes in hand with the mechanic of choice: whereas games and stories with binary endings tend to have choices that either obviously have no impact on the larger narrative or are clearly defined as to which choice is “correct” and which choice is “wrong”, games such as Oxenfree allow for more ambiguity and thus more meaning within the story. The player makes almost every dialogue choice for Alex; they influence who she is through these choices and feel attached to their version of Alex as a result.

Thinking Bigger

Regardless of the gender of the player, they only have one character to play as in the gameworld: Alex, who is clearly female—although she does have a gender-neutral name and there is no indication of her sexuality or gender identification. What is interesting about the narrative and choices presented in Oxenfree is of course what they are (a story about a female protagonist saving her friends from ghostly possession with the subplot of forgiving herself for her brother’s death), but also what they are not (there is no romantic subplot for Alex, she never needs saving by a male character, etc.).

Not only are women well-represented in Oxenfree (when it’s all said and done, there are more relevant female characters in the game), but they are represented diversely and with depth. Each character (male or female) has a well thought out backstory, giving meaning to their behavior and the narrative which the player can interact with and influence. As stated by Dmitri Williams et al. in The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games, “the presence, absence or type of portrayal of social groups matter in a diverse society…groups who appear more often in the media are more ‘vital’” (Williams et al. 818). The video game industry lacks notably in the presence and representation of women in their games even though the number of female players almost equals male players at this point. While not all players will identify directly with Alex, the sheer diversity of personality and appearance in the characters allows for a greater chance that a player will have someone they can relate to within Oxenfree. Games such as Oxenfree with strong narratives that allow meaningful player choice and a diverse cast of characters are widening the scope of female representation in video games.

 

Works Cited

Brathwaite, Brenda, and Ian Schreiber. “Part 1: Building Blocks.” Challenges for Game Designers. Boston, MA: Charles River Media, 2009. N. pag. Print.

Domsch, Sebastian. Storyplaying Agency and Narrative in Video Games. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Print. Narrating Futures Storyplaying.

Frasca, Gonzalo. “Chapter 10: Simulation versus Narrative.” The Video Game Theory Reader. Ed. Mark JP Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. 221-37. Print.

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” Games: New Media and Culture (n.d.): 174-86. Print.

“OXENFREE.” Night School Studio. Night School Studio, 13 Sept. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

Steam. Oxenfree. Night School Studio, 2015. Computer Software.

Taylor, T. L. “Chapter 4: Where the Women Are.” Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006. N. pag. Print.

Williams, Dmitri, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory. “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games.” New Media & Society 11.5 (2009): 815-34. Web.

Pokémon Go #5 Final Gameplay, Final Thoughts

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I decided instead of splitting up my time between multiple days/multiple posts for this last blog I would rather play Pokémon Go as I’m sure it was meant to be played: I spent two hours total walking around with my phone doing my best to participate in as many game activities as I possibly could. I mostly spent the time walking around campus and the areas near my apartment (by Safeway).

This experience wasn’t really so different from playing while walking to/between classes on campus – my main way of playing most of the time. I walked around, caught some pokémon, swiped some pokéstops hatched a couple of eggs, and attempted (once again) to use the gyms.

As with previous attempts, I found the gyms rather useless. None of my pokémon are strong enough to fight a gym belonging to a different team, and “training” at my own team’s gyms got boring, to be frank. It would be nice to have a different mechanic for training your pokémon; one that you can do without needing to be in the vicinity of a gym. I think this would increase the overall playability of the game by giving players something to do when they’re not near any locations of interest.

This goes into my next point about playing the game in general and especially in this longer session – off campus or away from more crowded areas of interest, Pokémon Go gets significantly more boring. Pokémon show up constantly on campus and around grocery stores, coffee shops, etc.; on the other hand, in neighborhoods they are notably scarcer. I encounter many more pokémon (usually the same ones over and over) on campus between the library and Lillis than I do on my entire walk home – this seems a little silly, in my opinion, and overall makes the game significantly less playable. I wouldn’t call Eugene “rural” – but what do players who leave in areas with smaller populations and less “stuff” overall do?

I can literally see gyms and pokéstops in 3/4 of the directions from my house, but there isn’t anything near enough to have a significant accumulation of pokémon in the vicinity of my home. I understand wanting to be careful about putting pokéstops and gyms around people’s homes to avoid players lingering where they aren’t wanted, but they could at least try to put more pokémon in these large empty spaces, especially if they want to encourage players to walk through them rather than driving to larger hubs of activity.

For me it isn’t that difficult: I can walk to the Safeway/Starbucks right behind my apartment if I want, or I can hang out on campus for a while. But there is such a lack of variety of pokémon in these areas that it’s already gotten rather boring. I walked around for maybe 30 minutes before losing interest, although I plodded through to get in my last couple of hours of gameplay.

Overall, I feel like there just isn’t enough in Pokémon Go to keep players enthralled for more than a few hours. Perhaps this is different with children, as they have less access to some of these busier areas. I just don’t see the point in looking down at my phone as I walk to class or around my neighborhood; I enjoy walking, and I don’t need a game to entertain me as I do it.

I see the benefits that early players mentioned when faced with backlash; some people have a hard time getting themselves to walk places or do things without extra encouragement. But I think of when the game first came out and we played at Disneyland or Santa Monica Pier; we were playing together, but most of us were more interested in our screens than just having a good time and enjoying the hustle and bustle around us. I actually had to force everyone in my group to just put their phones away and be real people for a while. This wasn’t the case at all a few weeks later, and I think we’re better off for it. Perhaps I don’t actually want Pokémon Go to get better, if I’m being honest. I think we have enough distractions on our phones without having more reasons to constantly check them.

Pokémon Go #4: Catch, Swipe, Tap, Repeat

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(Fourth day playing; I played throughout the day to/from/on campus on my phone)

The mechanics of Pokémon Go are relatively simple; catch pokémon, swipe at pokéstops for items, and “battle” at gyms. Considering one of these three major game components is still relatively uninteresting to me my second time around, it’s difficult to avoid feeling like Pokémon Go just doesn’t have very much to actually do.

On my map, I see gyms in the distance and as I understand it players use their strongest pokémon to battle those left at the gym and claim it for their team. I have only left a pokémon at a gym once, and have never actually “battled” at a gym before; the mechanic never really attracted my interest because it seemed a little silly with the premise of how it works.

For one, you have to get close enough to the gym to participate in the activities associated with it; this is often rather inconvenient, and while you can click on them from a distance there isn’t much you can do without being “in range” (a message pops up saying “This gym is too far away”). You can scroll through the pokémon at the gym, see their levels and who left them there, but other than that there isn’t anything else to do from a distance.

The battling component leaves something to be desired, as well. It has something to do with tapping rather than actual battling found in traditional pokémon games; not to mention you’re only able to battle at gyms and not with your friends or other players. Pokémon Go falls short as an augmented reality game in this way for me; it seems like the premise of the game is to get people outside, walking around, and socializing. Not being able to battle with friends removes a social aspect of the game that could really contribute to drawing players in for continuous play.

To be frank: the catch (pokémon), swipe (pokéstops), tap (gyms), repeat nature of Pokémon Go‘s gameplay gets old. The mechanics simply aren’t interesting enough to hold the attention of mature players who have played traditional Pokémon games in the past; it lacks a lot of what makes those games fun while attempting to make the player feel like a trainer in real life – what’s missing are the components that would make the player feel that way; being a trainer seems like it should be more than walking around catching the same pokémon over and over everyday. Players can’t even train their pokémon beyond giving them candy, as far as I can tell. Pokémon Go has a ways to go to live up to the promises conveyed to players in the initial launch trailers.

Pokémon Go #3 The One Where I Actually Talk About Playing the Game

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(Third day of playing; played throughout the day on campus and around Safeway near my apartment on my phone)

I guess I could get around to discussing actually playing the game rather than my thoughts on the overall mechanics, changes, etc. Admittedly, at first it was fun to jump back into Pokémon Go. I had already played and it wasn’t all that different, so it was relatively easy to pick up where I left off without the learning curve of being a new player or the frustration of starting over completely.

I was a bit more self-conscious about playing now than I was when the game initially launched and it seemed like everyone was playing, though. Back then I could always pick other players out of a crowd; now I feel like I’m the only person on campus who plays – obviously not true, as I see gym colors change all the time, but it’s the feeling I get.

Having new pokémon to catch is fun, but it didn’t take long for me to find all of the common first and second generation pokémon that I hadn’t already caught in California when I played the first time. There were very few “shadows” indicating a pokémon I hadn’t caught before by my third day playing the game, which is frustrating considering the short amount of time it took for me to accomplish it. When I look at my pokédex it indicates that I haven’t even seen half of the pokémon released through the game, even after playing in many distinct areas in two different states (I’ve seen 99 out of 247, and have only caught 84 out of the 99 I’ve seen).

It’s a bit frustrating to play a game where the goal is to “catch them all” that simultaneously making it feel impossible to do so. This could be solved by adding the trading mechanic shown in trailers but notoriously absent from the game almost a year after launch. While Nintendo and Niantic have successfully made “minds, bodies, and social interaction…increasingly “occupied” by Nintendo activities and purchases” (in this case, Pokémon) through their app, their desire to launch the product quickly seems to have leeched it of the soul that the traditional handheld games possessed (Kline 126).

Bringing Pokémon to our phones in an augmented reality experience makes it so Nintendo (and by extension Niantic) can bring their game into lives in an unprecedented way. While there have been successful – and likely better – augmented reality games in the past, none have been so “above all profitable for the colonizer” with “sensational virtual aggression and simple navigational pleasures” (Kline 127). Pokémon Go was brilliantly marketed, and felt new enough to attract masses of players on its first launch; even after such huge initial success, the app feels like its still struggling. I’m not quite tired of it – yet – but we’ll see how long that takes.

Pokémon Go #2: So, What’s New?

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(Played on campus throughout the day on my phone)

Adding more pokémon to Pokémon Go is all well and good, but it can only draw players back in for so long. So what did Niantic change about the actual mechanics of the game since the initial successful-yet-short-lived launch, and is the game really any better?

Mechanically speaking, I can’t see a lot that has changed significantly since I played last, but there are some small details that drew me back in. The locating feature is great, and really has improved upon the old system of just showing the pokémon (or their outline) and how far away they are from the player’s location; while the distance is still represented by footprints, images now accompany the pokémon and their distance so you can see where you need to go to find them. (They did have a hiccup in between where there was no distance indicator, which made headlines at the time due to player frustration with the removal of the feature).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the “nearby” system has improved significantly, but other than that very little seems to have changed. There are definitely more warning messages about staying out of dangerous places and not driving while playing…

All of which are great, considering that kids do play the game…although it seems a little ridiculous that Niantic has to tell adults to have common sense and not drive while playing.

I also enjoy the added avatar customization, and being able to pick a pokémon to “walk” with you – it’s great that Niantic recognized the importance of the avatar, even if the options are a bit limited.

I did revisit the avatar customization on my second day of playing the game, and found that I rather enjoyed some of the new outfit options that weren’t available the first time I downloaded the app (there were more options that you could buy, as well, but I wasn’t about to spend real money on the app). I spent some time fiddling with the outfit combinations, but it seems like the game designers working on the clothing didn’t really consider what “goes together” when determining the free v. paid options (although this could be another tactic to make players want to buy the locked clothing items).

Here is where I discovered the “buddy” option – I do enjoy this new feature, as it allows players to showcase their favorite pokémon with their avatar. But it is annoying that the pokémon doesn’t “walk” with your avatar on the in-game map (although, I am just being a bit nit-picky there).

The limited options for customization might be a bit more important if interaction between players was more emphasized in-game, since avatars are “a marker of player identity”; the more we know that others will see our avatar, the more likely we’re going to be desirous of customization (Where the Women Are 104). Pokémon Go doesn’t really seem to fit in the traditional model when thinking about avatars, though, since it is an augmented reality game and players are meant to be feeling as if their actual bodies are participating in the gameworld.

Pokémon Go #1: This Looks a Little Familiar

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In Electronic Frontiers: Branding the “Nintendo Generation” (1985-1990) the author discusses how “Nintendo colonizes its child players” and makes their “attention, time, desires, ambitions, and fantasies become attached to the Nintendo world” (Kline 126). While the piece focuses on how Nintendo did this with the Mario series, I think the same can be said about what Nintendo did with Pokémon, too. While the “Nintendo Generation” is classified from 1985-1990, the following ten-fifteen years saw the rise of Pokémon; with Pokémon Go, Nintendo is trying to market to older players the same way they used to market to children, banking on nostalgia to get us to play. (Admittedly, Nintendo isn’t the only group that owns Pokémon, but the brand is generally associated with Nintendo).

I’ll admit I bought into the Pokémon Go craze when the app initially launched; the nostalgia of revisiting a much beloved childhood series with a fresh perspective was difficult to resist at the time. It almost feels like cheating that I’ve played the game before and could begin where I left off, but it was nice to not have to start from scratch again. Still, before I can go into what I think of the game now I believe it is essential to reflect on what drew me to the game at first, and why I stopped so quickly after starting.

Nintendo’s marketing plan for Pokémon Go was great, but in the end they failed to create the app that was promised. The commercial showed all sorts of features (trading, battling with friends, etc.) that weren’t actually present in the app; these missing features are what would have likely made the game worth playing for longer than a month.

What we did get simply got boring after the novelty and nostalgia wore off. Gyms were annoying, there was no way to train your pokémon, and it was often difficult to find new or interesting pokémon without going to ridiculous lengths. I got tired of staring at my phone while walking around, watching my battery drain for a game that wasn’t actually that fun when I broke it down to mechanics.

Still, the craze was interesting to watch – especially after I stopped playing. It became a game to pick out people who were playing the game rather than talking to the group they were with (they were always easy to spot, especially in crowded places). Reading all of the sensationalist headlines in the media held some amusement, as well – really, it seemed like the hype surrounding the game held my attention more than the app itself.

I am interested in seeing what’s changed since I previously played; it has been about half a year after all. I suppose we’ll see if Pokémon Go manages to catch my interest any more this time around!

(This blog post represents my first play session, although I didn’t discuss actual gameplay all that much. I played on my phone throughout the day on campus).

W.O.W. #6 – Final Explorations

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I spent my last hour with World of Warcraft trying to see as much as I could. I returned to Stormwind, delved a bit deeper into Westfall, and tried to just experience as much of the world as possible (without dying).

I even went to Dun Morogh (without any quest compelling me to) just to see what it was like in that area; it didn’t disappoint!

If there’s one thing I can appreciate about World of Warcraft, it’s the sheer variety in the aesthetics of the gameworld. The color palette is extensive, there are a variety of enemies (even I can see that in my limited gameplay), and the world still feels alive even when I’m not around other players.

I do still take issue with the narrative limitations, though. I can see now that the game compels players to complete quests and earn experience so they can safely enter new areas. The further I delved into Westfall, the higher the enemy levels were – this effectively forced me to turn around so I wouldn’t die. Strangely, this wasn’t true of Dun Morogh – I was perfectly safe there and the enemies were all lower leveled. This mechanic forces players to interact with the (very loose) narrative to gain significant amounts of experience, unless they just want to battle random enemies all day for experience.

Still, these interactions with the narrative through quests aren’t all that compelling. I’m a narratively driven player and even I found myself skimming over the backstory given in the quest dialogue. The more I played, the less significant these NPC interactions were as I realized that they all wanted essentially the same things: kill something, meet/talk to someone, bring them something, or some combination of the three.

The world may be pretty, the lore rich, and the enemies diverse but World of Warcraft is too repetitive to hold my attention for long. Narrative driven, single player games are often critiqued for repetitive gameplay – why don’t MMORPGs receive the same level of criticism? I feel like there must be some sort of bridge, some way to make these sorts of games both interesting narratively and also open enough for players to mold their own experience.

All in all, I don’t think I will be returning to World of Warcraft on my own. Perhaps it’s the lack of narrative structure, or perhaps it’s my disinterest in interacting with other players is what keeps me from enjoying the game. Either way, World of Warcraft was too monotonous an experience for me to enjoy, although it was interesting to play a game with so much hype and see for myself what the experience is like.

(Game session was 1 hour, played at home on my laptop)

W.O.W. #5 – Struggling With Monotony

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In this play through, I tried to complete two quests together; exploring a mine and finding out what happened to some murdered/missing soldiers in Stormwind. I successfully managed the mine (all that I really needed to do was walk a few steps in), but the village I was supposed to explore to find the soldiers was overrun with frog creatures that I couldn’t manage to fight all at once.

 (I hate these things)

Seriously, though – what is up with not being able to cast spells while I’m moving? How am I supposed to fight multiple enemies at once if I can’t simultaneously get out of their range and hit them with spells? This game mechanic really bothers me.

I’ll be honest here: I’m really not compelled to continue playing W.O.W. at this point. The deeper I delve into the game, the more lackluster everything seems. I find this disappointing because I know there is so much of the gameworld I haven’t experienced, but the issue is I’m not compelled to experience it; the game isn’t drawing me in as it does other players. I find it more interesting than Zork by a long shot, but not as compelling as narrative-driven games like Tomb Raider or even Pokemon.

This is apparently the gameworld in its entirety thus far; I have seen very little of it (only one major city, some mines, a heck of a lot of forest, and the Westfall border area). I feel like I’m missing something, some key element that makes others find this game so enthralling. Either way, my experience of this game has been more akin to work than play – I find myself “playing” the game because I have to, not for the enjoyment of it.

Callois defines play as both “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often money” as well as “a free and voluntary activity, a source of joy and amusement” in his essay The Definition of Play and The Classification of Games (Callois 83). I find the former applies to my World of Warcraft experience much more than the latter – although I don’t feel like time spent in amusement is necessarily wasted. It’s difficult to envision the mentality of players who feel differently, who think that the game is purely fun and not a waste of time slogging through repetitive activities. Still, I can see why others might enjoy this game. From what I can tell so far, it just isn’t for me.

(Game session was 1 hour, completed on my laptop at home)

W.O.W. #4 – The One Thing I Like About the Game so Far

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I spent this hour trying to figure out who killed two people in a horse drawn cart on the edge of the border of Westfall, with the “help” (if you could call it that) of some nearby homeless people. This quest – among others – made me consider the game-world of W.O.W. more closely .

If there’s one thing the creators of W.O.W. did well, it was create a vibrant world. I saw this in my transition from Stormwind to Westfall; the color palette and look of the land completely differed in the two places.

 Goldshire

 Westfall Border

World of Warcraft is a game “controlled by the player as they explore the game space and unlock its secrets”; quests are everywhere in the world, but the player isn’t compelled to complete them all and can cherry-pick their preferences (Jenkins 182). While the quests themselves are a bit lackluster, the narrative space in which they exist is staggering in scope.

For me, the interest in the game came out of the lore provided in the text explaining the quests. Through the characters that already exist in the game world (the AI I suppose? Or the NPCs) as well as the structure of the world itself the creators of W.O.W. have successfully put together “narratively compelling spaces – even if the gameplay is lackluster in my opinion (Jenkins 176).

The interesting world yet lackluster gameplay leads to the issue that I’m finding more and more as I play: balance. The creators of W.O.W. do a great job of “environmental storytelling” through the gameworld and the NPCs – but is enough to compel the player to want to continue playing (Jenkins 177). I know W.O.W. has a complex and rich lore, and that as I play I can continue to uncover it; unfortunately, the lack of balance between gameplay and narrative. Here is where I feel W.O.W. struggles, the designers have an issue with “trying to determine how much plot will create a compelling framework and how much freedom players can enjoy at a local level without…derailing the larger narrative” (Jenkins 181). In a MMORPG such as World of Warcraft, this balance is different because you have many players in the same world, at the same time, with many different interests and reasons for playing. This creates a narrative vacuum for game designers, in my opinion. They have to try to create a game that appeals to all four types of players categorized by Bartle, a feat I’m not sure is entirely possible.

Yes, I think the lore surrounding W.O.W. is interesting, but the first few hours of gameplay haven’t captured my interest enough to compel to continue to discover and understand the gameworld. I can’t explore to my heart’s content without being killed by higher-level enemies; I can complete quests and achieve in-game experience, but the repetitive-ness and monotony in doing so make it feel more like a chore than fun.

(Gameplay session was 1 hour, completed at home on my laptop)

W.O.W. #3 – Yes, I Do Start Playing (but do I like it?)

Posted on by danicae

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering over character customization in World of Warcraft, but now I’ll get into my actual experience playing the game. In my first play-through, I stayed in the Goldshire area and completed many of the small initial quests that I’m sure all new players go through. Even when given the opportunity to leave on the gryphon, I stayed to complete the oddly comical quests associated with the families on the nearby farms.

At first, I found the world interesting. It was bright, full of color, and I felt at liberty to go pretty much anywhere. Here is where the explorer/spade side of me and the achiever/diamond side came into conflict. I wanted to explore the map and see how much variety there was to the world, but I also had a drive to complete any quest assigned to me. That’s why I spent so much time in the area around Goldshire, trying to complete all the tasks in that area before moving on to the next one (an impossible goal, I later found out).

This led to a whole lot of grinding; I haven’t made it very far into the game, but from what I can see most of the early quests are kill this many things, fetch this many objects, deliver this thing to this person, and repeat. To be frank, I found it all rather tedious and boring. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t care to be social with other players, but I completed these quests, got my rewards, obtained a new repetitive goal, and consistently wondered why exactly I was doing all of this. What’s the point? Where is my larger objective?

To be fair, the quest descriptions are interesting. They give you the why, how, where, etc. of your quest, and plenty of excess information concerning the world should the player choose to look. So far, reading these snippets of information has been the driving force in completing each successive quest, especially those that are sequential and relate to one another. But will it be enough to keep me interested?

I feel like I’m a picky player sometimes, but perhaps that’s normal. I know I tend to need either a compelling narrative to drive my gameplay, or interesting puzzles that capture my attention to keep me invested in a game. Perhaps the style of W.O.W. just won’t appeal to me, or (hopefully) it will get better as I play.

(Game session was 1 hour, completed at home on my laptop)