Response:
For this Critical Play, I played Places by JarnoLV (aka JLV, aka Ktch). It is a video game that I played within my web browser and it is quite literally a walking simulator, where there doesn’t seem to be much narrative drive, but instead purely exploration through walking and running around the places.
The “game” is hosted on a website where you can either play the “levels” (aka places) in your web browser or download them locally. In the places, you are a first person character without a body that can move in all directions, sprint, and jump. The places all have a similar ambience, appearing to be gorgeous outdoor areas in some post-apocalyptic world. The places are finite areas with borders that you can run into. The art has a very special style, it reminds me of oil paintings. There is no music, but instead ambient sounds like crickets, wind, and more. The different types of ground make different sounds as you run over them, for instance in place 5, there are frozen crops that make a crunch when you jump on them. Essentially, there is no direct narrative, but through the interactions with different places, we are able to experience moments that feel like they go together. By just walking around these worlds, we can appreciate their beauty and it raises a natural curiosity about what we are doing here. While playing around, since I can only walk and explore, I began spinning a narrative in my head. I think that’s a large part of what Places is about. You get to make stuff up as you go. Without direction, the story can be whatever you want it to be. For instance, sketch 1 is called “Post Apoc Sketch”, while the rest of them seem to follow the naming conventions of “Place [Number]” or “Sketch [Number]”. I took this as the first place in the series is post apocalypse, so the rest must be as well. Thus, we were the remnants of an old world, exploring the run down, yet beautiful wilderness of a world without humans. It was peaceful and eerie. Walking tells the story by letting us explore, grow in curiosity, and ultimately make both discoveries, and more importantly for Places, assumptions.
This game felt more like an art experience than a playable game at times. It was beautiful and serine, but not very fun. We’ve talked about in past readings how a game must have a system, and although there was a way to move around the worlds in Places, there wasn’t truly a system. And although some games can meet the pitfalls of being a set story with the title of “game” slapped over it, this was a complete 180 where there was an explorable world but no story at all. There is no ending, so it’s neither zero sum or non-zero sum. There are no rules, and no objectives. It clearly leans into exploration as a type of fun. While I did not regret my few hours spent exploring these places, and truly did appreciate the beauty of the art, I would not play this game again.
Ethics:
As previously stated in this response, the game Places does not have very many mechanics. The character can only move around, and cannot grab, hit, talk, or interact much with anything – especially not other sentient beings since there are none. This means that there is no room for violence at all. Even if I wanted to be violent, it is impossible in this game. In sketch 1 I even climbed to the highest point and threw myself off the hill but there was no damage. In sketch 5 I tried going underwater in the lake but the character floats and is unable to drown. While I specifically tried these things to test the availability of violence, I would not normally do these actions. So we have a game where violence is impossible, and honestly it wasn’t too noticeable. I was more concerned about the lack of story than whether I could hit something or someone. We don’t need to fight anyone in this game, instead we just appreciate the art in front of us.
Compared to games that need violence like DnD, it is much more relaxing but not as engaging. While games don’t need fighting to be engaging, it offers a clear situation where someone wins, someone loses, and there is a system where we can compete – things that we just can’t help but find fun. Some violence can even be funny, like in our section DnD game where we are actively trying NOT to be violent, when we fail and violence occurs, it acts as comic relief there, demonstrating that violence doesn’t have to be evil all the time. So in Places where there isn’t much of anything going on, if there had been some violence, it could have made the game more interesting. Although I would have just asked for some basic narrative first, like finding notes in the wilderness, or some kind of monolog from the playable character.
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