Gameplay Journal #9
* The following post contains spoilers for Fullbright’s Gone Home (2013).
This week we are looking at Gone Home (2013), a first-person exploration game that reveals its narrative through the player’s interactions with household objects located around the environment. Players start Gone Home with little context beyond the player character has returned to an empty home from being away overseas. Throughout the course of the game, the player uncovers clues to the lives and conflicts of the player character’s family, including the reasoning behind the departure of her sister, Sam. The game has been criticized by some for lacking the necessary components to consider it a game, arguing there is no real way to win or lose and the player’s only function is to observe objects (Good, 2019). However, that argument fails to consider the concept of critical play.
“Critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life. These questions can be abstract, such as rethinking cooperation, or winning, or losing; or concrete, involved with content issues such as looking at the U.S. military actions in Cambodia in the early 1970s (Flanagan, 2009).” Critical play opens up the definition of games to the analyzation of alternative, or avant-garde designs. Gone Home’s dark atmosphere (a quiet, empty mansion in a rainstorm) and occasionally foreboding clues may prepare players to expect a horror game or a tense or unpleasant experience, but no danger is ever present and the game ends somewhat happily in the context of the narrative. The story itself unexpectedly reveals familial drama, coming-of-age, and LGBTQ themes and revolves around Sam as the main character, breaking away from the standard of the player character also being a central figure in a game’s plot. By deviating from expected gameplay loops based on pre-conceived notions of aesthetics, genre, and mechanics, Gone Home demonstrates the ability to tell a compelling and progressive story using experimental techniques not found in standard game design.
References
Flanagan, M. (2009). Critical Play: Radical Game Design. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Good, N. (2019, April 23). The Story Behind ‘Gone Home’: Oregon’s Video Game Critical Darling. Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://www.dailyemerald.com/arts-culture/the-story-behind-gone-home-oregon-s-video-game-critical-darling/article_d3e27322-65db-11e9-8529-5f568b227dcd.html
