”We have no idea yet how people ‘read’ video games, what meanings they make from them. Still less do we know how people will ‘read’ them in the future.” - James Paul Gee
“The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.” ― Marcel Proust
Preparing for entry to another virtual world
A few weeks
ago, I used a computer game primarily as a stimulus for creative writing. I’m
becoming increasingly interested in using story-led – predominantly ‘indie’ –
video games that allow us to participate in and ‘inhabit’ narratives that we
might not encounter in other genres, or more commercial games. I introduced you
to another game, ParadisPerdus
(english translated: ‘Lost Paradises’).
‘The game is about not belonging. You are the bad guy, you are killing everything you touch. The world you are in is beautiful and
green, but the moment you get into it, you start infecting everything, and the world starts decaying, until it eventually ceases to exist. You can choose to
exit the world, and then it will heal
itself, but then you don’t get to enjoy it of course, because you’re not there any more.’
GAME PLAY
‘Reading’ the game’s opening screen,
including the portal
i take control of the game. The player begins the game
stood in front of the above screen. I posed the question: ‘So, where am I?’
‘somewhere green’
’A dark, evil
world’
’Somewhere like
Proteus’
‘Various ‘lands’
‘wonderland’
’futureland’
‘diamondland’
‘Somewhere
habitable – you can hear a bird’
‘a maths land –
everything is made of shapes’.
*Entering the portal, i was transported to a new world,
through a cave.*
Exploring the world.
‘tranquil’,
‘serene’, ‘magical’, ‘peaceful’, ‘non-active’.
you are like a
walking disease’,
‘it doesn’t want
you to walk back’,
‘You’re destroying the Earth’
Discolouration of the virtual
landscape following exploration, giving clues to the game’s meaning.
‘Humanity – it’s the most destructive
thing on the planet.’
‘Whatever we touch falls apart.’
‘Yeah, global warming!.. The environment…
Petrol!’
‘It’s trying to say
‘Don’t go back in life. Keep moving on,
from the past…’
Analyzes
‘The only true journey wouldn’t be to
go towards new landscapes, but to have different eyes.’ – Marcel Proust
This prompted further discussion,
centred around the meaning of the quote: ‘It
means that you need to look at things in different ways’, ‘Or maybe it
means looking at things from other
people’s points of view – through their eyes’. This continued into a short discussion about
metaphor, which linked nicely to the symbolic and metaphorical nature of the
game.
‘some games make you want to go out
and do something in the real world’ and ‘games can make you look at something
in a different way’.
Quit.
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