Looking back on a decade of emotional experiences and simulated strolls

By Jon Bailes

Daring to be different is often met that’s as true in videogames as it is Unfamiliar concepts may be turned away or interrogated in the belief they hide was never more true than ten years ago, brought a wave of games that seemed to of genre and interactivity in favour of experiences. Some were derided as accused of failing to meet arbitrary that this game existed,” creative This pushback was a result of zero- “If there were games that were not existential threat to games they This audience thought they were something more like Portal, but supposed to be anything of the they were like, ‘This is a shitty right, it is a shitty puzzle be clearer about what to constitutes a game. But like them or not, old debates about games’ ability to emotional responses – and the pivotal 2012, when a trio of developers decided to roses. And, detractors aside, it turned out equally ready for a sniff. One fresh-faced into the fray that year was Giant Sparrow, The Unfinished Swan, a game where the is applying paint to your otherwise- “There was a significant segment of making a game where the what to expect.” Dan same year, as his studio as a commercial product. that truly embodied Outer Hebridean island Pinchbeck sees it, the example of the now outrage. As such, he “Some of the stuff no dialogue to be had,” convincing. “Because of firstperson games; this ‘You hate games, Pinchbeck is old enough had been back in the absolutely barking mad,” games to be a medium that with suspicion – something any other part of life. by overzealous gatekeepers, unseemly motives. That when the indie boom reject established rules more contemplative ‘walking simulators’, or standards of what director Ian Dallas tells us. sum thinking, he reckons – about challenge, that was an loved” – and of expectation. getting a puzzle game, perhaps The Unfinished Swan was never sort. “When they played it, puzzle game’,” Dallas says. “You’re game. Moving forward, I’ve tried to expect, but that’s hard when we’re these titles capsized tell stories or evoke year in this shift was stop and smell the plenty of players were company that strolled with its flagship title most taxing interaction invisible surroundings. players who were angry whole idea is you have no idea Pinchbeck met similar resistance that The Chinese Room released Dear Esther No surprise, perhaps – here was a game the moniker, as you wandered an heading towards your narrated fate. As reaction to its release was an early exhaustingly familiar patterns of online doesn’t see any point in engaging with it. thrown at us was so extreme that there was he says. Nor did he find the arguments [Dear Esther] came from a real love I wasn’t having anything to do with you’re destroying games’ thing.” Besides, to recall how experimental games 1980s, on home computers. “[They were] he says, “so I’d always considered constantly pushed its own boundaries.”

“WHEN WE MADE FLOWER, PEOPLE WERE LIKE, ‘THIS IS NOT EVEN A GAME. THERE’S NOTHING TO KILL”

If there’s any question of whether Journey fits the (somewhat dubious) definition of a walking simulator, being a thirdperson game where your feet frequently leave the ground, the backlash it faced in 2012 put it firmly in the company of these other games. But this wasn’t developer Jenova Chen’s first rodeo. Since co-founding Thatgamecompany years earlier, Chen had established himself as a purveyor of emotional experiences. “When we made Flower in 2009, people were like, ‘This is not even a game. There’s nothing to kill’,” he says. The problem, as Chen sees it, was that the playerbase and industry were too narrow and insular. When he first came to the US in the early 2000s, “most console games were considered ‘mainstream’, but that mainstream was basically a bunch of young men, and mainstream [should be] everyone, right?” Chen thus made a conscious effort to entice new audiences and broaden horizons. “We wanted to show the world that games are not just guns and competition, that they can be a positive influence,” he says. “I’m so thankful when people who have never played games [before] consider playing games, a medium we love. So we have to make sure our games are accessible.”