![]() ![]() They want to explore for their own sake, their own pleasure. There isn’t typically any extrinsic goal or mission, like “kill the monsters” or “solve the puzzle.” Instead, the goal is intrinsic: the player has to want for themselves to understand the situation or experience of the game. But you can’t die in a walking simulator. There is no traditional “fail state.” The only thing impeding progress is your literal movement forward, or perhaps the requirement to manipulate a specific object. Likewise, walking simulators lack many of the properties we assume are necessary in making a game. They aren’t always literal, and are more often points for discussion than one coherent linear narrative. They hone in on details that lead to a revelation, not a resolution. ![]() Poems don’t revolve around a plot the way stories do. They break the conventions of what we expect to consume. It may not seem like poetry and walking simulators have much in common, but they are both cultural black sheep of their media genres. ![]() ![]() Many gamers become hesitant if told they’re going to play a walking simulator. Many students in a literature or creative writing class become hesitant if told they’re going to read poetry during the semester-even more so if they’re told they’re going to have to write it. Poetry and Walking Simulators: Similar, but Different And this is when I realized that Gone Home might be the most important artifact to informing my values as a writer, and what it means to tell a good story. By ending on an object, I was allowing my reader to be an active participant-a player-in the world I created. Readers, like gamers, don’t want to be told what to do-they want to make conclusions on their own, and explore a given experience. By explaining my moral at the end of a poem, I was basically functioning as a proverbial Navi, telling my reader where to move and what to do and why. They allow me to be a real participant in the story.Īnd that’s what I realized my professor was telling me all along. And unlike a clunky NPC, killing time and tension by explaining a game’s situation, the objects allow me to jump right into the story and make the connections and realizations myself. Gone Home is the epitome of the writing maxim “show don’t tell.” When I started picking up objects-the Christmas Duck, books, board games, sticky notes-I was amazed at how much work each item did in building up the story and world of the characters. I heard what he said but I didn’t internalize the lesson until playing Gone Home. He told me to trust my readers and instead end the poem on an object. In my poetry MFA program, my professor constantly quoted Ezra Pound, saying that “the natural object is always the adequate symbol.” He always marked the last stanza of my poems as unnecessary: the last stanza where I tried to “wrap it up,” explaining the moral to my audience. The still-sealed jars and rusty tractor toy paint a picture of a struggling farm family in one, while news articles, letters, and handwritten directions tell the story of family members drifting apart in the other.Īs a writer, I love a good story, especially when it shows me more than it tells. In both Ted Kooser’s poem and Gone Home, it’s the objects that tell the stories of their inhabitants. When you first approach that door and read the note from Sam to not go looking for her, seeing the dark foyer of the house and hearing the thunder rumble in the background, it feels like something has gone terribly wrong. “Something went wrong, says the empty house,” writes Ted Kooser in his poem “The Abandoned Farmhouse.” It could be said the game Gone Home opens with a similar premise. Like branches after a storm-a rubber cow,Ī doll in overalls. In the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.Īnd the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard Say he was not a farmer the still-sealed jars Something went wrong, says the empty house ![]()
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