Video games have helped create a form of media that allows for a unique form of immersion and interaction with its content.  Games come in a wide variety, managing a city of your own design, taking the perspective of a soldier on a distant planet, or even controlling your favorite superhero in his or her next adventure.  Each one works to form a compelling connection between what is being presented on the screen and the person who is influencing how the story unfolds. The effectiveness of a game comes down to its story, characters, environments, effects and play style working in tandem.  A game doesn’t necessarily need to have strong elements in all of these, but the strength or weakness of one will influence how it is experienced by the player.

Narrative can come in a variety of forms.  Are you someone exploring the world for any clue that can help you find a missing family member? Are you masterminding a takeover of an oppressive regime? Or are you simply in a fight with someone and trying to knock them off of a stage? Stories are at the core of almost every game, and they are not necessarily the ones that are scripted out for you. It can directly walk one through the story it is trying to tell and the emotions they want one to experience. Others purposefully leave directions vague and open to the players exploration and synthesis of what they feel the story to be.  The narrative of a game doesn’t even need to be a scripted event at all. The strategy you had to come up with mid-fight in order to beat the person next to you is sometimes the only story you need.  Narrative answers the question: what did you accomplish?

Next, the character in a game is not limited to who or what you control.  Characters that fill the world of the game are able to clue you in on a great deal of how you fit into the larger scheme of things.  Giving freedom of choice in a player-controlled character opens up opportunities to make unique choices of how one wants to be perceived in the game.  A set character allows for a deeper look into what the makers wanted to convey by limiting viewpoint and perception to the chosen figure.  Even the environment is a character in a video game.  A bright and cartoon-like color scheme could make a character fit into a playful world, whereas an asylum could help convey a looming sense of doubt or loss of control.  Characters in games help you answer the question: who were you and what were you like?

Effects and play style fit more into the technical capabilities of a game.  Was there a consistent frame rate and graphical quality?  Was the soundtrack and voice acting (or lack thereof) fitting to the world of the game and understandable by the player?  These questions could change for each person depending on what system they play a game on or the technical capabilities of the time the game was developed.  Play style fits more into how the player directly interacts with the game.  There should be a feeling of control and response to the actions you cause within the game. All of this plays into how immersive of an experience the game can create.  Did you feel like you were there?

With this website I am hoping to take a deeper look into video games than typical reviews allow.  Do games that came out years ago still have aspects that are compelling to the modern player?  What stories can we create or connect with, and what experiences can one hope to have while immersing themselves within a world?  It seems every time I play a game I get a new feeling out of it.  Sometimes, that feeling is hatred for what I can’t figure out or get past.  Other times it’s disgust at what I actually ended up paying money for and putting time into.  What keeps bringing me back, though, are the times where I walk away thinking about the match I just won, the puzzle I just solved, or the characters that I really felt connected to.

So what’s in the game?  I won’t be able to talk about everything, but I hope you all like what I find.