Why Gone Home Is (Actually) Controversial

[TureShot104]

Few games have made me feel so optimistic about the hobby with which I grew up. Playing through Gone Home, I found myself thinking about all of my non-gamer friends and what they would say about the experience. For once, I think I would be willing to recommed this game to the people I work with, who for the life of them have never held a controller and are that special kind of critical that comes with too many years of reading.

I am a heavy reader and writer (who related all too well with the crumpled manuscripts in the waste baskets). I play video games more as a chore these days than anything else. Yes, I enjoy them but am far less forgiving than I used to be when it comes to linearity and empty stories. This has finally made me excited for what the future might bring.

Most seem to think this game is worthy of controversy because of its LGBT content and lack of value. Sure. Ok. To me, this game should be regarded as controversial not because of its slightly-risque theme, but because it threatens to turn gaming into something that people don't associate with mountain-dew fueled kill-streaks and loot. It promises to turn video-games into something that is more in line with literature than pong. For those who think movies have replaced books and that a thirty second abstract can substitue for the actual paper, sure, these new games might seem boring. But man, I hope there are more and I hope that they are even more unabashedly about narrative and the intelligence of the player, games that tap into themes so strongly that you can think of them in the same discussion with other works of art (Gone Home is almost - note, almost - equal to Perks of Being of Wallflower). Gone Home is finally an attempt to be about something more than entertainment. It is still an attempt. But I hope that just like that quirky publishing house that picked up the father's writing there are more stuidos that are willing to publish experiences such as this.

[Tagamdar]

Many historical and present nonviolent games have appealed to diverse audiences, but I'll just mention three: Myst, Bejeweled, and The Sims. There have also been games with complex narratives that would benefit from analysis. Silent Hill 2 comes to mind, and that has indisputable game elements.

There's really no greater faint and damning praise for GH than that which is coming from a literary rather than ludological perspective and bubbles with excitement about how much it will "change gaming." Diverse audiences have played games since Pong, a large percentage of game players are already female, and insinuations that games are only played by and associated with adolescent males demonstrate nothing but ignorance, willful blindness, or just outright contempt for a core audience of players who have funded much of gaming's explosive growth and driven its technological advancement.

What makes GH unique isn't that it appeals to a wider audience or is intelligent, but that it was effectively treated like a fragile holy relic that evoked wailing and tears as it was carefully borne through bumpy and potentially damaging review processes.

[Luftmensch]

Gone Home embraces a lot of the parts of game design that critics get excited about:

• Ludonarrative harmony
  
• Environmental storytelling
  
• Exploring a small space in detail instead of a sprawling map
  
• Literalist and mundane stories
  
• Minimalist mechanics
  
• Sans Conflict and Challenge based progression

And a bunch of other little things you can read about here[www.gamasutra.com], or here[www.somethingawful.com]. And it does them all pretty well. I doubt the critics are just being unfairly precious in their reviews to protect it, since I'm not really apologetic in saying that Twelve Monkeys is one of my favorite films of all time even if noone agrees with me. If the critics are being unfairly positive, maybe it was because they recognize Gone Home is in danger of being written off by gamers at large for not following other games with a sprawling map, fantasy story, elaborate mechanics, and conflict. But what seems more likely to me is that Gone Home just planted its feet solidly in territory that some people love and a lot of other people hate, and the people who cared enough to write about it happen to fall into the former crowd.

[Gregalor]

I don't think Gone Home threatens to "turn games into" anything. There's plenty of room for all types of games.