In more lyric, free-form art, I find closure more difficult to come by because those artworks ask me to contemplate a subject in a different way than a narrative asks me to. But like, anything, it depends on the subject and how it is handled. One poem may cause me to ponder for years, and another might just be relief—something calming and closing. I think things like loop, like loops and choruses in music, like GIFs, like video installations, etc. can provide closure via drone or repetition, in that it can be comforting to return to, but okay to leave behind. If that makes sense.

Hey, sorry to take so long. I just spent a bunch of time with it and really loved it. And as a British Columbian resident, it really feels like a BC summer night. My first glitchhiker scared the shit out of me and then calmed me right down. And really great choices with the music. It reminded me of when I would go driving in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep and listed to à Propos on CBC Radio One.

I'm heading to Vancouver a couple times this summer. I'd totally buy you a beverage if you like !!

I was pleasantly surprised by Knytt: Underground (for the most part). It really subverts some "quest" conventions, and is at points pretty upsetting (and of course pretty funny).

If you're willing to put in 40+ hours into something, I really loved Fallout 3. The game's story isn't great at all, but exploring the world and helping non-story–related characters is really rewarding. If you want to explore but not for 40+ hours per say, maybe you should try Minecraft! (I think that's available for PS3 now.)

I would second fl0w and Lingers in Shadows, too.

What kind of programming are you learning. I'm also trying to learn stuff and am always eager to know what others are trying. I started with Python and JavaScript and still don't know either very well, but I understand the main syntax stuff pretty well. Now I'm trying a little bit of ObjectiveC, though it's coming really slowly.

Wow, that's fantastic. I am glad some people have finally seen this thing. Thanks for letting me know, too.

I wasn't really inspired much game-wise. One of the things that provoked me to make the project the way I did was my perception of Twine. I hadn't really liked any of the text adventures I had played that had been designed with Twine. They all felt very similar, and not inherently "interactive" like they were meant to be. (Though, the Fear of Twine exhibition really changed my perception.)

Though it is much different, I was inspired by bpNichol's First Screening. I guess I'm just interested in moving/transforming text. Narratively, I was inspired to counter the Choose Your Own Adventure-style of narrative. And I'm also very interested in re-reading/skimming/forgetting things.

Thank you for your comments, Michaël.

Oh no, sorry. Not at all a criticism. I was meaning to expand on Michael's comment:

Battlefield and Call of Duty have removed all game elements that don't support the entertainment they want to deliver.

If there is any criticism embedded in my comment, it's that an on-rails framework lends itself to particular content, like Call of Duty games: a chaotic environment, and that feeling that you just "along for the ride" and not actually present and doing. There's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes I get bored by how non-interactive (or pseudo-interactive) on rails-ish games seem to be—the triggered voiceovers, the triggered explosions. To paraphrase Michael: it's not about immersion, it's about learning a system and mastering your interaction with it.

Exploration driven games can be just as boring, especially when you need to find an item, person, etc. to trigger an event or unlock a new area, and you just can't do it, and you explore and re-explore to no end, discovering only the system behind the game, and being stuck in it.

I think I would love to make a non-text, 3Dish audio-visual presentation of this with a small team. I think, due to the way I've built it, the only thing I can really do to change it is edit the text. If it weren't so far along I wouldn't be afraid to make it a collaborative thing, but maybe I should just be more happy with what I already have anyway.

Ah, yeah. Sorry you got stuck. It was a dumb typo I missed, but it's fixed now. Thank you!

Thanks for commenting. You might be interested to know I used to have some more audio elements. Did you get a chance to see any of the visual elements in your time with it?

I definitely want the user's spatial interaction with the house to be abstract, and a little disorienting. It'd be really cool to try to play with that mechanic in a Portal-esqe way, but I don't really have the skills yet—at least not the skills to be in complete control of the presentation of things.

That narrative content stuff is hard for me, so thank you for your comments about that. If anyone else has any input around that, I'd really appreciate it. In writing all this, I was definitely mostly focused on creating something intimate, and something that imitates that bored/insomnia/exhausted/maybe-drunk feeling one can get. I struggled with the balance between too-mundane and too-interesting, not commonplace enough.

More beauty could definitely be the major pursuit for my next edit. It could create tension where there isn't (narratively) any.

Thanks again for your time! You've been very helpful.

I haven't spent a lot of time with the Battlefield games, and almost none with Call of Duty, so I apologize if I'm misrepresenting them here.

It's interesting that many of the same people who play Battlefield probably wouldn't want to spend their time playing something like The Unfinished Sawn, or even Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I think the success of Call of Duty-type games is the amusement park-type pace and the "on rails"-ness of them. Objective-oriented, and not at all driven by exploration.

Hello,

I have been working on a project for a number of months and was hoping that I could approach you all here for some comments and criticism.

http://web.uvic.ca/~bwillems/sleepwhen

As far as starting now, I have started many times—C+ specifically. I get very lost very quickly. But I've downloaded Unity now and will go through a couple tutorial things to see what's up.

I would like to, but I barely know where to start. I'm primarily a Mac user these days, and I don't really know any programming languages. Until I can take a proper class (those free online tutorials get very lofty!) I'd want to use software with the smallest possible learning curve. Any tips?

First conscious notgaming experience was "Freedom Bridge" and it seems like it was long ago. (http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/freedom-bridge)

I study poetry and narrative nonfiction at a university, I am a film enthusiast, and I play in some bands. That's about it I guess.