The History and Future of Walking Simulators | How they have Influenced Game Design and Storytelling 

That point of "Anticipatory play" tells a lot actually. And applies to almost all genres when you think about it. I think so far, IMO Edith Finch has been the best implementation of the points you've discussed here, combining mechanics to tell the story directly and indirectly.

I really hope that there will be historical correct walking simulators, so that you can see and learn older times and habbits. I ofter just walked around in LA Noire, just to get the feeling of this time, even I know that this game is not correct in every aspect.

This was great. I hope you do more. Walking sims are nice in that the player gets to experience the story at their own pace. In theatre or movies, the story is force fed to the audience at the discretion of the director. Even that minute interaction is enough to make every experience unique in a video game.

One of my favorite "walking sims" is Leviathan: The Old City. The atmosphere and story are so immersive and sad. When I was going through a really tough time in my life I tried to imagine what the world would be like if I was the only one left.. and that game did just that. It showed me the true sadness of an empty world, where youre truly alone. It will always be an amazing game, despite its short comings.

I really enjoyed this. The comparison I like as to where games are, is if we compare them to film, games have only just left their silent era. I think you're right in that storytellers are becoming more integral to the ground floor of a game's development, but then I always think that the adventure game genre (one of the earliest home computer genres) has always had story as a starting point. Of course the mechanical problems of the genre are well documented. Heck I'd say Walking Simulators are an adventure game subgenre, just stripping out the puzzles and leaving the exploration and narrative. I look forward to your next video :)

I'm deaf. Can you please upload your speaking script into the captioning tool so that RU-vid can pair its speech recognition engine with the script to automatically time it through the video?

I recently discovered your channel and I really like your content. Suscribed.

Honestly, I'm just stoked to not have the same sounding voice talking to me in video essays. Keep going.

In portal, failure state is getting stuck and not being able to progress.

Great video! Just as many others, I oftentimes over-emphasize the importance of interactivity in video games. So much that I was blinded to the large influence that is the anticipatory portion of video games. Although they are obviously highly interconnected--thank you for opening my eyes to a different game design perspective.

Wow... how have I not found you earlier? Totally underrated channel you've got here. Hope you grow bigger. Subbed.

Exploration games (walking simulators) are subgenre of adventure games. Adventure games are about story which is told through the gameplay and gameplay that focus on delivering the narrative. The classic adventure games use puzzle-solving which is about finding solutions for narrative problems, but there are adventure games that use different methods like making choices or finding information about characters. In the case of exploration games they use navigating the environment and piecing out information about the story. And while we are in the subject of adventure games, may I remind you that the selling point for Lucasarts adventure games was that there is no file state, there is no game over, and no one said that it made them less 'gamy'.

Excellent video and very thought provoking. I will have to watch it again and takes notes, as I try to teach games design. My students (16 years old) get very excited when talking about story v gameplay, it seems to be a major divide in gamer types. I was intrigued to see your reference to Wittgenstein and Hofstadter. I was surprised you did not counter Wittgenstein's ideas with Bernard Suits arguments in "Grasshopper" in which he deliberately takes on Wittgenstein's lack of confidence in being able to define a game.

I just finished 'Journey' on my PC yesterday and absolutely loved it. But I was kind of confuse that whether it can be considered a walking simulator or not. And while searching for it I stumbled upon this video of yours and I absolutely loved it. It was well narrated and researched. I have subscribed. But I'm still confuse though. 😅 So can you please tell me that whether or not Journey can be considered a walking simulator or it belongs to some other genre. Because it's official Wikipedia page says it's a adventure and art game.

Collins dictionary ; A game is an activity or sport usually involving skill, knowledge, or chance, in which you follow fixed rules and try to win against an opponent or to solve a puzzle.

Fantastic video, but I completely disagree that in Uncharted the division of gameplay and narrative is arbitrary. I think that at their core walking sims and Uncharted have more in common than not. They are both adventure games at their heart. While nominally Uncharted has "action gameplay", in reality it is so precisely designed to be an interactive cinematic experience that the player can smoothly go through while having the feeling of doing something amazing, but conveyed through tight scripting and amazing animations, so in that sense the gameplay isn't too different from cutscenes. The player is at no point encouraged to think "I can't wait to go back to the shooting". There's also entire chapters like the Tibetan village and others which are a literal proto walking sim.

The meaning af walking simulator is not just for games like Gone Home, Ethan Carter, Ether One and other, but for riddle games like the witness, antichamber and other. Walking simulator is a first person shooter without shooting. Games that tell storys when i walk on a rail are not walking simulators, because i can't choose my way. The game where a girl walkt in the mountain is no walking simulator.

I prefer walking simulators that don't have stories but just allow to explore the worlds and visit cities. Just imagine exploring the world of Ivalice in Final Fantasy XII with no combat and no stories to tell. You can wander anywhere you like, relax, and enjoy the scenery. :)

Hey. What do you think about how Cyberpunk 2077 approaches dialogue and storytelling?

What's the game at 10:37 ? Thanks!

What game is that with the maze?

Games have a fail state, win and lose, so if your walking sim has a goal you can fail at, its more than interactive storytelling, its also a game.

You know, there's very little that Gone Home offers that a pop-up-pictures book can't. 1. You can look at things in 3D. 2. You can rotate those things around as much as you want. 3. There are lots of words. Why use software to make something that could easily be put into a pop-up-pictures book? The only additions are sound and a pre-rendered environment. You could get the same emotional experience from a novel - either a paper one, or a virtual visual novel. That is the main crux of why walking simulators aren't considered 'true games.' They just don't use the medium of software to its grand potential. Imagine a movie that was just scrolling text. Or, imagine a song that was just two people talking normally. That's what a game without play is like to anyone that knows better. Meanwhile, Journey was highly praised by everyone, and even hardcore gamers were sucked in. That was because there was something very essential to its experience that you could truly interact with, which you couldn't have gotten from any other medium: Another player. The initial widespread burst of frothing hatred for the walking simulator was primarily for Gone Home specifically. Pretty much all of the other games provided in your video actually used the interactive aspect's greater potential - even Dear Esther, which randomly shows ghosts to the player if they're curious enough to keep looking around! The Stanley Parable had its seemingly-endless choices and dialogue, too, which no choose-your-own-adventure book could have ever replicated so effectively. So, as a guy that bites his nails over watching professional Street Fighter matches and played Dark Souls 3 for over 1,000 hours, I am indeed still glad that there are fascinating games like Edith Finch and the like. I just don't want Gone Home to be praised as some sort of gold standard for emotional games, because if people encouraged Gone Home's 'gameplay,' we'd pretty much be encouraging movies of scrolling text. (...Y'know, even merely changing around how you simply move can convey feelings to a player, and I don't think there was any moment in Gone Home where your movement was changed - which is something that even Metal Gear Rising did for dramatic effect. Eugh.)

No Amnesia: The Dark Descent mention?!

i think 'no game' genre would be a better suited name for these kind of games

We get it, walking sims are games too. Now let's boot up a nice game of reading a page of text every few minutes! Or even listening to audiologs! Playing a game where you participate in the story is too much work anyways.

I have no desire to ever buy any walking simulator, since you can just watch the story play out on a RU-vid video. They offer no replay value to me.

This is pretty pointless. It's a genre that is going to die. With Streaming and RU-vid destroying any value it might have the argument falls apart. Interaction really isn't worth much, only true gameplay is.