Inovative Video Games Thread

[Guest SirVladimir]

Greetings, Forum.

Let's have a list of high-conscious, inovative, creative or insightful video games. You can share already existing games on whatever platform, in whatever format (2D, 3D, etc.) or things you've thought of.

• What other qualities should a penetrating game have?
• How can a game move us up the Spiral?
• Where do you see a potential in relation to marketing and distribution while keeping the game in a good shape?
• Come up with better questions!  

I'll start. Obviously, the best video game are psychedelics. I also like Life is Strange, for it visualizes the matter of choice, and games in general that demand systems thinking.

[Torch_Lighter369]

Hey SirVladimir, your post caught my eye. While many people in the actualized.org forum, including Leo, think video games are ultimately a waste of time to talk about after deciding to pursue self actualization, I disagree, and will add to this discussion.

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"How can a game move us up the Spiral?"

Good Video Games tell stories at their core, unless they are meant to be simple(Untitled Duck game, Jackbox Party Games, Little Big Planet). Such stories can help us find a perspective in how we see spiral dynamics, to the point where we either make games of our own portraying the journey we experienced previously (Stage Yellow), or find ourselves giving up games enitirely for greater enlightenment within our minds, without the assistance of Physical mediums, such as video games (Stage Turquoise). These stages are graduations from the pure, almost religious love and devotion of video games we had as a child(Stage Blue), following up with the process of understanding how our identity is connected to video games and how we feel real experiences from them, not overtly devotional ones mimicing the game (Stage Orange), and how to Detatch ourselves from that identity and try to devote ourselves (but not necessarily stop playing) to do something better with our lives primarily, and helping others see that too(Stage Green).

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"What other qualities should a penetrating game have?"

If a game is going to be penetrative, it needs to subvert people's expectations, and capture their heart with a captivating, message and big venture of some kind, whether simple or complex, rewarding the player, and ultimately celebrating the fact the fact the player is engaged with playing the game with all of it's bells and whistles, as well as it's storyline, plot, characters, and events. Thinking outside the box, and seeing things in ways people don't usually see them, provides a perspective that is unique to your own. When shared perspectively, it can have universal appraise.

For example, think about the way you press a beach ball in the water. On one hand, you could see that beach ball as buoyant as it always comes back to the surface, floating on the top of the water. This would be considered a rather normal deduction if you were at the beach with a beach ball.

On the other hand, you could also see the ball as a flying projectile as it sits above the ocean. I mean, if you think about it, there's not much of a difference between how we swim through water and walk around in the atmosphere we breath. Technically, when we swim through water, we swim through liquified air, so the ocean would be like a sky in this light, with the ground being the ocean floor, no matter how deep. Similar things can be said about our atmosphere. Our air almost feels like water if we're immersed in the thought enough. With this perspective, that ball, if the water is seen as air with it floating multiple feet in the air in and upon it, the ball is now a flying machine or floation device, or perhaps some sort of balloon that stays on the surface of the air without rising.
It's all about perspective and creativity, you could come up with millions of ways to describe a beach ball.

As a result, games can be seen the same way. While the market seems to easily categorize many types of games and the amount of ideas seems finite, there is still room for new and exciting games to be made from scratch.

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"Where do you see a potential in relation to marketing and distribution while keeping the game in a good shape?"

As for the marketing and distribution, here's where the video game market is going. Big companies are suffering losses, as more and more indie games and PC gaming companies like Blizzard and Steam come into the picture and have a huge following of gamers playing games with their  online game stores. Then there are independant games that are being made with small teams with the same hardware big companies like nintendo, ubisoft, EA, or software, etc, use. We are continuing to see better and better computer games on steam, itch.io, and gamejolt,, because these developers pour their heart and soul into these games.  As a result, independant games are high in quality, and people will enjoy the experiences they recieve from the game they made, because the consumers, the gamers who enjoy their games, are able to see how much work and detail was put into every aspect of this game they played and how much fun they has playing it. And these games are made by people like us, who just have their computer, or a group or small team of creative people, to make the game. The fans love the games as a result, so there's no problem distributing the game and making money, even if it;s underrated like Stardew Valley.

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As for Life is Strange, that game is terrible. This guy overlays the problems fo this game very well, with comedy woven in(   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFlMoAasW4A )


Jokes aside, The game provides little to no player choice, limiting you to only two real choices you really make, all the way to the end. The developers of this game treat the player's choices as if they don't really matter, because the player can't make a serious impact on the game with his or her choices, since the game pretty much makes the choices for them(since it's more of a guided narrative), putting the player in positions to make binary choices most of the game, instead of using your creativity to find those other choices in the game. The choices you make could have potential to make big differences to how you play, but the developers don't do anything with those small cues, and don't add  the multiple outcomes/timelines to show that the game really could be a game that promotes having the ability to choose, tailoring the choies peron makes to their gaming experience, whatever those choices might be. This game leads up to only TWO choices, you either let Chloe die to save Arcadia Bay, or you save her, let the hurricane skip town,  everybody else dies. That's it... So much for player choice.

This is what happens when you try to make games with multiple endings, but leave the players short of all of the other potential endings besides the narrative with political undertones they try to push on you. It's frustrating to watch over and over again, seeing the potential for a game turn to ashes when this episodic mess appears.

But have no fear, games are only getting better by the day. If they can make visual novels with multiple endings, I bet they can do the same with multiple different types of games. I know such a game will exist one day.