#mostlywalking

Mostly Walking is a Twitch-streamed show about classic adventure games (the current pick is "The Secret of Monkey Island"). It's hosted by Sean "Day9" Plott, and his game developer friends/former grad school classmates Bill Graner, and Sean Bouchard, streaming on Mondays then posting to YouTube on Tuesdays. They got together in 2012 for a limited-run series, MetaDating*, on the Geek & Sundry channel, and started Mostly Walking about 2 1/2 years ago. So I've been watching these guys on and off over the last four years, learning how video games work, and while it's gotten less pedantic over time, it's still pretty fun.

Early on Sean Bouchard introduced us all to GNS theory, a way of breaking down tabletop role-playing games into three interacting facets. Roughly (very roughly) speaking, the 1. narrative facet is the story that's being told. The 2. simulation is the world that's been created. The Matrix, if you like. And the 3. gamic refers to the mechanics, how action takes place, how the whole system WORKS. I love mechanics (murder mysteries might be the most mechanic-driven genre in print): using this paradigm to look at video games is fascinating.

The game before "Monkey Island" was "Obduction", a spiritual successor to "Myst". (Same publisher?) The guys have played a number of puzzle-heavy games, and ironically, I find it difficult to stay interested. Checking in for the recap, the guys were NOT pleased with how the game ended: they solved the final puzzle, but there was no emotional payoff because they didn't know what it meant. "Obduction" let them tear through the puzzles (the gamic) without paying attention to the story (the narrative). In fact, when they skipped the narrative cues, the game rewarded them with faster progress. Design flaw. You can say "We expected the player to wander around more, in which case they would have bumped into narrative clues", but if so the game needs to direct that behavior.

Here's what I had to say on YouTube ("Obduction" P15):

Guys, you're talking over each other. We can't understand what you're saying.

The end of "Obduction" provided some insight into what makes puzzles work in video games, a question that's haunted Mostly Walking since at least "Nancy Drew"... Another thing games need to ask is "Why does this puzzle belong in this adventure game?" It's about context, but also player-character identity and identification. There's a big difference between solving puzzles vs. playing an embodied puzzle-solver.** The "King's Quest" games thrive here: Alexander and Graham are dopey, and so are the solutions you come up with on their behalf. If the puzzle itself gains nothing from being in the game, the game probably deserves a more narratively-ambitious puzzle.

Link to the show's YouTube playlist: https://youtu.be/0MT2tn_1XhQ.