First Person Walker Footnotes #1: Ed Key

Yeah, I find it pretty stupid. I was talking about this on twitter recently and how QWOP is the only real walking simulator. Rich Wilson pointed out that Miasmata was another one - since this actually does emulate some elements of physically walking over different terrain, like momentum when running down slopes. My counterpoint to this: Why don't we call all tradional FPSs "face clickers"? It's a similar kind of reductionism.

 

On the other hand, perhaps it is genuinely useful for some people in identifying games within this vague genre of exploration with minimal interaction. I don't get too stressed about it.

Well, you can literally go anywhere with nothing telling you when to move on! I'm not sure if this is exactly on-topic but one of the things I like about Proteus and the reactions to it is that nothing tells you what to do or even tell you there's an arc or an ending. I think a lot of people struggled with this, most of whom probably switched it off, but I love hearing from people that got drawn through that, maybe after a few tries and end up really enjoying it. 

 

It's deliberately kept minimal because giving more options to affect the world would change the focus of it, and make it become about "doing" those things. Agency in Proteus is more about moment-to-moment framing and mixing, and the inherent choice in where you are. Player agency is hugely important to me but I guess it manifests in subtle ways in Proteus.

That's a good way of putting it.  Instrumental music is also similar - in fact, any artwork that allows interpretation has a kind of built-in freedom and agency to it, but perhaps I personally feel like I get this most with music. Of course, this is much more concrete in videogames, and inherent in the capability of the medium. It's still highly dependent on what individual creators do. There are games that basically don't use atmosphere at all, and games that do but throw it away with excess prompts and pop-ups and interruptions. 

I would say it's mostly the same as the idea of agency and continually reframing the world for yourself. It revolves around following little sensory threads in the world, discovering now entities, events and scenes. I think of it as taking the exploration element from bigger games, removing anything else that would intrude or distract and then making it pleasantly responsive and reactive to your presence.

 

Did you receive negative feedback for your game's lack of "real gameplay"? How did you react?