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S2 Ep184: VGBD - Walking Simulators
77 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they take a leisurely stroll through some games that like to take it easy in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:48
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Hey, hi. Hello. How are you? That's a lot. I'm doing pretty well. I'm deflecting. How are you? Doing well? Okay. 100% counter. Perfect parry on the how you doing.
00:01:11
Speaker
How's your day
Awkward Grocery Store Interactions
00:01:12
Speaker
going? No, you. What? Did you find everything you were looking for? No, you. I guess I didn't find what I was looking for. You're right. Your minimum wage job is unfortunately shitty. I'm sorry about that. I hope life looks out better for you in the future. Oh, yeah. I'll say yes at the cash register. Yeah, that's the safer bet.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if possible, if it's not a busy day, it's not terrible, I think, to interact sometimes with cashiers or people in checkout and see like just be a little extra friendly, you know, a little more sociable. But if there's any measure of busyness, just like let them get on their day. They are trying to be a business professional and they've got to get through the list.
00:02:05
Speaker
So
Grocery Store Robots: Friend or Foe?
00:02:06
Speaker
that's life it that we're starting with the life advice I guess I also like the part where you They say hello to you and you kind of stand up on your tippy toes and look around the whole store You know how many people are there? Okay, I'm doing fine. How are you? Well, there's crazy today, right? Or we don't have time for this. Mm-hmm
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, my favorite is if someone asks how I'm doing and you really just got to move it along and just like, um, you're not privy to that information. I don't know if it's like having the balls is the right term. I've never had the gusto to.
00:02:44
Speaker
say that because I think that would be like funny as like a thing, but like to a stranger who doesn't know me, I'm going to come off like a complete asshole for that interaction and then I'll probably see them in like two weeks when I go for groceries again, right? So I feel bad, but man, that would be funny.
00:03:03
Speaker
But if they don't remember the second time, they probably would with an interaction that weird. You're just like, um, I've just come back from the privy and you just like, you just find other ways to insert the word privy into all of your responses. Yeah. I don't think that's very popular way to describe restroom in the U S though. No, I was also trying to think of more like, this is like a privy privacy.
00:03:32
Speaker
privacy privacy. Ah, privacy. Yeah. That's how they say in the UK. That's true. The uke as we call it. Uke. Yeah. I don't even know where we're going with this. Yeah. I'm like,
What is a Walking Simulator? - Gaming Genre Debate
00:03:51
Speaker
do I mention more like grocery store anecdotes?
00:03:55
Speaker
Do I again bring up the robot that's now at all giant stores? There's a robot at giant stores. Yeah. I mean, maybe not every single one, but it has like a silly name, like Sam or something.
00:04:10
Speaker
I thought that was the wandering thing. Somebody heard this and has immediately corrected me while listening. But it has googly eyes and its whole purpose is to detect spills. And I think it can clean some basic things up. Oh. But if it's like a cup of water, it'll just notify whoever is working like, hey, so there's some shit here. It's kind of a super Roomba type situation.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yes, but it's more just a very tall Roomba versus a very effective Roomba. Gotcha, gotcha. I'm just imagining the circumstance. I mean, obviously, depending on the liquid it identifies, it's just like listing out the chemical composition and then it's just like human blood. Don't worry, no one needs to know. Do not panic. Okay, the robot is Marty. Ah, okay.
00:05:04
Speaker
had to look for my own posterity. No, I've never seen that, but it's been a while since I went to giant. It's my closest one, but I prefer going to Wegmans because it has self checkout and I value that, um, over, you know, a shorter trip. I will drive an extra 10 minutes and not have to talk to people. Yeah.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, so our last trip, obviously we use Trader Joe's a lot. That's pretty freaking great. It's hard to beat that. It's like nice people. If it's possible, like not crazy, they'll help you bag or we'll bag and they'll thank us for bagging. And it's like,
00:05:47
Speaker
That's a pretty good, that's a pretty good environment. Wegmans also. You know what? You're welcome. Wegmans also helps with bagging, but definitely the place I'm least happy with is...
00:06:04
Speaker
No, no self checkout whatsoever. Got to get hit with a credit card spiel. Um, I would go anywhere to avoid that. And when they say, Hey, it's going to prompt you if you want to donate to a charity, I'm like, are we having this interaction right now? You know where my finger is. You know what button I'm pressing.
00:06:26
Speaker
Maintain eye contact. Where you declined the charge, it's just like $150 for groceries or whatever. Maintain eye contact. Not accepted. You instead donate the bill to charity that exact amount, but then you don't pay the bill for the groceries. Yeah, I don't know if they'd appreciate that or not.
00:06:50
Speaker
Do you ever feel like when you're in a grocery store, particularly like some of the large ones for a bigger trip? And maybe this is mostly when you're like with other people, maybe family, but you get, uh, your day's walking exercise. Get in the eye. Do I answer honestly, or do I let them lead in? Anyways, not an actual question.
00:07:17
Speaker
I mean, yes, in like a Sam's Club or a Costco. Costco. I've definitely felt like it's a lot of walking. I've gotten some exercise in. Yeah. But I wish there was a way where I could kind of get that experience but not have to physically do it. Yeah. Hands to black and white of me walking through a store. You ever hate walking? Yes. My man. Yeah.
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, anyways, Walking Simulators, it's what we've titled this episode. I don't even know if starting out if we have a great grasp on what that necessarily means, but we hope that together with you, dear listener, by the end, we will understand the topic that we have decided to.
00:08:07
Speaker
use for this week's episode. That's right, everybody. You're long for the stroll. Oh, that's good. If you're if you are in the process of strolling, are you a stroller? I'm more of a high stroller myself. At least that's what my friends tell me. Right. Bit of a high stroller. My friends just tell me I'm high strung. Yeah, no, they don't. Nobody says that.
00:08:37
Speaker
That that we just call that a whale tail jig That would be a weird thing to tell somebody but like you're kind of high strong Be like, how do you take that? There's not like there's not a good way to take that. It's like pull up your pants. You're out your thongs showing All right Um, but yeah walking simulators, I guess no one would title their own game a walking simulator I suspect
00:09:01
Speaker
unless they're being like massively self-aware or just a joke joke, I suppose. Because I don't know if you could. Do you think that this is a real genre? We're getting we're getting meta tonight, folks. So I think it is an attribute you can give something. I don't know if I define it as an entire genre, because looking on Steam and looking through my library,
00:09:30
Speaker
Like the only singular example I can think of, I haven't played, so I could be a little bit off base, maybe two. Firewatch in Dear Esther. If a guy on the street said to me, walking simulators, I'm like, sure stranger, I'll chat with you. I think that meets the constraints because you're kind of just walking through a story. There's not many elements beyond that as far as,
00:09:54
Speaker
combat, puzzles, other game mechanics. It's primarily just kind of walking through the story as it's happening. Right. But we have other things here like the Amnesia games, Soma, anything by like I think it's frictional studios where obviously you're walking around, but there's a story and there's puzzles and there's other things you have to do. So I guess our current question is, does that break?
00:10:22
Speaker
from walking simulators or is that just a subset of it? Right. Like how
Narrative and Engagement in Gaming
00:10:27
Speaker
many actual mechanics other than hold W do you need before your game is no longer like a walking simulator? Well, I mean, I would say any FPS immediately is discounted.
00:10:43
Speaker
Because it's all about the gun play and tactics of where you're positioned. Yes, you do have to walk around to move there holding the W key, but no one's going to say it's a walking simulator. Also, I feel there's like a correlation between a walking simulator and something that's more story driven or more like experiencing a movie through a game. Right, right. It's like I feel like you could to the point of the movie,
00:11:14
Speaker
It might be it might be middle ground. I feel there are some walking simulators that are basically they could be movies and it's like you just want to portray a certain experience and going through that experience linearly is
00:11:27
Speaker
for some reason or another better accomplished through an interactive means instead of just, you know, an animation or something like that. Um, but I think the other factor, the other factor going into classifying walking simulators is the time spent in transit versus, um, versus the time spent doing other interactions. So like.
00:11:53
Speaker
Take Death Stranding, for instance. I know you played. I have not. There's $18. I did buy it. I do own it now. My perception, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you do spend a lot of time going from place to place.
00:12:13
Speaker
And that might be why some people, it's classified as a walking simulator on Steam, or it's tagged as such, which we can disagree with perhaps, but it's because there's a lot of time spent in transit. It's like you're not spending a bunch of time in hyper-engaging gameplay. Yeah.
00:12:32
Speaker
That's something I have to like concede immediately because each mission is essentially go from point A to point B, carry packages. I don't know if you always have to take everything in one trip, but like when you start out, you don't have access to any tech. You don't have any vehicles. The terrain is going to be shitty. So you might have like a rope. You might have a ladder to like forward a very small
00:12:57
Speaker
river or stream. But it's primarily just walking and making sure your shit's balanced, you're not dropping and damaging your packages. And then later on you do get access to building some roads, building some bridges.
00:13:11
Speaker
having a car or a bike, which definitely helps, but primarily it's still the transportation. There's not really puzzles or anything like that. There are some boss fights for some reason. You have cat boss fights. It's Kojima camp.
00:13:30
Speaker
And like there will be some mobs that will attack you that you can have weapons or a defense for. But again, it's more kind of like a secondary hazard. Right. Something to kind of to mix it up a little bit. Very up the gameplay between A and B.
00:13:50
Speaker
It's like, we want people to walk. If you're gonna get bored of that, what else do we need? Black goo, that will attack you and drag you away. I mean, it sounds bad if portrayed like that, but I mean, the difference between, you know, that one great year I was setting out and just being like a lot of downtime moving between point A and B and like an open world game. Like most open world games aren't considered walking simulators unless there's like really
00:14:20
Speaker
not much to do between A and B. And most games, I think, give you something there. So I would at the very least split off something like Death Stranding from narrative walking sims or games where they're trying to put you through a very guided experience.
00:14:44
Speaker
Well, I'm going to ask guided versus what? Because I think a lot of video games are guided experiences. And it's true. Not something that's more open-ended RPG, but like something else we have on the list here. Again, very similar to how Amnesia is done. Would be like Tacoma.
00:15:01
Speaker
Or Soma, or other things that rhyme with that. They're all in the same family. Oma games. That's the sub genre. Oma games. Sounds like an old meme, but gone home right there.
00:15:18
Speaker
But like each of those, like you are going through the story and you'll be gated by a monster that's trying to kill you and you have to like hide and be sneaky beaky. Yeah. Or you might have to do some simple puzzles, collect a key card, something here and there that fits within the narrative to drive the story forward. But really it's just to keep you engaged. Yeah. Like the whole thing is very much that guided experience of here's your situation. Here's how the story goes. Here's how it resolves. Yeah.
00:15:47
Speaker
There's a there's a lot on our list of potential walking simulators that I felt like could meet that criteria. There's some overlap here with emotional games, which I know we have had an episode on in the past. It's been a while now, but specifically.
00:16:05
Speaker
Like a type of walking simulator game can use the walking to help pace out the emotional beats. I think like Fury. Yeah. Well Fury, well literally yes.
00:16:21
Speaker
Actually, Fury is a great example. You thought I was memeing, son. I came with notes. Unless you have notes on the side, this is actually off the top of your head, which is even more impressive. But Fury is broken out into largely just two phases usually. Like a boss fight might have multiple phases, but there's boss fight.
00:16:42
Speaker
And then there's the cooldown period where you're moving from one boss to the next. And that's essentially the entire game. And so you could say it's like a significant part could be walking simulator, right? But those are very intentional beats. Walking from one boss fight to the other. That's where a lot of the exposition happens. It's where you have some time for introspection. You get to listen to the cool music. All important.
00:17:10
Speaker
And you just get to hold forward. Or if you try and move the D stick as your transition between scenes, you'll walk into walls a lot. You can just hold forward. Yeah. But it's not bad, honestly. It's important pacing. Even games that are heavy in action can usually vary it up purposefully. We were literally talking Ghost of Tsushima.
00:17:39
Speaker
Similar deal, right? Well, so first off, I want to say that I don't personally classify Fury as a walking simulator. No, I wouldn't either. I wouldn't even say it has that aspect. I mean, they could have made it like a cutscene instead of you traveling between and that would be fine as well. I don't think you'd really lose much. They just chose to have you
00:18:04
Speaker
pushing forward, which I think very like subconsciously pushes the narrative of like you are choosing to do this versus just I'm along for the stroll. I use it again. We're back. And just being
Accessibility in Walking Simulators
00:18:18
Speaker
like, Oh, I'm just playing along through the game. It's like, no, you are the character doing this, which I think helps again on like a very minor level. And I would also say with Tsushima, again, like it's an open world. You have to travel.
00:18:34
Speaker
So I don't know if I'd consider that. Like it's just a, it's a mode of transportation. If you could walk, you could ride a horse, you could fast travel. Probably shouldn't ride a horse or fast travel. Those are the better options. Fast travel your horse. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't classify either. I was comparing it more to, um, an active versus passive emotional beat. So it's like, here's a time for you to relax, take a little bit, little easy.
00:19:04
Speaker
regain your reflexes, you'll need them for combat later potentially. It's not just constant high intensity, fight, fight, fight.
00:19:19
Speaker
And I mean, that's our middle ground, I guess, for what I think you could consider some walking simulators is they have a lot more downtime, perhaps, where you're just kind of passively taking in information instead of actively engaging in the world. And if it's entirely passive, it's literally just like a meditation simulator, I guess, where you just walk around or, you know, a graphical demo of something.
00:19:49
Speaker
Then it's like a true walking simulator, but there's not that many of those Right and that's again where like the line gets a little bit blurry for me because also on steams list they had abduction Which is I think made by the same people who did mist. Mm-hmm
00:20:06
Speaker
and missed, at least back in the day, was like a point and click puzzle adventure. That's because they couldn't figure out how to move cameras around at that point in time. But I would still consider that a puzzle game and just you're not flying around. Your character is a person, so you will walk. So I think that's just the means of transportation in game.
00:20:30
Speaker
Because you're not really exploring a lot unless you're like, hey, I need to figure out how to open this thing. What pieces do I have available to me to figure that out? Right. So that's really why you're kind of exploring to a degree. So I guess like.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, the fewer other engaging mechanics, you mentioned puzzle from Myst. The fewer other genres that you're overlapping, the more concentrated the walking simulator might be. Because I also wouldn't agree. I wouldn't consider Myst a walking simulator. If I recall correctly, you can click quickly between areas to end up where you need to be.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah, it was basically the original Google Maps when he dropped the little guy. Oh, yeah, that's how the cameras worked for that. Yeah. But to some games that I think like there's a lot on my list that we could definitely categorize. We talked a little bit about Soma, which I think is
00:21:31
Speaker
at its core narrative game, but, you know, perhaps a walking simulator and that you're moving from area to area, but it's OK, I think, to reduce the inputs because you're essentially reducing the inputs required and you're having people focus more with their with their noggin and with their eyes and perhaps their ears to like what the game is portraying. And that's 100 percent. So, right, it's about perception and reality and identity and
00:22:01
Speaker
It would be kind of tough to get the same impact if they were over saturating. Everything is like a first person shooter, right? Like you drop Isaac Clark into so much and he'll be like, I will solve the problem. I have I have my plasma cutter. Let's go. He actually just fixes the station. Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to agree with that.
00:22:26
Speaker
A lot of things just work better for narrative games if it is a slower pace. And I don't think having a walking simulator has like an attribute in it.
00:22:36
Speaker
diminishes it really in any way. It's more so, it makes it more accessible. Let's say you're somebody who like, I really enjoy video games, but man, do I suck at them. I'm not gonna play Dark Souls. I'm not gonna play a shooter. I'm not gonna beat anything. I just wanna be along for the experience and enjoy it. I want the story and the fun to be able to share with other people.
00:22:57
Speaker
Right. Okay. Something like this is perfect because it's a low barrier entry. You just have to explore and pay attention to story. Yeah. So I think that works.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah. You mentioned the low barrier and another facet that a lot of games that qualify as walking simulators have in common is like either really limited lose conditions or literally no lost conditions. So there's like potentially no way to get a game over. Um, like a fire watch is on our list. I played that and that's entirely there just to
00:23:38
Speaker
Play with your emotions for like a distant communicator somebody the only person you're talking to across this period of time walking around Checking things out very slow very deliberate. It's entirely just to like draw you to this other person and There's as far as I can remember no loose condition. I don't think you can throw yourself into the fire I don't even remember if there actually was a fire but
00:24:08
Speaker
That's the other aspect, right? They're pulling back some of these mechanics, some of the difficulty so they can focus on concentrated narrative experience.
00:24:20
Speaker
Imagine trying to do that if you were like slide dashing with Destiny 2's mechanics. And I would be if I could. The reason they'll put stuff like that in like a hub world or something so you can like dick around while you're idling, waiting for stuff, because it's engaging.
00:24:42
Speaker
in the same way like if you're playing overwatch and you're attacking, you're in that room, you have things you can interact and break. You break so much. People are just like hitting every stuff, hitting everything, throwing up stickers and sprays, doing emotes. Yeah. It's just a minute that you're there. But just you're not like sitting there awkwardly like, is the defense set up? Okay.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah, for a bit more the air of TF2. Yeah. Well, in TF2, eventually, like they have some things like that, too. Sprays, obviously, came from TF2. They added like the emotes, the conga line, things like that, which make them most. Yes, it's funny to do it in the middle of a match, but it also makes more sense in setup.
00:25:22
Speaker
Even the original mechanic, like the Medic, Medigun charges twice as fast when you're in spawn. Yes, it was balancing to make sure that you had a meta charge at the start of the match, but you don't start out at 100% charge, which they also just could have done, right? Like if you started at the beginning of the game. So it's all factors like that to just make you do something, keep you busy.
00:25:49
Speaker
And I mean, particularly I'm not a psychologist, but like, or social psychologists. Um, but if you've got something where you like a condition or something like that, where you need to stay busy, where something has to keep you interested, perhaps having a video game where like literally walking around and looking at whatever you want to look at would be more engaging than watching a play through of the same thing. We're watching a show of the same thing, you know?
00:26:17
Speaker
I'm nodding quietly in agreement because I am not also, I'm also not a social psychologist or a psychologist.
00:26:25
Speaker
It's like in MMOs, if we're talking a lot of times, I'll just be jumping around the terrain, like find a thing, parkour. Doesn't matter what the MMO is, doesn't matter what the jump button actually does, parkour. It's like a required downtime activity if we're not doing anything or jumping around doing something. Real talk, Elden Ring, yep. Parkour. You give me the ability to jump after all these years, I'm jumping on everything. I'm gonna toadstool bosses, let's go.
00:26:54
Speaker
People, they'll be an invader following your footsteps and they're like, this doesn't make any sense. It's just like up castle walls and things like that, jumping off ledges.
00:27:06
Speaker
They look straight up and they see I'm using the fall guys cheat from years ago. You can't fall. So something that's just guys, just guys. Do you want to play guys later? What do you mean? So something that I have on here that I would definitely not classify as a walking simulator, but is a narrative experience. I thought was interesting. Yeah. I just wanted to get some of your thoughts on it. Sure. The game is called before your eyes. Okay.
00:27:35
Speaker
Have I told you about this off? I don't believe so. Okay. So basically the concept is you have to set up your webcam so it can see your eyes are open or not. Right. So as you're going through the game, if your eyes are open, it will show you like a scene through like a part of your life as that character. And you can like look around a little bit to kind of remove some of the fog to get more of a picture of the scene that you're in. Right. But as soon as you blink,
00:28:01
Speaker
it will go to the next scene. Gotcha. The whole purpose is to have you engaged to not blink through because you're going to lose those moments of your life because it's gone in a blink, essentially. Right. That's a really cool gimmick. It is really cool.
00:28:20
Speaker
So I really like that as far as a narrative thing because you literally can't move in the game at all. So it's very much not a walking simulator, which is why I put it on the list for some reason. But I really like that as another angle of engagement for a narrative story.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think that this is a smart inclusion because this is the core of what walking simulators actually are, right? It's all about focusing in on a few senses, removing a lot of the fluff, removing other mechanics that could complicate the situation, removing difficulty in some cases.
00:29:00
Speaker
And what you're describing before your eyes sounds like just another embodiment of that. Yes, maybe it does not have the walking aspect. So it's just simulator, I guess. But it's still, you know, sensory narrative experience, which I believe is core to walking simulator. Now I'm wondering if we could. Anything with VR.
00:29:31
Speaker
Obviously, they have games of VR and you click to blink to locations. I know they have certain setups where you can strap you into a treadmill stationary, but you actually are walking. Oh, an actual walking simulator. Walking as therapy simulator would be cool.
00:29:52
Speaker
rehab after you broke your legs. It's just rehab. I did have to get in rehab today. A lot of points. A lot of points. Extra points. And gold on the leaderboard.
00:30:09
Speaker
I'm absolutely destroying everybody else in rehab. We'll go back to the third, the group therapy session in weeks. I'm going to laugh at a tiny Tim who hasn't made any progress seemingly at all. Loser. You're a loser. There's one that's not on the list, but I think it's interesting. This is probably the one I would say we have most exposure with. We had an episode on it, the Stanley Parable.
00:30:38
Speaker
I'm just hearing the narrator's voice a Stanley Stanley. Yeah, it entirely is. There's I can't even say there's puzzle mechanics. There's just different routes you can take for the story, but it is narrative driven and you're only walking. Yeah, you might press a button, but it doesn't do anything really. Hmm.
00:31:05
Speaker
Yeah, the closest thing this game comes to diverging from Walking Simulator is where there was that, like, continue to press button to, I guess, it would stop a baby from falling into a fire or something like that. And there is some absurd achievement for doing it for a very long time. I think it's like an hour. Yeah, the game hates you. We're extending variables just hates the people that play it, but in a hilarious way.
00:31:33
Speaker
Or the achievement for not actually playing the game for like five years or whatever it was. I don't think I have that. Cause I occasionally get the edge at like the three year mark. I'm like, it's a really good game. And uh, forget about the achievement. No, that's actually like a perfect example.
00:31:52
Speaker
I think you touched on this, but so many walking simulators are actually, and I said this, linear in nature. I like how you're like, you talked about this, but I said this. Well, you talked about the choice, and I was talking about how it was linear earlier, and most of them are, but they don't have to be. You could have a fully fleshed out walking simulator with a lot of choices,
00:32:19
Speaker
As long as those choices aren't really diverging into separate mechanics, it's literally just, where do you want to go in reaction to the situation? And Stanley is a hundred percent that it's literally red door, blue door. Here we go. Would you then, would you then qualify life is strange? See, that's when it gets, that's when it gets interesting. Cause like.
00:32:48
Speaker
Life is Strange is kind of in games like that, like the Telltale games, their expansions off of like the visual novel genre. Yeah, I think it's leaning more kind of like a choices matter. Yeah. Because if we go to the more recent example of Wolf Among Us, there's not a whole lot of walking and exploration. Yeah. It's fairly linear of like, you're at this location. What things do you want to click on?
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah, the game actually wouldn't have been any worse if it was more like mist or something, or you could just like click buttons on the side of the screen to switch between scenes, like point of view in a crime scene. Be like, look at the front of the room, look at the side of the room, look at the other side. It wouldn't have changed anything about the game. It would just basically be King's Quest at that point. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Which I think is where these
Pacing and Narrative Techniques in Games
00:33:40
Speaker
all originated.
00:33:42
Speaker
Everything's a bit of a King's Quest clone, let's be honest. Yeah, right. King's Quest, King's Field, it's all the same. But yeah, I think this is interesting because this is very much taking the walking out of it, similarly to the previous games, but it still is at its core, focused.
00:34:08
Speaker
certain sensory input for usually an emotional or storytelling experience. In this case, literally reading, you know, in a lot of narrative games.
00:34:24
Speaker
I feel like it's such like a gray, a gray topic. Like there's one person at home who's listening, the one person at home who's listening, who is like pulling their hair out. They're like, why have they not mentioned ring fit adventure? The only true walking simulator. Right. Yeah. Even though it has combat and cardio. Get out of here. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing with cardio. That's just walking. Um, and other exercises. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:34:54
Speaker
But yeah, I think like those narrative games, they can honestly, sometimes they use walking even to dilute the experience a little bit. Like the game would be shorter if you didn't have to walk around and pick up clues and things like that. Yeah. It's like, why do we even pay these level designers? Yeah, exactly.
00:35:15
Speaker
No, it's it's definitely used as a I don't want to say gimmick because that again seems to like diminish what it is. It's used as a tool in many things. It just in certain cases, it's more prevalent. But like now I'm even considering Senua, right?
00:35:34
Speaker
Senua is very much, you go and explore, you occasionally have to do like some simple puzzles, some combat, but it's interspersed. Typically, you're literally just walking around and trying to get over some obstacles and dealing with some mental issues as you go.
00:35:56
Speaker
Like the game starts as a kayaking simulator. I think before, while I'm before becoming a walking simulator. God of War. Oh, no, no, sorry. Send me. Send me. Yeah. Yeah. Same universe actually, but yeah. The crossover. Get ready for it. God of War 4.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yes, look at my Norse. My Norse is amazing. That's good. Okay, that was actually good. Everything else was trash by comparison. Glad to get that one. Yeah, I think Senua... See, it feels like Walking Simulator is an insult, right? That's why we're defensive about having games that we like. I mean, Walking Simulator tagged on.
00:36:39
Speaker
It's like early access or some other things. It brings up skepticism, at least. It's like, why am I spending time walking around doing nothing? That's the impression when you see walking simulator tag. And for Senua,
00:36:56
Speaker
Specifically, I'm actually going to compare this against like the worst example in a second, like terrible example. But like Senua, the reason there's these walking segments is because she's going through her, you know, psychosis or a multiple personality. I can't remember exactly what her theoretical condition was, but like listening to the other voices in her head.
00:37:23
Speaker
Maybe there's a little bit more walking than was necessary in the game, but it's also like a fleshed out 3D world with interesting terrain and things to explore. And at some point you cross over from just being like, we're just padding things out by having you walk around to be like,
00:37:41
Speaker
There's a world here and we spent time making it and we would like if you saw it, you know, like I don't think that's evil. You know, no, definitely not. And the other part of that to bring back a point I made later on in the game, you have like in hell or a hellscape. And it's like hell. Oh, yeah. I remember the name of that.
00:38:08
Speaker
it's almost like a Jim Henson level of like there's all these arms and faces sticking out of the walls and ground and they hold you back and you actually have to push through which is again I'm talking about like that part of the gameplay is like you interacting to push through. Yeah. It could be a cutscene but there's less value in a cutscene in the same way with
00:38:35
Speaker
going back to blanking on it. Wolfenstein. Okay. Interesting. Right? There's a choice you have to make. I think in Wolfenstein one, we're like, which character dies? Yes. Uh-huh. And you making the choice has you more engaged instead of just like, Oh, this thing happened. Yeah. And I don't know. I like anything that involves the actual player to do something versus just watching it in a cut scene.
00:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, especially if that cutscene is unskippable. Monster Hunter, you can suck my dick. Yeah, I think...
00:39:12
Speaker
Like having player initiative is important, even if it's, it's better if it's real, right? True choices matter more. Um, obviously tail-tail. What do you say about Bioshock, Jake? Huh? Right. I mean, Bioshock, some of them had choices. Um, there's a few choices to make in each of them. I don't know if infinite did.
00:39:38
Speaker
By definition, I can't remember if infinite did, but I'm not going to go into infinite spoilers on this random episode. But it's still like, like you said, moving forward itself is a choice. It's all about, from the game developer's perspective, building a relationship between the person behind the controller or keyboard or mouse, whatever.
00:40:00
Speaker
behind the screen and the character that's designed there in the screen. And part of that is just time spent together, right? Like you'll care more about Senua for having gone through her entire ordeal, her entire experience.
00:40:17
Speaker
And if it was just a boss rush with cutscenes in between, there would be no space to develop that relationship. It's the quiet moments as well as the intense struggles that get you more attached to the character by the end.
00:40:39
Speaker
We're dwelling on the positive aspects of games that may have that walking simulator tag, but this is walking simulator done right. I did want to come back to my terrible example, which is not Senua, but it made me think of it. So in Batman games, there's literally this infamous
00:41:05
Speaker
Voice piece basically you put your hand up to the side of your head you start walking slowly The camera kind of zooms in so that man's taking up more of the screen You lose access to all of your abilities and you talk to Alfred or Oracle or whoever And if for this brief moment the game becomes a walking simulator Because you can't do anything you're literally just here until the dialogue plays out and
00:41:31
Speaker
And it's so you don't encounter a borderland situation where like you're running forward and like tripping over all of these other triggers and dialogue and things like that. But it's also stupid. It's also like it's anti-fun. And that's what I would file under taking the aspects, the strict elements of walking simulators and making them bad, removing control.
00:41:58
Speaker
Instead of trying to like rehash everything you said or trying to like add onto it, I'm just gonna make a light joke. Anti-fun is why I don't trust liberals. Yeah. But yeah, I think you do need to actually have engagement. Because I can't think of a single walking simulator example where there's not like a heavy narrative tie. Right. Because like basically what
00:42:27
Speaker
What strolls you forward, right? Like, why should you give a shit about literally moving forward in a game at a slower pace than running and jumping and dashing and shooting, right? That's the question game developers 100% need to be able to answer. Like, why should anyone care is an important question to ask whenever you're introducing something to your game.
00:42:54
Speaker
I mean, it has to be fun or it has to be engaging. I mean, if you're lucky, you have both. Yeah. But there are definitely games where it's just, this is shits and giggles and nothing else. And then there are games where I'm emotionally tied to something. And then there's some examples like Minecraft where like my brain just shuts off and I'm like, I want to beat that shit out of some trees. Rest in peace.
00:43:20
Speaker
Literally, every game I play I had D4 is I'm like, I'm going to build one giant tower shaped like a dong. But yeah, it's a pacing thing mainly.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think, like, so a lot of the walking simulators I've played, they are, I don't want to retread Old Ground too much here, but coming off of visual novel type games, coming off of point and click adventure games, if they were made in olden times, that's what they would have been, right? Like, another one I played is Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
00:43:54
Speaker
And it's a natural expansion of just a mystery game. It's just like there are questions and the game is moving you forward. You know, the walking part could have been completely removed, but it is a walking simulator because of the time spent walking between areas.
00:44:15
Speaker
And it's, the only reason to keep playing is those questions. Why should I be playing this? Like, why am I interested? And the questions are, who is Ethan Carter and why did he vanish and et cetera, et cetera, until you get to the end. And I think that, you know, there can be different reasons to have somebody hold forward, to hold the W key, but finding that reason and making sure one exists is absolutely essential.
00:44:45
Speaker
I agree with you, but I have to ask, what is your opinion on the vanishing of Ethan Carter? It was alright. It wasn't super, super great. Did you play through the entire thing? Yup. Ah, okay. I did not enjoy that game at all. I thought it was bad. To me, it was the equivalent of, you know those
00:45:04
Speaker
giant billboards on the highway where it'll be for some car dealership,
Genre Boundaries in Narrative Games
00:45:10
Speaker
but it'll be something really vague like, I hate Stephen Singer, or like, what did Jim do? And you're like, who's Jim? And then you have to look up on the website, and it's like, oh, Jim sells cars. Right. And that's the whole thing. And you're like, oh, now that my question's been answered, I'm very unfulfilled. It's IRL clickbait. Yep.
00:45:26
Speaker
And that's what that game was for me. I don't know what it was in particular, but I was very much just not engaged. At least for that example. I think it's fair. I can't remember a lot of the plot details, which is maybe a sign. Well, my memory is not that great in the first place, so maybe it's not a sign of anything.
00:45:46
Speaker
I completed it. That's props to the game. It's not the type of game that I usually play, but I also don't recall that much from it. That's props against the game because it probably wasn't that memorable. Something that is memorable, and I would say is probably like the start of, if I had to make a list, this is going to be like the first on the list. Don't look at my actual list. Gone home.
00:46:10
Speaker
I think is the first entry in my historical memory of a walking simulator that I played that was kind of definitively that in its truest form. Right. It's very much going through a narrative story, trying to make progression, figure out the mystery of a little bit about what's going on. And you don't really have a lot of context. You just kind of come home and you're exploring the house and you're getting the story delivered to you as you are exploring and walking around.
00:46:41
Speaker
And it was just a good game, but like I hadn't played anything else like it. That's very much its own set of pacing. Yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker
Yeah, this is, it's very much, again, it would have been kind of in the midst adventure genre where you're like, click to go to different rooms. It could have been that game. But while I'm almost 100% sure I didn't actually look to see if this had the walking simulator tag, I assume it does. It has very little walking compared to some of the others. Like, this is a girl in a house, essentially, right?
00:47:20
Speaker
Like I can't remember this. I don't think this game is honestly that long. It's mostly just finding out what's going on. I think it was two-ish hours? Yeah. I think it was crazy. That's not long at all by like actual game standards. You can say like a first-person shooter runs you like 11 hours for single-player campaign or something like that.
00:47:42
Speaker
JRPGs are infinite hours and other games are somewhere in between. Like that's that's almost nothing. So this is not. You could not really make the argument, even if it is a walking simulator, that the walking is used to pad out the experience. Because two hours means that there was no padded out experience, right? That's the experience. That's that's a movie.
00:48:10
Speaker
But I think this might be one of the perfect examples of a walking simulator because the pacing matches the experience. If you could just click between rooms really rapidly, like super rapidly, you would have no time to digest the newspaper clipping you just read or the letter.
00:48:33
Speaker
or anything like that. It does actually help to have a little bit of time to reflect. It's just finding out the balance between encouraging the player to think about what you're putting in front of them and also not holding them back, putting the baby gate up. You're like, have you paid attention yet? You're paying attention? Okay, now you can go. Ethan Carter was outside for a lot of it, and it was literally just walking across the landscape.
00:49:02
Speaker
And that's potentially too much time to think about what's going on. There wasn't much to think about. The landscape is not pretty from what I recall. I think anything with an uncovering story is a good route that is really serviceable for that medium.
00:49:23
Speaker
I, if you heard me typing a minute ago, I was looking at Mandalore's channel. I would love him to be. That guy is so cool. Um, but he did a review on no one lives under the lighthouse. Did you watch that one? I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:41
Speaker
So this is like an old PS1 type graphics game where you get brought to a lighthouse and you have to take care of the lighthouse. So you'll explore the island, you'll refill the fuel and some other stuff. A story unfolds there, a much darker mystery type thing.
00:50:01
Speaker
But very much it is paced of like you are killing time to walk around. Yeah. And it's it's done just for that pace. So you appreciate it. And then you get more terrified by like it's becoming nighttime. I don't want to have to deal with this. Yeah. The obviously nothing that lives under the level of a house. Yeah. I don't know why they're so specific. They weren't like, hey, nobody died in your apartment when I rented it. Weird thing to say up front.
00:50:30
Speaker
Also important and important to clarify. Next time I move, I'm going to ask that nobody died here, right? Right. And they say, not yet. I'm like, hmm. That's an important question to ask. That's why I always open with it. No one's died here yet, right?
00:50:47
Speaker
Always a good opening. Is this place fresh for a kill? Right. Yeah, I just thought about another aspect of why I hated the Batman example. It's because you can't take a game that's not a walking simulator with a bunch of mobility and options and the ability to just move at your own pace. You couldn't take Mirror's Edge, for instance, and then be like,
00:51:14
Speaker
Shut up. Slow down. You're going to be moving a walking pace through all of this and expect people to be happy because they're there to move quickly and a walking simulator or a game that has that tag usually.
00:51:28
Speaker
That's mutually exclusive with fast-paced action, right? You would not expect to see both of those on the same game. Yeah. I did consider for the list, but I would say, no, it's a running simulator. You dump pieces of shit. The whole thing is literally free running. Oh, Mirror's Edge. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing paced about it.
00:51:51
Speaker
And then like when things do slow down, it literally is like a cut scene. Yeah. Mm hmm. Which again, it's fine. It's a lovely game. I highly recommend it. Just the first one. I don't remember it to be in there. Um, catalyst. But. Yeah, no, it's I feel like.
00:52:13
Speaker
For how vague this is, I feel like we keep rehashing the same ground or we say we're very, very out there and people are like, how does that connect? Yeah.
00:52:28
Speaker
It's part of like, we've covered like a couple, I don't know if we've focused too much on genres. I think we've done first-person shooters in general, but like walking simulator as a tag, because this is more of a tag than the genre. This is literally just a steam tag you can sort games by. It represents a pace and a feel for games, a lot of times more than anything else. And also a subtle dig, right?
00:52:57
Speaker
Like I don't know how do you how do you think that I really think it depends like This is something that we're never gonna have an episode on something. It's worth it But I think I told you like a year so ago. I played a game called rhyme
00:53:12
Speaker
And it is adventure, puzzle, exploration, atmospheric. Those all check out. You could throw a walking simulator on that as well. And I think it still fits. I don't think it takes
Perception and Classification of Walking Simulators
00:53:23
Speaker
away from that. Like there's some more verticality in this than something that would just be like just walking. But I still think it fits. But it is very much a slower paced. I want to say narrative, but you don't really get any clues about the story until like the very end.
00:53:42
Speaker
Right. You were looking on Steam and you said that a new world was marked as a locked-in simulator. That's obviously meant to just be a poke. I think their positivity rating has gone down. They've had a lot of issues post-launch and it shouldn't really surprise anybody.
00:54:07
Speaker
It's the company's first MMO as far as I know. It's Amazon just using money to push something into reality instead of
00:54:18
Speaker
I think they literally changed a game to be New World. It wasn't even originally supposed to be like that, but there's so much busy work that even though, like, yes, there is a lot of travel in the game, you're probably doing a lot of things between point A and point B. I can understand why the walking simulator tags there and discontent is what it's expressed. That's kind of led to the question I was going to have. Like, if you were a game developer,
00:54:44
Speaker
And you made a game and you're published it to Steam and it became you can't turn off tags unfortunately users can't suggest tags for games and the most popular ones show up and Walking Simulator was one of those tags. How would you feel I? Guess it would depend on what the game I made was But I think in a lot of cases coop I
00:55:10
Speaker
That would be definitely a boon in that case. Sometimes in my belt. But yeah, it would definitely not be ideal for, I would say, 90% of games you could make. Right. Because even if it was narrative, I don't want that to be like, oh, I'm looking for a walking simulator. This fits. Right. It's like I want, oh, story rich. Story rich. Yeah. If that was an actual thing of like atmospheric or paste. Excellent. Great music.
00:55:40
Speaker
Yeah. Versus you have like war cash, right? You get like four visible tags, something like that on the front page. And so most of them are either descriptive, like beneficial or it's usually just descriptive or beneficial. Like I don't think there's a ripoff tag. I haven't seen that one yet, but walking simulator takes all those spots. We really know what hentai means when someone is tagged and a little bit of a ripoff of.
00:56:13
Speaker
It's a derivative and degenerate. Save that for review. But yeah, I think it's tough to see it as a boon when you have so many good tags that you'd love to see there, right?
00:56:34
Speaker
Imagine this on a box cover, right? It's like IGN, four out of five stars, an excellent walking simulator. That's not the tag you're gonna take. Like that's not the sub line. Yeah, it's like if it was truck driving simulator, I would want great truck driving simulator. That's it. Otherwise, yeah, try and like boil it down too much really. Like you can do that literally with anything.
00:57:00
Speaker
If you say like, what's this podcast? Oh, two people just talking about stuff. It's a talking to me. It sounds like shit now, but. Like, if you break anything down with raw pieces, you can make it sound really shitty. Um, so overall, I still don't think walking simulator is necessarily a bad tag, though, in the same way, early access, it does kind of give me that knee jerk of like, uh,
00:57:27
Speaker
You know going into it. That's maybe the difference. Maybe you would never want to see this if you're the developer. But if you're the player, seeing Walking Simulator show up as a tag on a game, it's kind of informative.
00:57:42
Speaker
It is, yeah. But again, if I'm looking for a game, I'm not looking for something that's going to be walking simulator because my mind will jump to something more like Gone Home or Firewatch. And that's fine, but I'm not usually looking for that. I more so want something that's going to be atmospheric or paced, but have other elements, which would be something more like Hellblade sending with sacrifice. Right.
00:58:09
Speaker
Friend of the show, Hellblade, send you a sacrifice. Or I guess just send you one. The game is a friend of the show. And does that have Walking Simulator? That's my question. I don't think it will. This would be the great injustice. I'm checking real quick. It doesn't. So here it is. Here's what Hellblade has. Atmospheric, psychological, story rich, and mythology.
00:58:40
Speaker
So you don't know, you don't necessarily get the pacing at all from that. Maybe it is pseudo walking simulator, but everything else there, none of them are saying like action, adventure, Ninja Theory's product here is clearly in the narrative space, you know, based off these tags. And it's conveying that, you know, the pacing might not be crazy fast. It's not, it's not, uh,
00:59:07
Speaker
I was going to say Metal Gear Solid. That's a terrible example. It's not Devil May Cry, but it also doesn't have like a semi-negative tag here to potentially drive people away. I know we're very close on time, but do you want to see me chaotically pull out a thread? Sure. Yeah. Where would you classify Outer Wilds?
00:59:31
Speaker
Okay. Oh, interesting. So exploration for sure. That has to be one of them. Crap. What are three other words for exploration?
00:59:42
Speaker
Sci-fi or world building or something to that extent. I'll give you a space. Yeah. Spaces. Is it just space? The word space. So far, exploration space. Space. OK. Gotcha. I'm imagining open world or free untethered, something like that. I guess explore kind of associates with that. Adventure. Adventure. OK. All right. Related.
01:00:11
Speaker
Are we trying to figure anything out in this game? Yeah, I guess puzzle or mystery. Yep, those are the other two. Yeah. Yeah, and that's you spend a tremendous amount of time walking in this game. You also fly a ship sometimes. Those are the two modes of transportation. A lot of the ones that are here on like this steam list or on adjacent pages.
01:00:35
Speaker
So like I just clicked amnesia rebirth, which I haven't gotten to because I mean that series kind of how the fuck it's good. Let's yeah, it's bad. But even as top tags here don't have walking simulator, even though it's on the list in steam. That's true.
01:00:51
Speaker
So it is, if you think our definition is fuzzy, get the fuck out of here. Everybody's definition is fuzzy. Yeah. So it's a suggested tag or it's a tag that is on the game, but it's not one of their top four. Yeah. In this case. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. Uh, rebirth mostly positive on steam right now. So like.
01:01:10
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if there's a solid criteria where it's like, Hey, here you go. Walking simulator. Here's your walking simulator tag. You can't return it. Just put that on your body. So we all know. Um, I assume that's how it works in steam. They just tell you.
01:01:27
Speaker
It's like when you Google like one specific thing and then you find a web page that has like every word in the English dictionary on it. It's like what has the thing you were looking at? You're right. This is for you. Yeah. Yeah. But it's definitely definitely I would say yellow flag.
01:01:49
Speaker
if I see it pop up on a game, and like you said, unless I'm explicitly looking for that type of pace, that type of experience, I'm questioning why there's not a different fourth tag that is as popular. Why is one of the core things about your
Conclusion and Contact Information
01:02:09
Speaker
game the fact that
01:02:11
Speaker
You walk a lot, you know, potentially a factor. Um, but you gotta, you gotta weigh them one by one. You know, see what the, uh, cause again, I was thinking about, I was thinking about death stranding. I was like, I know it has so many other things. It could have so many other tags. It could have four tags for just weird Kojima.
01:02:30
Speaker
like tags like that. And it, you know, may be more appropriate, but the public's perception of death stranding is like a lot of walking though, right? Tag walking is really there, right? I think it's a hive mind thing. It is, yeah.
01:02:52
Speaker
But I would say that if you guys have any ideas for our small hive mind, or of an Archon than anything else, you could send those in to soapstonepodcast at gmail.com, or you could join the Facebook hive mind, wouldn't recommend it, at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. And not as always in this one specific instance, have a happy Thanksgiving. See ya.
01:03:52
Speaker
down to the forest