Infinitap Games

so you made the choice to eliminate the feeling of the player having a choice, even at points where the player was making a choice. This makes them feel disempowered.

I guess I am not quite grasping how this would make logical sense to the player based on the rest of the game.

the player begins the game and has the choice of where to go and what to do. they have the choice to interact with dolls or paintings to view them. they have the choice to locate the certain key items and proceed through the game or to continue exploring without them and get them later. They even have the choice of how to best deal with enemies and not get killed (or to just run at them and die).

But after all this, when they get to the latter part of the game where their choice REALLY matters to the final stages and direction of the game, you want to disempower them by making their choice invisible. Because it adds to the themes of the game.

This same theme of disempowerment that made the ability to sprint limited. That chose enemies to be one hit kills with no method to fend them off. That gave no weapons or abilities to the player besides walking and avoidance. That set certain moments in the game as such the player HAS to die.

This reminds me of how there is a fundamental different in how attractions are listed at theme parks, carnivals, faires, and similar venu's. They have "games" and they have "rides". Games are challenges that people can partake of where there are elements of chance, skill, competition, reward, and potentially higher escalating stakes. Then there are rides/attractions, which offer participants a chance to be guided/forced/flung in various ways to thrill, scare, frighten, excite or entertain them as they sit and go through the paces (or walk through a fun house). It could be anything from a rollercoaster to sitting for a live stunt show.

I think it is fair to say that with rides/attractions are fairly disempowering, and so their impact can be magnified significantly. WHen you get on the coaster, you have no real way to make it stop, slow it down, get off, or control the experience. you just have to go along it. When you sit down for a show you have about as much control (except you can try to leave). You previously mentioned NeN was not unlike a fun house, where you just move through things and deal with the creepiness and scary atmosphere. You wanted to immerse the viewer into a forced oppressive and nightmarish experience where they had little ability other than to just move through it and so understand better what it was like to have such nightmares and obsessions.

Whereas games are, to some degree, empowering because it requires interaction, skill, thought, objectives, planning, and often a system of challenges and payoffs (or goals). Video games are often not so different.

What you have created in NeN where it lay somewhere in the middle, and it feels like the motivations of having the game making the player disempowered and forced to walk through the funhouse, but also claims it is a game where you would expect "gameisms" to occur, are completely clashing conceptually. If it is a game, why are you averse to having most "game" aspects like screen prompts/interactions/clear choices/narrative/rewards/character progression/etc etc. If you want complete immersion, why add in elements of puzzles and some unnecessary interaction and call it a game? Why give the characters names and voices? How are we to immerse ourselves into the moment and become the character if they themselves have their own defining traits? IF you didn't want it to have a central clear narrative, why do we have characters and a sense of narrative in place (albeit jumbled and vague)?

I guess there are so many mixed messages in NeN that I can't grasp at anything solid. Maybe that too is you putting an invisible choice out there: believe it is a game or believe it is an immersive experience.

Don't worry, I don't expect you to reply to this. it is more me talking out loud (or typing out loud?) in an effort to rationalize the dissonance I am seeing and understand it. I'm just doing it on here in case you might get something from it yourself.

I honestly don't consider Neverending Nightmares to be a "game", and I think the term game (which will probably never change) is baggage weighing down the industry since it implies things like skill, challenge, and fun whereas some of the best "game" experiences don't really line up with those expectations.

Neverending Nightmares is interactive entertainment or if I'm feeling pretentious, interactive art. I'm not sure if that helps you understand things, but to me, Neverending Nightmares is what I set out to make. Is it perfect? No. Is it interesting/entertaining/worthwhile? I think most on the forum would answer an enthusiastic yes to that. However, it's impossible to please everyone, so I can certainly understand that some people won't enjoy it.

matt wrote:I honestly don't consider Neverending Nightmares to be a "game", and I think the term game (which will probably never change) is baggage weighing down the industry since it implies things like skill, challenge, and fun whereas some of the best "game" experiences don't really line up with those expectations.

Neverending Nightmares is interactive entertainment or if I'm feeling pretentious, interactive art. I'm not sure if that helps you understand things, but to me, Neverending Nightmares is what I set out to make. Is it perfect? No. Is it interesting/entertaining/worthwhile? I think most on the forum would answer an enthusiastic yes to that. However, it's impossible to please everyone, so I can certainly understand that some people won't enjoy it.

I actually agree with you here, that it is interactive entertainment and not necessarily a "game" by traditional standards. The issue is the blurb on steam says completely otherwise.

Neverending Nightmares is a psychological horror game inspired by the developer's actual battle with mental illness. In the game, you take on the role of Thomas who awakens from a terrible nightmare only to find that he is still dreaming. As he descends deeper through the layers of hellish dreamscapes, he must hide from horrifying apparitions and outrun his inner demons. He must discover which of the horrors he encounters are a manifestation of his own psychological state and figure out what reality will be when he finally wakes up.

And I seem to recall most references to NeN cites it as a game. When I look at the steam page for say, Dear Esther, they don't cite it as a game. When I look at the page for Gone Home they cite it as "Gone Home is an interactive exploration simulator". I cite those two because they've popped up as comparisons to your NeN on the forums and in your videos and they are also questioned as "not a game" and "walking simulators" by the nay-sayers.

Personally I think they each have a degree of merit and them not being " a game" is not really a slight on them as it is the beginning of the idea that not all interactive entertainment needs to be the traditional concept of 'a game'. But, that said, marketing an 'interactive entertainment' title as a 'game' opens up a lot of confusion and potential feelings of deception.

at the same time, there is this need to make a title a "game" because it has a greater chance to sell well. So game elements are implemented and rules are added and language is tweaked. It almost feels like someone has to consider " If we don't market this as a game in some way it'll never sell". Likely it is true, it wouldn't sell, and so I am saddened by that reality and that the final release has to be altered accordingly.

Well, I think it would be tough to word without using the word game. "Neverending Nightmares is a psychological horror experience" sounds a bit weird. Game seems like the catchall term for interactive entertainment, so I think it is easier to refer to Neverending Nightmares as a game. I think it being on Steam and marketed alongside games would lead people to infer it is a game (whatever that means to them) regardless of the wording of the Steam description.

Do you really think that not saying game in the description would make a difference in what people think about the product?

I think it approaches being a way to set up better expectations for the consumer. If i marketed a visual novel by saying it was an epic game with a story full of colorful characters and the player could make significant decisions as they progressed to change the events of time, and then you play it and it's just a visual novel with 2-3 branching paths and no other 'game' elements, i'm betting we'd see a ton of gripes no matter how great the story/art/sound was.

I saw your other thread about this so it looks like you are taking this to heart. I cited the 2 other examples where it is not as much a 'game' but an experience and i think in terms of building this as a sub-genre of gaming, it's good to perpetuate a degree of truth and not cause unnecessary confusion. I realize Steam is mostly for games, but it also sells software and i think even movies (didn't it have indie game movie on for a while?) so it is not JUST games.. though many may consider it for that.

You can't base a decision solely on what might be the inferred perception or belief. lately steam has gotten a bad rep for greenlighting a lot of terrrible games, and in that regard seeing NeN as an indie greenlit project infers that it too is likely to be a terrible budget title. Where is the truth in that?

And as you said in the other thread, your review of NeN, which was the most accurate and truthful, is voted the most useful. that alone should shine a bit of light on what accuracy can do for you. Sadly, this all may be too little too late. making changes would help new consumers and future sales, and very likely when you release a NEW game folk will look at your other creations and appreciate walking into NeN properly, which generates a better vibe/word of mouth/sales/reviews/references to the game. Over time it may outweight the bad reviews currently bugging you. but by no means would it be 'insta fix'