The Night Journey
Game
3 documents in the library are about The Night Journey, from writers such as DiGRA and Press Start. Each has a summary and key insights with the page they come from.
Connections
Each row is a game or company named alongside The Night Journey, each column a document, oldest first. A mark means that document names it. Select a row to see those documents.
Documents about The Night Journey
Revisiting the Magic Circle for Critical-Ethical Reflection through Artistic Installation Game Design
The document explores the capacity of game design, specifically through artistic installation games, to cultivate critical-ethical reflection in players.
- The paper argues that installation games can prompt critical-ethical reflection by moving players beyond the 'magic circle,' the boundary separating play from real-world consequence, using narrative thought experiments combined with metaphoric, embodied interaction.
- The central case study, I Don't Know Who I Am, is a single-player installation game in which players inhabit Bow, a cow experiencing identity loss, and face an ethical dilemma about whether to eat grass seasoned with soy sauce.
- The game's structure moves through three stages: narrative immersion, an ethical dilemma, and a closing dialogue with the designer about online manipulation and technologically shaped desire.
Subtle Playability: Orienting Players' Actions Beyond the Threat of Failure
This extended abstract proposes that "walking simulators" and "notgames," despite removing traditional failure conditions, still possess an underlying ludic structure that differentiates them from non-ludic interactive artifacts.
- The paper argues that walking simulators and notgames lack a failure state yet still have an underlying ludic structure, challenging Leino's view that a failure condition is the decisive marker of playability.
- It proposes 'subtle playability': a system of valorised outcomes embedded in an artefact that orients player behaviour without any explicit failure state.
- Proteus (structured as progression toward an ending) is contrasted with Traversing the Sectors (open-ended exploration with no goal or win condition) to illustrate how orientation can exist without a win or lose state.
Shifting Borders: Walking Simulators, Artgames, and the Categorical Compulsions of Gaming Discourse
The gaming industry frequently relies on restrictive taxonomic labels such as walking simulator and artgame to categorize digital experiences, yet these classifications often fail to capture the nuance of contemporary interactive media.
- Gaming discourse frequently relies on restrictive, binary categories like 'artgame' and 'walking simulator' to legitimize the medium, often mirroring the defensive categorization seen in traditional arts and literature.
- Bill Viola's 2007 gallery installation 'The Night Journey' and Connor Sherlock's 2015 'Walking Simulator A Month Club' serve as case studies for how experimental games resist formal classification by prioritizing disorientation and non-goal-oriented play.
- The term 'artgame' has expanded into a broad, often ill-defined taxonomy since its 2003 definition by Tiffany Holmes, now encompassing sub-genres like empathy games, altgames, and serious games.