Lessons Learned: Life is Strange

Life is Strange taught me importance of being someone else.
As I am learning and gaining experience in the game design, I see vast majority of efforts aimed at the holy grail: Creating game fun game mechanics. As gold prospectors in river, searching through his bowl full of sediment it, trying to find gold. And when we finds it, it feels really good. This is fun! We want to hear. It’s our goal. Our drug.

Two faces of game

That is one face of games. The entertainment. Like game of dice, the often hazardous game of luck, chess, brushing your thinking, or poker, best psychological game of tactics over in face of chance.

On the other hand, game is a medium. Like books, like films. Not by any chance inferior. They tell you stories, and in unique ways: No other medium will give you the control. Make you in charge. Let you do anything (in game’s scope). This is why some people say that best stories of 21. century will be told in games, and I don’t disagree. I hope for that.

I sometimes come to thinking, that calling this medium “game” makes it somehow inferior, like it’s for childern. If you remember holockeck from Star Trek, I wouldn’t call those simulations a game, but what else it is, right? All of their simulations, even more serious ones, like Kobayashi Maru, fit the genere.

Matter of perspective

But back to ground. To life. Which is strange.

I spent 12 beautiful hours playing it. I really enjoyed the story. I enjoyed mechanics, but the game’s not about them — rewining time is interesting, but not fun just in itself. Decisions are the juicy ones. Ability to rewind them adds a nice twist into the genere.

What I brought from that time to the rest of my life was the different perspective of young girl’s life. How various small, even meaningless things are important in that world. Value of relationships, very cute curiosity and caring about different things from everpresent posters on boards to caring about the planet, and balance between emotional and rational in her mind.
But most interesting for me were the small things. I spent long time thinking, if I would date Warren. He was trying, consistently. This was completely new for me as a person: I am either interested and go for it (when confidece allows), or I am not interested at all. This is very binary for me. But playing as Max, I couldn’t just sent him away. On the other hand he was total nerd with low self esteem hidden behind bad jokes… But he tried, he was able to take and give some punches because of me, and he was kinda smart. If nothing less, Max had to be complimented by his efforts.
So yea, that was fun. In the end, I tried hugging him and giving him a kiss… and the hug won. Sorry Warren.

Other thing that enriched me were decisions, mostly the one at the end. They were well done, and really got me thinking about my values. If life of most important person in my life is more important then lives of other, less important ones. That decision was kinda easy, but still, it made me think why is that.

And third — life is Strange is kind of like poetry. It makes you see things you would not care about, cast different light on the ordinary. The same world is very different from perspective of each person, and experiencing this different person’s view is enriching experience. When I finished the game, I felt the same way as I would read good book.

So where are the game design lessons?

Thinking outside of box of “fun — how can I make this fun?”, can be a nice change. Or let’s just drop word fun, and call it experience. If I can make strong experience out of a game, I won. But on the other hand, this is really hard. Designers tend to go full let’s make real horror story — but they are not able to make gameplay add to that factor. I encountered confident people ready to force feed player with really tense atmosphere, thinking they will provide them with something they never ever experienced.
It did not work.

Actually I know one instance where it worked. And when it worked, it bringed my best gaming experiences. April 2012, when I found Arma 2: DayZ Mod. I have to write about that one someday.