Transit and Branding Response
In the readings for February 14 I once again found 2 chapters that I thought were fairly interesting. In reference to my previous post these two chapters do not improve much on Bogost’s habit of selecting a title for the chapter and then not focusing on said word. Transit was really bad about this as half of the chapter focused on the history of transportation. Branding did a much better job, but I believe it was because it focused mostly on video games as a business and not the content of the games themselves. The good thing was this wasn’t the only thing I found interesting about this chapters. Transit offered a view into the way transportation has evolved throughout history and ultimately how video games tend to copy transit within their gameplay. I think one thing that is missing from this discussion, and maybe he talked about it and I missed it, but the idea of fast travel. Bogost discusses how video games give you the ability to traverse across huge maps either through car or on feet, but a lot of these games offer fast travel methods. They, like the train, blur the line of travel and offer panoramas of the outside. The transit chapter stuck out to me because I love open world games and in open world games travel is important. I typically will use the modes of transportations provided to me for the majority of the game, but eventually I get sick and decide to fast travel. This doesn’t happen when the mode of transportation is entertaining, but if it’s just regular driving I would rather save the time through fast travel. I think it be interesting if Bogost had explored the idea that developers now are forced to incorporate real time events within the game to insure people continue to travel and not abuse the fast travel. I think the best example comes from games like the Arkham series or the newly released Spider-Man. In these series you have fast travel capabilities, but if you fast travel you miss the chance of stumbling upon a heist or a bad guy committing some form of wrong. You miss the opportunity to collect riddler clues or stumble upon a murder. These I believe are tactics so that players don’t fast travel. In games like GTA V you have events like a man stealing a purse that you can only participate in if you don’t fast travel. I think the ultimate truth is that players get bored off being forced to travel long digital distances in order to get to missions and if given the opportunity they would fast travel. The other chapter that I thought was interesting was the Branding chapter. I won’t lie my thoughts on the chapter are actually pretty limited. I’m glad he stuck to the topic. I also had never heard of the Burger King games and was really intrigued by that form of advertisement. It probably wasn’t much of a success because it never picked up. I’ve never seen another company do something similar to what Burger King did. I think something that would have been interesting to pursue within that chapter are what differentiates Burger King’s games with the games produced to promote upcoming movies. I had a ton of Harry Potter games that would come out on consoles around the time the new movies came out. These games overtime have stopped coming out by I think they exist within the same vein as the Burger King ones.
