Game Blog 1 - Her Story

Game Blog Week 1

Game: Her Story

Question 3: Does your chosen game(s) make user input feel meaningful in terms of story direction and progression? Why or why not?

In the game ‘Her Story’ developed by Sam Barlow you are tasked with watching previously captured interview footage to piece together what you think is a murder mystery but develops into something a lot deeper. Due to how the game is structured (or lack thereof) the order in which events unfold and new information is acquired is entirely determined by the user's input. In my opinion this makes the user input very meaningful because your progression through the game and the direction of the story is 100% player controlled and every player would progress through the game in a different order. Technically to reach the credits you don’t have to watch every video meaning that two different players may play through it and have watched two completely different sets of videos although they are likely to stumble across some key videos as they come up from multiple keyword searches. As well as a story structure this game is also lacking a definitive ending, this means that depending on what videos you watch and how well informed you are you may come to a different conclusion to someone else meaning that different players might have different interpretations/theories about the events described in this game. This is another reason I believe that your input is meaningful in Her Story because different play throughs from different people or even the same person may result in different theories about what actually happened and because the game lacks a definitive ending explaining what did and didn’t happen the players theory is essentially what happened as far as they are concerned.