Proteus is fun enough. I got it in a bundle (or was it just a sale?), so I can't really say I was disappointed or anything. Apparently there are things you can do that do other things, but I haven't figured that out yet. I just prance around, listen to the music and disturb the animals :D.

Please, tell me what "genuine" puzzles it had? Tell me what I missed from this interactive book?

Easy games are still games, checkers is easy to play, you can lose, you can win, and there is a specific goal and challenge to overcome to get to that goal.

Gone Home is you walking around, looking for doors and buttons to hit, to advance a simple minded narrative and shallow story. You are not overcoming any challenge, you cannot lose, you are in an interactive book. You look at things, read a lot, and explore a bit. It really is in every definition of the word a walking simulator.

It's not like I'm the only one with these views, just look at the reviews on the web after the hype blew over. If people like this stuff I could care less, but the fact it's labeled a game drives me up the wall.

Sure, it's frustrating to have some certain expectation when you buy a "game" and then discovering that what you have bought is something else entirely. But I kind of feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with the "it's not a game" argument.

Airbrush painting has been accused of being "not art" because the airbrush painter doesn't touch the canvas with his airbrush pistol as opposite to people drawing with charcoal or painting with oils. Digital painting also had the "its not art" threatment, on the argument that digital painting doesn't produce any original, and thus "isn't original". A lot of the various -ism art forms was also acused of being something that is not "art".

I don't get it. What is it they are trying to prove by disqualifying something from a specific category?

It is fine to ponder on what a game truly is is, which elements it typically contains and so forth. But absolute rules for what can be considered a game, defined with the purpose of exclusion, is artificial and something that limits the artform instead of exploring its posibilities. If we say that a game must have a win state, then roguelikes or similar permadeath-based games can't be considered games because they always end with the player dying. And a lot of games aims at other emotions than "fun".

True, games typically has some sort of mechanics that the player has to master to make "progress" in the game. But just because we are used to this, doesn't mean that this element is the foundation of what a game is. I think a far more important element is the players feeling of presence in the gaming world. This is a very crucial element, the only one that is not found in any other media! I think this element is just as important as typical game mechanics, if not more. But even if this is a crucial element, there are games that do without just fine: abstract games such as Minesweeper and match-3 games have a very low level of player presence.

(I should probably mention that I have never played Gone Home, and that you might very well be correct in your analysis that it is a crap game! I just react to your "It's not a game" angle.)

Far cry 3 has more walking Than shooting if collect Stuff -_-

...not Going to Say its cool though.

All fair arguments, though I myself would argue the win state of a rougelike is to not die and complete the game, most of them have endings. But I myself could possibly shoot down my own argument when bringing up a game like Pac-Man or Tetris, which just keeps going and going?

It's an interesting topic, but I just can't bring myself to call Gone Home a game. The same way I can't bring myself to call something like Train Simulator 2014 a game. These don't feel like they were designed with that intention. I feel there is a difference between interactive experience and game and even simulator.

I'll give another shout out to The Path. It's somewhat debatable as to whether or not it's a walking simulator (though it's commonly tagged as one), it has things to do, things to collect and interact with and conditions for "winning" (based on discovering things) so you could peg it into the adventure genre if you wanted to.

It has stunning visuals (aided by the exceptional art direction and style), beautiful audio (including the reactive music) and a overall mood and atmosphere that goes from creepy to calm and warm to absolutely surreal. The story is told without dialogue, relying on symbolism (some heavy handed, some light and some completely abstract) and environment based storytelling. All in all I absolutely adore The Path, but I've yet to finish it.

The Moon Sliver by one of GOG's own forum members is a walking simulator as well, and a good one at that. Short and sweet, it has a unsettling vibe throughout the entirety of it, aided by a well written text based story. Visually it's nothing too special, but the visuals get the job done and certainly do not hinder the game and the game's audio is done well enough as well.

Dear Esther is another favorite of mine. I just played it this year, the first time for about ten minutes while waiting for a new batch of games to pop up during a sale here at GOG, the second time I played it I played it all the way through in one sitting. Utterly fantastic in every single way...except that walking speed. I still need to get my second playthrough underway so I can check out the alternate story bits and see if I missed anything visually the first go round.

One tip for anybody making walking simulators, or thinking of it: Include a run/sprint mechanic! It doesn't hinder the game (as proven by The Path, which features the ability to run) so why leave it out?

I enjoy playing Two Worlds as a walking simulator at times. There are some pretty big areas that you can just wander around in, picking flowers to your heart's content (that you can make into really useful potions when you get back around to actually playing the game), jumping up on rocks for nice views, etc.

You can also play Divinity II this way. I had great fun flying up to high platforms, turning myself back into a human, and dropping down to explore.

I can follow your logic, and it might very likely make perfect sense! But I think the problem I have is not something about the correct definition, but that excluding something from being a "game" practically judges it as being worthless.

In the nineties there was a lot of hype about interactive multimedia experiences. "ScruTiny in the Great Round" were sold on being "an interactive work of art" ... The word "interactive" and the word "multimedia" had a kind of sparkle that promised cutting-edge entertainment, which meant that the interactive experience didn't have to be sold as a "game".

But times have changed - the only way to sell interactive experiences today is to label them a "game". So if a walking sim is no longer considered a "game", they are practically defined as having no value. It's bit like how expressionist painting would be robbed of their value if they were judged as being "not art". And sure, someone might have an art definition that logically would exclude extressionist painting and it might make perfect sense. The problem is that there is no other way to define the value of the expressionist paintings besides the "art" label.

I remember a freeware first-person perspective music demo produced by some music group. Basically, you walked through a pre-defined route and looked at the scifi scenery and listened to the music. Anyone remember what that one was called?

I tend to think of the Elder Scrolls series (including the Bethesda Fallout) as walking sims.

As far as I am aware, the term started as "hiking sim," and it started on the rpg codex forums, and it started as a derogotory term for Oblivion.

It's presence in the article from the OP, and out there in general is more due to the current craze of "simulator" games, each trying to top the last with how non-exciting the title can be. "Grass Simulator" seems to hold the title right now, although "Mountain" is in contention with it's direction to leave the game playing while you do other things - it plays itlself.

It's not properly a genre, people aren't creating "walking sim" sections on their digital shelves, developers aren't asking each other if "walking sims" have run their couse or if they are here to stay.

It's an odd term and was thrown at two interesting people who are connected to projects that you could plausibly throw the term at. Whether it sticks is anybody's guess. The result was an interesting conversation.

Personally, I would play less Elder Scrolls games if there were no fast travel. I have started Proteus twice, at least six months apart. Played for less than an hour each time. I don't have the patience for whatever they are doing. That's okay, I guess. I don't have the patience for Rockstar games either. Talk about hiking simulators... jeesh!

For added immersion, turn off undiscovered locations on compass. It helps tremendously. It's astounding how much visual cues is put into the game's world on various points of interest - little rock formations to guide you towards dungeons, trails of corpses, old pathways in forests... The world is completely designed in such a way that pretty much everything important (marked on compass) is fairly easy to find, and it's much more immersive when you're using your eyes to find it as opposed to magic compass thingy. It's really amazing how much effort went into crafting that game's world.

I don't really look at the compass much other than for knowing the general direction. Usually hide it with the Ihud mod.

I think they were more like jumping simulators, where you jumped everywhere to up the acrobatics skill.