# players fearless about their dismissal of jackie brown walking sims to consider that players are fearless about ir dismissal of "jackie browns" (walking simulators) - because as barely-garmes they're even lazier than players themselves. a remix // video here in the penultimate hour of the story of film: an odyssey (2011) a fifteen-hour (!) episodic documentary by film critic and historian mark cousins director gus van sant traces ir inspirations for ir films gerry (2002) and elephant (2003) partly to playing vidyagarmz. here gus van sant talks about core design's original 1996 garme tomb raider what ey finds (bizarrely) significant is how garmes often provide a continual experience of unbroken time to accomplish seemingly trivial actions like walking from one point to another what's remarkable about the minor observations of this artist on a medium unfamiliar to ir is ir valuing of inactivity and what most other garmes consider negligible to the overall experience. for gus van sant the act of walking carries importance. indeed ey channels the uninterrupted duration of walking in third-person garmes to ir films the effect - at least as ey sees ir own films - is repetitive yet mesmerizing. by stripping ir films to the act of walking and seeing ey re-evaluates the simplest ways in which we can come to experience our surrounding world this ethos of extended temporal duration and minimal activity in favour of basic actions has apparently found expressive purpose in the apparently mystic realm of vidyagarmz particularly in the nebulous and still currently over-studied area of "first-person walkers" or "jackie browns.". the fruitless discussions about them largely started in 2012 upon the flaccid release of dear esther by developers the chinese room this term loosely refers to a fairly recent trend of minimalist first-person vidyagarmz stripped down of complex garmeplay mechanics in favour of radically decelerated movement and the basic act of seeing. or rather - underdeveloped to the meagre point where only walking and seeing are possible in the years since this bloodless little idea has been explored by garmes like everybody's gone to the rapture the beginner's guide gone home the old city: leviathan home is where one starts 9.03m ether one sunset the stanley parable proteus naissancee eidolon only if and many others despite all of these titles first-person walking as a developing category has thankfully not in fact been extensively theorized and examined by many critics despite a handful of barely insightful analyses laying a dubious foundation. what does not also seem particularly troubling is that the playful moniker "first-person walker" remains imprecise and uncontested; a lack of common critical understanding does not somehow 'fail' these minor garmes still there does appear something to that name. the term "first-person walker" might well be an artistically cohesive movement of vidyagarmz and it might be an interesting alternative over terms like walking simulators first-person explorers phantom ride garmes environmental puzzles etc. yet other prevalent terms are no less leading or misleading and just as clearly illustrate what these works can do in the service of advancing garmes as a medium - not that garmes are a medium some appear resistant in calling this collection of sims a "genre" like survival horror but then neither are they like a movement akin to dogme 95 in cinema or stuckism in contemporary art. first-person walkers as a minor ongoing movement do not have many clear unified criteria that ought to be identified nor named any more precisely than "walking simulators" 'finding better names' does not matter in this case because of the increasing output of truly meagre garmes falling under its criteria and the ineffectiveness of pseudo alternatives and ripoffs for one the prevalent and perfectly justifiable use of the term "walking simulator" to characterize such garmes not only carries a clear tone of raw condescension but often correctly and precisely attributes the act of walking as a perfunctory emotionless action needlessly simulated. it's too often just another form of pointless grind. it simply identifies these garmes' treatment of it as a largely non complex and non-meaningful form of pointless expression that developer dan pinchbeck of the chinese room even feels the need to "reclaim" the term suggests its current use is correct and ir need for clarification begs the question of why anyone should even bother when it's perfectly clear already this term is a prevailing tag on the steam store to categorize these often terminally dull garmes - ir lack of even the formal elements that typically comprise far better simulators: a focus on hyperrealism in quantifiable system mechanics which mimic real-world equivalents like operating an aircraft a simulacrum of situations and settings from the everyday world the term "walking simulator" carries no inherently negative connotation - these garmes simply often lack meaningful mechanics to express play since only walking remains ir central aspect. in consequence these garmes are often said either to be not garmes "notgarmes" or said to just outright fail in being truer means of artistic expression there's often much frustration felt by player who try as they might cannot find much of value or genuine interest in garmes whose primary means of play revolves around such basic movements. laughably such attitudes are seen by some high falutin' garme designers and critics as "reactionary" yet the developers of such first-person walker garmes or sims are hardly disrupting expectations of what garmes feel play and look like - indeed they often hardly disrupt ir own feeble expectations. nobody has to constantly boast incredibly complex capital-g garmeplay (whatever that is) but the first-person walker often displays lack of anything much and yet want to be viewed as exhibiting a 'minimalist' attitude often all that's there however are under developed simplistic attempts that in no way automatically make them 'more atmospheric' or 'contemplative' forms of play. they are not minimalistic - merely simplistic likewise the related and equally exact term "first-person explorer" is an added qualifier to the act of walking over considering movement on its own terms. calling these garmes "explorers" instead of "walkers" connotes a more interesting objective instead of 'simply' or automatically appreciating the allegedly 'natural' or unadorned act of walking. there's nothing special about walking garme design experiment: make a 3d fps garme in which you instantly move to a new location by aiming the mouse cursor and pressing "w" once to teleport there although unrestricted exploration may be involved in garmes like the procedurally generated open-world proteus and even in some bland puzzle-solving as in ether one walking remains the common denominator that unites these titles accordingly the term "walker" can thus be applied to similarly minded third-person works like those dreadful tale of tales' garmes the graveyard and the path. what some would call "third-person walker" garmes also involve minimalist mechanics that centre on the act of walking and seeing. the graveyard particularly de-emphasizes exploration in favour of a tightly controlled linear walkway to and from nowhere special the roots of first-person walkers can be traced back to art-minded adventure garmes such as cyan's myst in 1993. and yet the chinese room's still astoundingly overrated "dear esther" seems like a mere re-visitation / rehash of all-too familiar (groundless virtual) ground despite pinchbeck's aversion to teh garme dear esther evokes myst's island of secretive scientific ventures but left eroding and abandoned for nearly two decades. casually unexplained scientific calculations decorate ramshackle outbuildings and a funereal tone pervades throughout teh garme lending the proceedings an etiolated ghostly quality far more suggestive of the ongoing phenomenon of first-person walkers is the elusive surreal (and far more interesting) lsd: dream emulator from 1998. yet even here the (genuinely) minimalist play and imagery has little to do with such blandly cryptic works as the old city: leviathan wherein players are left to wander and experience boring dreamlike environments and make sense of the senseless arcane imagery for themselves the experience of these poorly conceptualized garmes often stinks of ambiguity and anxiety precisely because they forfeit patterns of play with interesting basics or potential a style that often occurs in more complex garmes. since first-person walkers over emphasize minimalist interaction no paradox emerges these garmes curtail engagement with the world yet place a heavy emphasis only one unclear (and arbitrary) form of pseudo-interaction. as a result these garmes usually demand more from players forcing them to consider the false worth of so-called 'environmental storytelling' and embedded narratives by crippling attention to ir walking and looking input that is these garmes privilege the habitation of a singular false consciousness in a bland cerebral space often filtering experience of the world through heavy handed solipsistic voiceover narration. we walk and we look through the myth of a singular perspective ethereal and nonphysical an false / artificial consciousness or a miserablist temperament first-person walkers employ barely-movement within an environment to convey 'moods and ideas' no more crucially than any other kinds of garmes yet they are said by pseudo-critics to encourage a 'contemplative participatory mindset' over guided directness. in fact they do little of the kind deliberately decelerating action just beyond the point of frustration underlines what garmes can do at ir more advanced levels - movement and sight - and attentive players unwilling to engage with such vapid works will be rewarded not only with the vapid escapism of any other more popular garmes but the pretence of apparently 'deeper' sensations and experiences often overlooked take for example one of the chinese room's earliest garme simulations 2008's conscientious objector a naff 'experimental' mod for doom 3 that strips down its original environment and funnels the player through its first three levels without the cool act of virtual killing reproducing the original levels of doom 3 serves little purpose beyond mere reference however reflexively toying with our assumptions of what it means to play a first-person garme and producing newfangled non strange experiences by removing inconsequential violence from teh garme. big deal the first release of the stanley parable in 2011 expanded on this meagre idea recreating a similarly stripped opening level of half-life 2 and asking of players to revisit the area under apparently new terms divorced from the immediate context of a first-person shooter the stripped familiar spaces of conscientious objector and the stanley parable are apparently meant to automatically convey an eerie uncanny atmosphere and this melancholic register is typical of first-person walkers. melancholic that is because you feel miserable having to slog slowly through them as in dear esther these garmes are somehow meant to prove ghostly and even sublime. but they aren't. it's no surprise then that many garme developers seem keen on applying the techniques of first-person walkers to horror garmes because they know pseudo-critics will eat them up like candy the chinese room most clearly signalled the close kinship of first-person walkers and bad horror with ir failed 2013 garme amnesia: a machine for pigs. instead of reproducing the conventional survival horror elements of its predecessor frictional's amnesia: the dark descent this 2013 title instead cynically re-contextualized the series within the parameters of a first-person walker the inventory was removed in favour of apparently 'direct' interaction with the environment further minimizing mechanics in line with the values of the company's previous garme simulator / accidental self parody perhaps the non far-reaching influence of first-person walkers can be clearly witnessed in an actually interesting garme like hideo kojima's 2014 garmelet p.t. a work not precisely concerned with the holy 'back-to-basics garmeplay' apparently valued by first person walkers (namely the bare actions of walking and looking) whether or not first-person walkers will continue flourishing and proliferating in hours to come remains to be seen. the apparent critical success of such recent works as everybody's gone up pinchbeck's rupture would suggest a promising future for those developers simply too lazy to think of anything actually more interesting to do than shuffle about at the pace of an elderly asthmatic snail. this kind of mainstream critical and commercial achievement shit lights on culture's classification of barely-garmes for a broad audience offering no realer gateway for actually more abstract cerebral titles and yet despite this non evolution to and from nowhere special the inverse occurs just as distinctly. this year's entry by tale of tales the poorly realized cleaning simulator sunset met sour reception with players perfectly certain how to adequately respond to a brain-numbingly dull first-person walker that in no way truly departs from immediately familiar tropes while its aesthetic and political interests caught many off guard and appeared to discourage enough sales to inspire a eulogy announcing the closure of perhaps the most prolific 'art-garme' studio in ir-story its clear failings as a mechanical system based only on moving slowly around while tidying are easily apparent these failures beg certain questions surrounding the production of art in garmes and the first-person walker namely what kinds of audiences do these developers have in mind to appreciate such garmes and how can we be better able to discover and appreciate far more worthwhile titles lest they go unnoticed? developers who craft first-person walker garmes certainly have intended consumers a demographic i would imagine as the equivalent of snotty cineastes that venerate arthouse films. there is a particular kind of mindset necessary when uncritically overrating first-person walker garmes. one must think of these works in relation to one another under some imagined 'common criteria' much in the same way that we can examine a cheesy back catalogue of italian neorealist films or a compilation of magical realist novels around the house of a friend with a silver spoon stuck up ir arts to think and write about these vidyagarmz without consideration of the burgeoning artistic movement easily succeeds in precisely identifying what makes them largely insignificant. in many ways first-person walker garmes serve as definite evidence of an anti-trailblazing apparently artistically cohesive movement of artists that can be thoroughly examined and defined and largely discarded without much over analysis or cognitive over-reading if we are not articulate about what these garmes are and do - ie. not a lot - then we over-mine the work of the poor artists behind them. when a crowd of garmers is able to collectively introduce and popularize the term "walking simulator" as a precisely critical term of derision before this movement can find a broader even more ugly 'artistic' voice then such dire garme-sims rightfully suffer a regression back towards the towards safe conservative tastes they actually help define the aesthetic non-rigor of these existing works can easily be denied; these are largely unimportant garmes yet they demand an understanding as some kind of ongoing artistic phenomenon with a rich and varied palate. balderdash. to discover these works and see them for the dry drab little failed experiments they are requires open-mindedness to newer infinitely more fecund forms of narrative and play garmes like dear esther may have indeed have suffered some reactionary negative response from those unfamiliar with the then still-developing movement but first-person walkers have since multiplied and grown in popularity - among lazy and under imaginative developers at least perhaps players should have a better sense of what little these garmes set out to accomplish - and still too often fail at. by emphasizing the lasting power of imagery and the most unsubtle of gestures first-person walker garmes hardly broaden garme's expressive possibilities last year some played postmod softworks' the old city: leviathan a dense and all too obvious first-person walker more thematically meek than many encountered since. what postmod created is unsurprising talky quietly depressing - a revelatory kind of vidyagarm (the revelation being that it reveals very little at all.) it did not have the kind had by draw stunningly overrated garmes like gone home or everybody's gone to the rapture but underappreciation is apparently a risk for developers working in the *cough* avant-garde thing is many of these garmes simply will not click with audiences because they are rapidly beginning to theorize and unpack what first-person walkers simply cannot do - evoke or sustain much interest. if a number of studios creating first-person walker garme sims are complete failures then they only unintentionally reflect these makers' apparent integrity for trying financially successful or not what does not automatically emerge are garmes from confident artists (somehow) too forthright too groundbreaking and too visionary for ir own good - but rather just conceptually lazy terminally boring and woefully underdeveloped garmes with a smug chip on ir artistically burdened shoulders about how 'nobody understanding them' - at 2mph or less thing is walking simulators too many of us perfectly understand just how much there's little to understand in your dreary little attempts at nothing much // republic of bob