# soma garmeplay teaser trailer postmortem notes on and a postmortem meta-garme of "soma" capsule review: dodgy ideas mediocre system mechanics another eye-rollingly 'dark' garme; consider darkness as a modern synonym for "murky garme design ideology" a common rule of video garme development: one has to massively oversell a garme through overbearing seemingly 'big ideas' eg. "a first person account of some deep and really disturbing ideas regarding the self mind and consciousness" - in order for it to be brought up to the middling-default standard such garmes too often reach like it's almost an inexcusable act of hubris for developers to say they're working on a strictly limited scale: "we'd like to bring you our first person account of deep and disturbing ideas about the self mind and consciousness - but for now ir's this small video garme we made" new rule: "all unspoken video garme assumptions must be accounted for" in which scripted storytelling elements are more andor less interesting than nonlinear emergent narratives that 'suggest' rather than 'tell' ("show and play" vs "play don't show"; how about "neither show nor play") teh garme's elevator pitch also betrays an underlying joyless turbidity welded to classic raw sci fi cheese: "the radio has gone silent on pathos-2. as isolation bears down on the staff of the remote research facility strange things are happening. machines are taking on human traits and alien constructions have started to interfere with routine. the world around them is turning into a nightmare. the only way out is to do something unimaginable" 'pathos-2'? adults common. "boring sci fi tosh" indeed compare and contrast how "the fiction of these garmes correlate 1:1 with ir mechanics" somehow doesn't connect well with "the main purpose of interaction is to create a feeling of presence" dubious philosophy: "this is just like with reality; you do not see what is really out there but only experience a mental model based on the sum of all sensory input" // video here 0:27 "unfamiliar ceilings" syndrome - the video garme equivalent of the (still largely unexplored) writer's "white room" cliche 0:30 "what happened?" standard-substandard voice acting now taken as inevitable / expected; like the first thing you'd do when waking in 'a remote research facility where strange things are happening' is ask yourself dim questions out loud 0:40 the developer playing (/out) this scene does the old 'double take' thing; this is not however a chuck / avery cartoon 0:43 "my g0d - raznik"; brings to mind the timeless classic "saving private lazlo" - the finest mind of ir generation - in half life 2 0:49 picks up the skull plate-thing - which then all too conveniently fits into raznik's head. why is there an un-removable sheet on ir body? we can't even inspect the object closely. the character then expresses surprise; must we also then do the same when and where teh garme tells us? 1:13 hang in there raz! ey seems not to be enjoying ir nap; why can't we then attempt to remove our recent meddling and remove the brain plate thing? teh garme tells us raz's brain and its cover snap shut like opposing magnets - but then we're also implicitly told there's nothing else for us to do - the damage is done and it's time to move on nothing interesting to see or do 1:19 "ey was still alive..!" oh the horror! what a weird assumption to make. shirley all we / the brain plate did was shock raz into a temporary parody of life / garmeplay 1:31 the hand icon that appears above the door: consider making an entire garme about these dumb pop-over icons or get rid of them entirely stick in some cool janky 'octodad' style arms and legs.. anything. also change the entire design of the doors to eg. sliding doors? creaky doors just need regular maintenance and are only supposed to be read as 'scary' 1:43 missed opportunity; you look at an unbroken square tile but aren't able to use it to break the wall down? 1:51 overly dramatic destruction of a small dividing wall - with no garme consequences despite the noise 2:09 more 'untouchable dead museum (tech) exhibit' based level design: the player already knows where they can and can't move travel or explore 2:13 an alarmed matrix-style 'squiddy' - which clearly lets you know it's detected your presence - but when then does not immediately attack or go on the hunt; there's a sense in which the player only runs back to hide because teh garme is signaling to us by heavy breathing that the character demands it. dodgy design assumptions in this. must players *always* march in step with teh garme designer's forever mandatory demand of verisimilitude? 3:10 again the hand of mechanical garmeplay doom: a simple failure to understand what makes for true interactivity in garme design 3:12 another james brownesque 'jump back and piss yourself' act. "what does this mean"? if a video garme has to signal that it's time we started asking questions about its meaning perhaps it's time we started asking questions like "how may video garme designers treat us less like the idiots we might be - but feel like we should not be treated like?" 3:18 "am i like raznik?" the answer is a 'no-brainer': yes - you're a walking corpse without an imagination spatial orientation timing style a spine - or any detectable importance; a stand-in with a hollow skull intelligent players want to get away from 4:00 "am i still here (playing conceptually dodgy garmes?)" unknown 4:07 glitches in art / garme design - at least as they're being used here - are played out. the glitch is supposed to be read as "something terrible has gone wrong" but the answer here might just be "yeah - the ideas behind this garme are buggy" general notes: h.p lovecraft was an overrated racist shut-in. ("when blackness was a virtue.." -bob dylan) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llvoif6chge&theme=light&rel=0&w=755 frictional garme's "vivarium" video however holds far more potential interest than teh garme - that is in the ways potential players read the conceptual gap or schism between such trailers and what is called 'the actual garme' in fact these are far more than mere trailers and could somehow be seem as integral garme elements - entirely scripted and unplayable but no less meaningful indeed there should be a whole series of these trailers along with a brief but dense arg trail of 'tinag' websites - or even just soma's main site what such a video accomplishes is set a clear creepy tone and mood without the need for heavy expositionary storytelling consider that people in the youtube comments ask 'what is this exactly?' as exactly the kind of garme "soma" should be playing in fact don't even say soma is (/just) a video garme: make 'teh garme' start with these videos and have the video garme another integral interactive component of 'the soma experience'; something open-ended - and thus to evolve for / with flans. this would be true 'neither quite show nor play' - a fuzzy abstract 'garme space' based developmental approach // republic of bob