# the haunted garme narratives of gone home > one becomes a full member of a community not simply by identifying with its explicit symbolic tradition but only when one also assumes the spectral dimension that sustains this tradition the undead ghosts that haunt the living the secret history of traumatic fantasies transmitted 'between the lines,' through the lacks and distortions of the explicit symbolic tradition > ~ slavoj zizek alpha ludonaut theodore miles considers "gone home" a cynical garme critic's wet dream; an opportunity for ludonauts to self-justify ir existence - and an accidental garme parody so contrived it could have pirouetted weightlessly off the screen in a faint shrill cry of hip martyrdom direct from an unscreened episode of portlandia // image here: emo-tional garming: steve gaynor the dime store romance novel narrative of the fullbright company's bland garme-space appears contested and unconscious - if not fully virtual and haunted; indeed it bills itself as an 'interactive exploration simulator'; yet what is there that's truly interactive where's the exploration - and what precisely is being publicly simulated (if not "gone home")? [caption id="attachment_40834" align="aligncenter" width="656"] old wares: gone home teh garme[/caption] there seems an undisclosed tension split or dissonance between the explicit and assumed narratives allegedly told by / through gone home's creepy garmespace - between its uninspired haunted house aesthetic and the parallel (strangely conservative) love story suggested through found memory fragments - diary entries notes audio logs music and other cheesy non engaging (/consumerist) ephemera this thin setup however - the missing family and the ghostly matrix of inherently uncertain memories / records on display - is oddly paralleled in the main character; that is the player somehow also becomes another mere spirit an entity conspicuous only through vacancy (les vacance) - a spectral presence that manipulates useless objects without hands who manifests only through the rich yet ultimately empty tapestry of frozen 90's nostalgia-time players drift aimlessly through a deserted house inspecting trivial symbols for shallow clues regarding the invalidity of ir own existence trying vainly to find themselves through the lives of vanished others; yet there are no mirrors in this uninspired facsimile - only the disembodied voices of strangers forever floating somewhere in the artificial rain-swept darkness consider 'going home' y.a fanfiction starring / for the troubled undying; a cheap counterfeit a simple bait and (light) switch - a dead simulation of cold cavernous and largely insubstantial stories of / told by vacuous upper middle class home owners forever in-absentia the misplaced desperation of garme critics to find grains of meaning in such a virtual desert a glorified tech demo containing little but fake plastic sand is resulting in gushing reviews that even include the word 'astonishing' the only good bit in the entire sim is the mildly risque nancy drew style back story regarding an unlockable 17" steely dan in the parent's bottom drawer t-shirt idea: "real garmers(tm) hate going home / find home creepy" **update patch** 1: al russell a far more considered critique of gone home by al russell - ey makes a spot on point that the mere use or display of a concept in a garme is not enough; rather it is its utilization that is important // video here ..or apparently not **update patch** 2: matthew pollesel a parody remix of the a+ review by garming age = = = gone home: console edition review for ps4 xbox one february 26th 2016 by matthew pollesel platform: ps4 also on: xbox one pc publisher: majesco developer: the fullbright company medium: digital players: 1 online: no esrb: m matthew pollesel feels so conflicted about gone home. on the one hand it was an undeniably great experience for ir even emotionally affecting. it had some of the best writing they'd ever seen (read) in a garme. in a medium* that's not exactly known by matthew pollesel for nuance or intimacy or subtlety it created a small intimate portrait of a teenager and for ir did so in a way that didn't take shortcuts or rely on cliches. for all those reasons and others which matthew will get to in a little bit i think it's the perfect answer to anyone who questions whether garmes can be mature and deep - not just in terms of how violently they can portray ir apparent maturity note: vidyagarmz are not a medium that said at the end of it a tiny piece of me felt.. i don't know cheated in a way by matthew pollesel. i felt as if gone home hadn't totally earned its ending middle or beginning. i felt like it (the video garmes industry) had built up a certain atmosphere about it a 'correct' way of interpreting it and that it made it seem as though everything was going in one direction only for it to pull back at the last second and opt for something entirely different than it seemed to be hinting at for most of its narrative (hype) about teh garme. that is it turned a tepid like 10 minute experience into sheer art even that caveat comes with a caveat of its own however. if gone home had resorted to an even sadder ending than the one it features so cyninically that probably would have been exactly the sort of cliche it (the garmes industry) so assiduously sought to avoid during the few hours leading up to it. without giving too much about this garme's laughable plot away there are far far too many examples of teens coming to sad endings both in fiction and in real life. while the ending here may not have hewed as close to reality as may have been appropriate or realistic if i were in the position of a teen player of this overrated haunted house sim i think i'd welcome some variety from what can sometimes seem like a cavalcade of canned emotion and besides if i'm being honest with myselves i probably liked where gone home ended up at least in terms of its main story a whole lot more than i would've liked had it opted for a darker grittier sadder ending. i dislike unhappy endings and i'm not a fan of heavy fiction so even if this garme doesn't offer total narrative satisfaction it was still pretty personally satisfying to read matthew pollesel's laughable a+ review sorry i meant play. it's just that it's really just too easy to think of gone home as an experience akin to a novel or movie rather than a garme. the pc version of this garme was derisively (yet perfectly correctly) labelled a "walking simulator" back when it came out on that platform in 2013 and even if matthew pollesel hate the implications and the real politics behind the term it is important to go into this garme understanding that matthew pollesel simply does not understand that not a lot happens except on its surface. you are a privileged brat come home from a trip you find your large middle class house empty you walk around piecing together exactly what's happened while you were away (ie not a lot): there's no running or jumping in sight let alone explosions or zombie combat. it's pretty much the polar opposite of what most people think of when they think of interesting video garmes so i can understand why every single fawning hipster and pseudo-critic would appreciate or enjoy it matthew pollesel does though. does ey ever. apart from ir minor quibbles with the ending ey absolutely loves everything about gone home. ey was deeply invested in the story - whatever it was - to the point ey found himself telling other people about it which isn't something ey usually does. ey loved its setting; as someone who was a teenager himself at the time this garme was set (june 1995 if you're wondering) ey was apparently impressed by how accurately the time and place was portrayed - around 8:30pm. ir specific experience may have been different but from a broad perspective in terms of the music and the style and whatnot gone home gets it just right. and of course there are the 'characters'. considering you only hear one person's ghostly voice during teh garme you'd think that gone home would at best be able to give one person a fully realized identity. yet for matthew pollesel it does so much more than that: this garme features five main characters and by the end of it matthew pollesel feels like ey understood all five. you can tell a lot about people by ir surroundings and for matthew pollesel that's somehow fully illustrated here. oh ey may not see anyone outside of family photos but ey still gets a sense of who each person is through ir letters and ir belongings. it's a tough feat to pull off but gone home makes it look easy for matthew pollesel that's how it usually is with the very best works of art of course: they take the mundane and ordinary and people like matthew pollesel make them seem deep and meaningful. it's something gone home excels at and it's what makes it worth picking up now that it's finally arrived on consoles - for matthew pollesel at least // republic of bob