Whether you rise through the league tables, or just improve compared to your family, the satisfaction or getting to grips with something so monumentally challenging is really satisfying. Rather than offering assistance, these games leave you to it.
Rather than relying on the stats of your character or player, you have to execute the moves yourself with timing proficiency and instinct. Whereas many games simplify getting around, these games make the complexity and depth of their movement systems part of the joy of playing them. There are a small group of games that hone this challenge down to the mechanics of moving around the environment. It takes time to understand their systems, mechanics, objectives and worlds. When someone plays a game too much it’s easy to think they are taking an easy route to something entertaining, like junk food. Games offer us challenges on many levels. This not only offers an accessible experience to those without sight but a chance to engage with a virtual world using just our hearing. Games like The Vale and Frequency Missing can be played with just sound. In Mini Metro you add to the ambient sounds as you place stations and new tube lines.įinally, there are games where sound is your main way of navigating the world. Touching petals in Flower adds notes to the classical music. There are games where you create the audio with your actions. Not only what is happening, like the sound of someone boarding your ship, but where that is happening in relation to your character with spatial audio. Then there are games like Uncharted, Alba, Fortnite and Sea of Thieves that use audio to indicate things happening in the game. This is more than just background music as it reacts and integrates with the sounds the player is making while they play. There are games like Limbo, Hellblade, Overboard and Super Mario Odyssey that use sound to set the mood and aesthetic of the play. Doing this intentionally can help younger players discover a new world of sound in the games they play. Playing a game with headphones helps the player focus on the sound. As well as this, audio is often a crucial aspect of interactions and clues for puzzle solving.īecause of this, video games (like walking in nature) are a powerful way to learn to notice and use the sounds around us. But just as important is to develop more than just cursory listening.ĭespite their name, video games use sounds just as much as visuals to create their worlds. We encourage children to read, watch and observe. Of the different senses, it's easy to overlook the importance of hearing. In video games, we step into other bodies so we can better understand our own and those of the people around us. In travel, as Andrew Soloman says, we go somewhere else to see properly the place where we have come from. More specifically, to use body therapy language, games offer us a chance to discover the inviolability of our bodies, personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination. Whether this is into the awkward teenage years of Mord and Ben in Wide Ocean Big Jacket, the grandparent-escaping Tiger and Bee in Kissy Kissy, the fractured heartbroken body in Gris or the haphazard movement of Octodad we have a chance to reassess our own physicality and how we respond to and treat other people's physicality. Stepping into the shoes of a vulnerable, small or endangered character can help us understand for a short while some of what it is like to be someone else. This is not only an enjoyable way to escape the reality of daily life but a chance to reflect on and understand ourselves, and our bodies, better. Whether we step into the powerful frame of a trained marksman or brave adventurer, while we play we have a different sense of our physicality. Video games offer an opportunity to inhabit another body.