I started reflecting on this question the instant I started Gone Home.
Some background information: due to the lack of a decent PC and console, I grew most of my gaming literacy from watching play-throughs. I followed a specific game streamer for his narrative style and that being said, my gaming literacy is mostly based on his choices, which are mostly horror games. His persona in the videos is a very experienced gamer who can pass through the levels smoothly and provide detailed explanations on how the details of the objects/environment foreshadow the plot without giving spoilers. So I experienced most games as a smooth narrative and I developed this mindset that his experienced playing will be much better than me stumbling and failing all the time and contribute to a smoother experience of the narrative. So, I’d rather watch him play in order to have a better experience of the story.
But when I started Gone Home, I was struck by the pure sensational experience brought by the gameplay. I’ve watched a lot of play-thrus so I had a sense of what the player is supposed to do. And although I’ve played 3D games before, I couldn’t get used to the 3D motions of Gone Home even after I played it for a while. I felt very dizzy and waves of nausea swept over me. My computer is also kind of stuck when processing motions. It would take seconds for me to process the movement of standing up or opening the door. I had to temporarily leave the game because I felt too physiologically uncomfortable, although I really wanted to finish it.
This short experience left me thinking about this question: what experience is intended here? Different from roguelikes, where failure and frustration are intended and designed to help players learn, in these heavily narrative-based games, failure and confusion could be potential intrusions to fluent storytelling, which affects your experience of the narrative. Is that also intended and if so, to what extent? How could narrative interrupted by failure, player’s inattention, technological issues, and motion sickness, etc. actually contribute to a game experience? And that being said, is a smooth playing experience necessarily “better” than a stumbling one? What does a smooth play-through lack, and what new feelings does it bring in? Also, how come that the motion sickness is not present in play-thru videos, even if it has the exact same visuals as the gameplay?
P.S. last week there’s a similar question raised during my discussion section of roguelikes, so I will just post it here as a kind of comparison as well. The question is that is difficulty an intended experience in a roguelike? And how could an “easy” mode of roguelike contribute to, or undermine the gaming experience?
This is a very interesting question! Your own experience proves that intentionality can easily be lost on players. Especially on a narrative-driven game, interruptions that are not seamless or integrated into the gameplay will ruin the immersion. If anything I think that’s a challenge for game devs to overcome if they choose to implement failure at all. I also acknowledge the flip side of this though, that even if a game was intended to be narrative-driven, it’s still a video game. In that way, there is intentionality in using video games as the medium to tell this story. Maybe you’re supposed to fail, because the intention was for the player to not get too immersed? The question of intention and how games are “meant” to be played is a difficult one because it’s so subjective. Watching playthroughs is a completely different experience from actually playing a game because different players coming from all their different backgrounds will make different decisions if given choice. I think the only way to avoid this outcome is to make a game completely linear and guided. Your experience seems intentional to an extent, because if you were not meant to fail, there wouldn’t be potential to fail.
I think that your question about interruption — both purposeful (e.g. pausing the game) and unintended (e.g. disconnections) — is very interesting. As des said in their comment, game developers have to account for and plan for certain types of disruptions, and I think it is intriguing to think about how the way that they go about doing that can change the way a player interacts with a game or thinks about their experience playing it. I know of some single player games that force you to restart if you disconnect from the game or disrupt it in some other way, others in which the disconnection is embraced and incorporated into the story, and still others that simply continue as if no disruption occurred at all (e.g. Eco). Like you pointed out, interruptions in general can break narrative fluidity, but they can also be utilized by developers to make the gaming experience unique since, in almost every other popular medium through which narratives are conveyed and consumed (e.g. film, literature, and television), interruptions aren’t (and, in most cases, can’t be) incorporated in the same way.