Hi everyone!
Today I want to talk to you about Nicky Case. He is an independent game designer who creates games in order to communicate messages. All his games share a rather minimalistic approach, with simple gameplay, simple graphics, a background music, sound effects and focus more on teaching, demonstrating principles, explaining systems, concepts, and trying to share a vision of life.
These games are rather quick, it takes 5 minutes for some of them and up to 45 minutes for others, and every one of them provides with either knowledge, interesting vision of life or both.
Here is a quick review of my favourite games by Nicky case (every game he has done is free and doesn't require any download):
The evolution of trust:
This game, as the name indicates, is about trust, but also about moral values, such as kindness or forgiveness. It also features a simple but cool gameplay, where you have to choose whether to cheat or cooperate, and will at least challenge you a little. But again, the principal interest is not here: the game is filled with sociology, with for example some elements of game-theory (obviously, the concepts and ideas presented are basics of sociology). This game will surely make you think of your attitude, the attitude of others, and mixes theory, history and moral values to give a lesson of/about humanity.
Parable of the Polygons:
This game is about how segregation works. It shows, through graphs and explanations (not very much gameplay this time) a theoretical system of segregation and diversity. It also gives alternatives to what it denounces and tries to get the player to be a slightly better person after playing. What I really love about this one is how he succeeded in making the information so visual and easy to read, without making it too simple.
I hope you'll check out Nicky Case's work, and I hope you'll like and learn some things from it!
This is very interesting and it's quite a feat to get me interested in videogames.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Choffrut, I can't wait to see you showing up late at school with very, very tired eyes, because you decided to try these games and ended up playing until 3am. (I am kidding, of course, but this image popped up into my mind and I couldn't help but laughing)
DeleteWho knows @ Jabrielle.... That might just happen if I connect with my inner gamer? ;-b
DeleteYou had already told me about these games, but I haven't got around to testing them ! They seem really interesting and I won't forget to let you know what I thought about them once I have tried them !
ReplyDeleteI cannot highly enough recommend this masterpiece that is Orwell by Osmotic Studios. It's a point & click story driven game that makes you at the command of a new secret spying tool called Orwell (see the irony?). Without spoiling too much, this tool permits you to intrude private life of citizens and see everything from calls to comment and texts. But the interesting part is that you are not a basic cop taking data out of a computer: you are a mediator, as sole accessor to the program, you chose what information you reveal or not to the government services. I've never played such a minimalist and impactful game in a longtime... Even though there are multiple endings, the game takes about 2 to 4 hours to finish.
ReplyDelete10/10 would recommend!
Very good games indeed with plenty of things to learn.
ReplyDelete