This article was translated from my German piece, here. Many thanks to Joe, who posted his own thoughts on the game here.
R
ecently Christof looked with understandable regret at Gone Home and how its clarity, its explicitly stated goal of presenting a puzzle with one “correct” solution, robbed it of the chance to be more than “just” a game. It’s an all too common dilemma in this medium: Instead of forcing us to interpret, games provide us with answers, feed us definity and the “right” solution, lead us onward with official walkthroughs, past the intentionally hidden easter egg and towards the end of their one-way trip, paved with achievements.
Why? In short, because engineers are used to dealing with binaries, not ambiguity. Mostly.
There is another way. Up next: A song of praise for Dan Pinchbeck’s Amnesia - A Machine for Pigs, which points into an entirely different direction - one in which games outgrow their explicit, technical training wheels and finally get to defend their place on the pantheon of culture with reason and confidence. Something akin to spoilers ahead.