Playing Games As A Form Of Travel
In light of the fact this is a holiday weekend in the US, here’s a lighter look at how video games are a context for our cultural experiences, and may one day be a substantial basis for them.
Confronted with his ex-girlfriend’s rather facile reduction of two experiences – travel and video games -to somewhat common traits, writer Jason Wilson’s first reaction is an enlightened outrage. Flitting across the world in Street Fighter, he’s convinced, is most assuredly not like one visiting those places for himself.
Yet then Wilson encounters a game on his Wii, plays it with his two sons, and finds himself taken to a place that feels eerily like ones he’s visited before. Not for their scenery or people – but for what he experiences, and remembers.
Travel Channels – How is a Video Game Like Travel Writing? [The Smart Set, Sept. 2, 2009. This essay was also published in The Best American Travel Writing 2009]
Not too long after we’d broken up, I came across the essay she’d referenced, “Nintendo and the New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue,” by Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins. Fuller and Jenkins likened Nintendo’s Mario Brothers’ adventures in rescuing Princess Toadstool to the nonfictional New World travel narratives of John Smith, Virginia Dare, and Pocahontas in the lost colony of Roanoke. Both are “forms of narrative that privilege space over characterization or plot development” and “a different way of organizing narratives” that they call “spatial stories.” At the time, it seemed like the sort of loopy scholarship that got debated over a bong in someone’s dorm room. But now I’m not so sure.
I thought seriously about travel writing and video games this past year when reading hundreds of nominations for The Best American Travel Writing. I spent a lot of that period playing Wii with my two sons. We enjoyed a game called Endless Ocean, in which you play the role of a deep-sea diver who, along with a somewhat irritating companion, a marine biologist named Katherine, explores the fictional Manoa Lai Sea in a fictional South Pacific. The graphics are amazingly life-like, and over time a whole world with a diverse underwater ecosystem – full of whales, tropical fish, stingrays, sharks, and other sea life – slowly, gently emerges. In fact, calling Endless Ocean a “game” at all is stretching the definition. The challenges aren’t very taxing – it’s almost impossible to run out of air, and not even the sharks bite. There’s only a light plot involving the legends of native peoples of fictional Pelago. Most of the time, you sort of swim around, unscripted, collecting new species of sea creatures and exploring coral reefs, sea caves, and sunken ruins, But after hours of leisurely navigating, a strange emotional experience begins to take hold. Suddenly, the discovery of a simple seahorse or a bit of an artifact is a cause for joy. Upon uncovering an ancient, fossilized whale whisker, I found myself looking forward to surfacing and celebrating with my kooky shipmate, whom I now called Kat. Virtual as it was, Endless Ocean was beginning to take on the recognisable rhythms of travel.
All of which mean that Endless Ocean was becoming a little scary. I wondered if someday in the not-so-distant future, fake gaming worlds like Manoa Lai might replace, say, the real South Pacific as an actual destination. If the current economic and energy crises continue, perhaps my boys will have to skip the old backpacking trip to Europe and instead experience that formative travel though some type of gaming. I guess if that unfortunate outcome truly does come to pass, at least I take solace that some form of travel narrative might still possibly thrive.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
loved endless ocean. absolutely loved it. Needed some polish, but for a Wii game.... 9/10
That dolphin got a purty mouth
No, deep sea diver! Don't trust the Dolphin! DID YOU NOT KNOW THEY'RE THE MASTER CRIMINALS OF THE SEA!?
Ursus-Veritas
@dowingba: You know, with a 5.1 or 7.1 sound system, and a 52" HDTV, it could be incredibly awesome.
Black-Dog-Howls
@expansionsss - the jaded gamer: So if it was a PS360 game, what score would it get?
@expansionsss - the jaded gamer:
Then you need to check Endless Ocean 2, which will be released very soon.
The sequel has a bigger budget, so it has way better graphics, bigger areas, it has online co-op with WiiSpeak support.
Now you can explore not only the ocean, but also lakes, rivers and even the polar ocean.
And you can ride the dolphins to travel faster. And some animals can attack and kill you, but you can use a tranquilizer gun.
Fernando Paramo
@dowingba: +1
'...for a Wii game' needs to be striken from our vocabulary.
Here's a little antecdote about my travels in video game worlds. I was part of a project about a group who would document their vacation. Me being uninterested in where I was going (Ocean City, NJ), I decided to write about a more interesting adventure in Cyrodiil.
At first, I sounded crazy. Stories about a unicorn who was protected by these mammoth beasts, and these bandits who I followed into a crystal shrine. But to my surprise, they were fascinated by this other world I was in.
These open-world game-types, if you ignore the gamey parts (scores and min-maxing), are much of a exploration as say, backpacking. The experiences are different, and the risk is much smaller. But the endorphin rush is just as valid.
The next frame of that picture is of the dolphin raping that scuba diver.
Rozzlit
Sounds to me a bit like Treasures of the Deep, which I loved not for the action or anything like that, but for the feeling of exploration and stuff.
@dowingba:
well i wouldn't play it on PS3, but Xbox360, yeah... The point is that the Poly count is kinda low on the some of the creatures, any/all online modes for Wii suck ass, and there are a few "effects" that look very old on the wii.
generally it was a graphics complaint, which can be a detriment to immersion.
Also, the music got old fast. it was good, but it got old.
If virtual travel means meeting virtual people and getting virtually drunk....
but seriously, as sad as it is, virtual traveling is important for our planet. The wear and tear of tourism on our environment is not really worth it. As fuel resources dwindle, air travel gets more expensive and will go back to being only for the wealthy. (unless we discover some alternative way to hurl heavy metal containers through the air....)
jedbeetle
How about this?
[www.rockpapershotgun.com]
Makes me want to play Fuel again and finish it now, but I am sad because of no patch still.
n00b_pwner
this is pretty much why i imported and love Yakuza 3... well, that and the game is just fucking excellent
@Ferkner: I could quire happily strangle her with her own warbley larynx after a few hours, using an SD card to pick a song was much better.
Although accidentally getting the wrong song made it go from a relaxing swim,(The Eagles Journey Of The Sourcerer) to OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT,(Dope Die MF Die).
All they need to do is allow you to select more than one song from the card each time you dive.
I love this game it's my guilty pleasure.
@Ursus-Veritas: That was extremely lame.
@dowingba: It's better than Afrika, so...it gets a score of "Better than Afrika out of Endless Ocean."
Despite owning Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess etc, I played Endless Ocean the most - strangely it is the least conventional 'game' of them all, yet it is the one title I miss off my Wii. But that's still not enough to make me re-buy another one.
Pudgie'sSmokerGivesAGoodTongueing
@dowingba: That's the thing though. A game like Endless Ocean would never get made for the PS360. It's way too experimental for the devs to justify the cost of creating a game like that on a platform driven by shooters ect. It's one of those true exclusives that you'll probably never see on any other platform.
@Ursus-Veritas: Does nobody listen to the hoff anymore these days?
This is kinda why i am pissed at how most RPGs are being released on the DS, and partially the PSP. There's just no real sense of grandeur or adventure in them, like I had with Dragon Quest 8, Final Fantasy 12 or ye olde Monster Hunter. There's a little of it(hah), but it's just not the same.
Ashton
@Ursus-Veritas: It'll be okay! You can't see it in the image, but there are stars on that dolphin's forehead.
I need to get back to my Endless Ocean. It looks pretty damn good on my 51" HDTV, and discovering new stuff is exciting.
I've been whining about not having any money to go anywhere -- back to Manoa Lai!
A 2 years ago in Australia there was a Xbox 360 marketing campaign really pushing games as a form of travel "New York from $499. XBOX 360. More games. More destinations" ( [theinspirationroom.com] ). I saw these in magazines and huge billboards in Melbourne, I didn't have a 360 at the time, but it really made me think about games as a way to get away from it all on a budget - something which is also more relevant today, than before.
Picking up Afrika/Hakuna Matata for PS3 soon, US$30 is a good price for a holiday, one forum goer who's played it said "the alternative cost me ~$16k incl the DSLR but I also did a lot of other things of course. You also don't have to take malaria tablets either"
A 2 years ago in Australia there was a Xbox 360 marketing campaign really pushing games as a form of travel "New York from $499. XBOX 360. More games. More destinations" ( [theinspirationroom.com] ). I saw these in magazines and huge billboards in Melbourne, I didn't have a 360 at the time, but it really made me think about games as a way to get away from it all on a budget - something which is also more relevant today, than before.
Picking up Afrika/Hakuna Matata for PS3 soon, US$30 is a good price for a holiday, one forum goer who's played it said "the alternative cost me ~$16k incl the DSLR but I also did a lot of other things of course. You also don't have to take malaria tablets either"
Endless Ocean...loved that game. Hopefully its sequel will come to the US
feder