Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 65: But That Was Yesterday

[Ravenlock]

You may recall that when I wrote up Sombreros a few weeks ago, I confessed (as though you didn't already know) to being a fan of art-house games. If you're not one... well, you may want to skip this week's installment of Free and Worth Every Penny, because we're going all-the-way-pretentious this time. If it's any consolation, I promise it's short (and this writeup will be, too) and it's easy. Hopefully that'll be enough to get you to give it a spin even if you ordinarily wouldn't, because you might find yourself saying that you didn't think this sort of thing was worthwhile...

...Or maybe not. I apologize for the abuse of the title card, there, and I should say up front that I know this game won't be for everybody. Indeed, But That Was Yesterday won't even be considered a game by some of you, I'm sure; it's as valid to call it a piece of interactive animation... maybe even more valid. You can't really lose - or rather, any moments of "failure" have no real consequence - and you are limited to moving along the pre-set path laid out for you by the designer. Of course, I will refrain from pointing out how well that last sentence also describes many of the AAA single-player games I've played in the last couple years. Wait, I guess I just did. Well, nevermind.

In any event, it certainly isn't a game about challenge... wait, that's not true. It isn't a game about mechanical challenge. It's very much about challenge - the challenge of loss, and pain, and acceptance, and perseverence. I expect you'll find that at least one part of the narrative laid out here, if not the whole thing, resonates with the experiences you've had in your own life; the themes tackled by Michael Molinari ("Bean") in But That Was Yesterday are fairly universal. Like Jason Rohrer's Passage - another favorite of mine, though I know many dislike it - this feels like a very personal piece of art, but I think it means to speak to everyone about the joys and hardships the world holds for us and how to deal with them.

Unfortunately, I can't actually talk about how the game asks you to deal with them, or I'd give away the only secret it holds. Allow me to dance around it by saying that the game makes the most of an extremely minimal input set in some pretty clever ways, and that while I did think the whole thing went on about 5 minutes longer than I needed it to, I still took genuine satisfaction from the way everything came together in the game's final section.

But That Was Yesterday is an entry in this year's "Casual Gameplay Design Competition", run by JayIsGames.com and sponsored by EA. The theme this year is "Friends" - you can view all the entries here if you'd like to try more of them. As I said before, there's an argument to be made that this game is so casual that it doesn't even qualify as a game, but personally I think it's a wonderful take on the theme, and I'll be very curious to see how it fares against the other entries.

You'll notice, I'm sure, that I've spent a large portion of this piece writing from a rather defensive stance, as if I'm hesitant to put this out there and stand behind it as a game I like. That's because I am. Not for any good reason, really; I feel the same way I might feel taking a friend to a really quirky movie I love but that I know they might not like at all, or putting a painting on my wall without knowing exactly what people will think it reflects about me. What if anything that says about the "are games art" question, I leave for you to decide. If my words or the above screenshots have piqued your interest, evaluate it for yourself and let me know what you thought.

But That Was Yesterday is...

• not going to appeal to everyone. It's about a subject matter some people think games aren't suited to, and even then it arguably takes a position some may not like.
• very pleasant aesthetically, with simple but bold color use and some well-chosen music in the background.
• extremely straightforward from an interaction standpoint, but most of the time I appreciated the chance to think about what was going on.
• the only game I've ever played to use sitting on swings with a beautiful long-haired girl as a "level." As it happens, that's also a pretty awesome level in real life.

But That Was Yesterday is a flash game, so any supported browser will work fine. Click here to try it out. As a postscript: there are multiple endings, but I wasn't able to figure out whether anything I did determined which one I got. It may be random.

I hope you like it. See you next week.

[TheKeck]

Hardest... game... ever.





Seriously, though, I can't get past the first scene. Am I just retarded?

[TheKeck]

Nevermind, I finally got it. :/

[Bandango]

Fantastic game. Interactive enough to be called one. More than ample reward for the time and energy you put into it. Great pick Eric.

[Spigot]

Very interesting. Reminded me a bit of Limbo for a few reasons (stark visuals, laid back feel, very ambiguous narrative).

[jpublic]

Awesome game/story. Loved it. Best of the competition this year.

[menage]

Need to try this, looks awesome.

[yeti]

Lovely. Reminded me of Braid in its atmosphere.

[Shieldmaiden]

I played this the other day and really enjoyed it. It's interesting that you should bring up the point of whether it qualifies as a game or not, because I've been pretty torn on it. In my opinion, it's right on the cusp and could go either way. I'd argue that the interactivity definitely added to the experience, which is something I often find lacking in similar games.

[Ravenlock]

Yeah, I couldn't really write about specifically why I think it's well-suited to being a game in the article because I wanted people to discover the mechanics for themselves.

If you haven't played the game yet please do so before reading this spoiler tag, because I think a large part of the game's value might be lost if you go in knowing this, and it'll hold no discussion value for you without having played the game:

For me it's a game because the player needs to mechanically experience the same revelation that the character needs to experience in order to proceed. You're meant to throw yourself up against this wall of emotion and frustration and memory until YOU realize (you the player) that the only way to proceed is to turn away and let it retreat.

Obviously that particular emotional experience translates really nicely to a game mechanic (EDIT: And what a fantastic metaphor, to have the character literally knocked off his feet by this barrier of overwhelming emotional tumult. I mean, who doesn't know what that's like?), so that's convenient. But additionally, the act of doing it yourself - trying, failing, and finding the solution - gave it more weight for me than it would have had if I'd just watched an animation of somebody going through it.

[MosBen]

I've yet to see a discussion of whether something qualifies as a "game" that wasn't just pedantic. Those discussions never seem to result in anything worthwhile coming out the other end. While there may be some dividing line between a game and whatever's on the other side of the line, I've never heard any compelling arguments that that is an important distinction. Even here, it seems the argument, if we were to have it, would be primarily about whether the article called it a "game" or something else, but nothing else about the article would change.

Anyway, this is a beautiful...game...and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The simplicity of the themes is both a strength and a weakness. It allows the game to convey something in a very short amount of time, but at the same time it felt a bit shallow. Still, as a quickly consumable experience I think it really succeeds at what it's trying to do.

Great pic.

[Wilkz07]

very interesting. so far i haven't hit the shadow wall, i've turned around each time it appears to make it disappear.. wonder if that will affect ending.

[Shieldmaiden]

Spoilered response...

You've hit the nail on the head there. There was a solid, albeit abstract, link between the actions you perform as a player and what the character is experiencing. I think it was the rooftops that really did it for me. That kind of flowing, run and jump gameplay is, to me at least, inherently joyful and liberating. It was perfect for conveying the relationship between the protagonist and his friend and it really did increase the impact of his death.

I can see me using this game as a reference point for using game mechanics to convey abstract concepts like emotions for a long time to come. It succeeds where so many others fail. Take Freedom Bridge as an example of doing it wrong. (It only takes a couple of minutes to "play" if you're interested.) You can move about a bit, but all that you really do is press the right arrow key until you reach the end. If reaching the bridge was actually a struggle for the player, it'd resonate a whole lot more.

[Shieldmaiden]

Originally Posted by MosBen

I've yet to see a discussion of whether something qualifies as a "game" that wasn't just pedantic. Those discussions never seem to result in anything worthwhile coming out the other end. While there may be some dividing line between a game and whatever's on the other side of the line, I've never heard any compelling arguments that that is an important distinction. Even here, it seems the argument, if we were to have it, would be primarily about whether the article called it a "game" or something else, but nothing else about the article would change.

For me, it's not about the nomenclature so much as whether making something a game actually enhanced it in any way. If a five minute animation could have conveyed the intended message as well as a five minute game, there's not much point in making a game in the first place. I've written briefly on the subject before.

I have a fairly simple view on games as a medium; for games to be a worthwhile vehicle for messages, meaning and emotion, they need to bring something to the table that movies, books, plays and other media cannot, otherwise someone may as well make an animation. That thing is interactivity. It doesn’t have to be a lot of interactivity, but it has engage the audience more than pressing play on a remote.

I believe that games have massive potential as an expressive medium, but I feel that too many "art games" either don't qualify as games or don't use the gameplay itself to express anything, which are both pointless and hurt the artistic aspect of the medium.

[TheKeck]

The problem for me was the game being ambiguous and/or buggy in the beginning. I very quickly, (in fact, the very first thing I did after hitting the wall once) tried looking backward and letting the wall recede. But then that stupid dog told me to go forward. So I followed his instructions. It took me a million years to realize that I had to let it go for so long that the dog would give me a heart, or whatever, and THEN it was ok to proceed.

And yes, I let the wall recede all the way off the screen and then some, but it wasn't enough.

[Ravenlock]

TheKeck -

Sorry that frustrated you. I didn't have that particular problem - I definitely spent a good minute or two smacking against the wall at the dog's instruction before figuring out that I needed to wait and turn around, but I didn't find it too irritating, and every time I met the wall after that I knew how to deal with it. When you say it "wasn't enough" to wait for it to recede, do you mean that you still found the wall there as you kept walking? Because you're supposed to encounter it several times.

Regardless, I hope you understand why I really couldn't talk about that in the article for fear of cheating people out of the experience.

It makes me really happy that you guys are enjoying playing and talking about this one. Wilkz07, I also find it fascinating that you apparently pre-empted the game's revelatory moment yourself. Well done, I guess? Did it change your ending? (Spoiler as appropriate.)

[MosBen]

BigJonno, why are games required to add something as compared with animation? Do motion pictures have to add something over radio plays to be considered worthwhile? Do radio plays have to add something over print? Does print have to add something over an oral tradition? These are all mediums with their own strengths and weaknesses, and while the very best works play to the strengths of the medium in which they are created, there are plenty of works which are successful without doing so. Idiocracy (which I just watched) is funny but doesn't do anything with the film medium that justified it being a movie rather than a book, comic, or some other form. The Walking Dead doesn't really do much, that I can think of, with the comics medium, but it's enjoyable. Indeed, it seems to have made the transition to TV rather well.

Why should games be any different? Interactivity may be a good tool to provoke certain reactions in users in some works, but I see no reason why a creator should have to justify making some part of their work interactive rather than keeping the whole work passive.

[Ravenlock]

I think BigJonno has a point, though, MosBen - one that I wrestled with as well - about how one defines the medium they're looking at. Print may not need to "add something over the oral tradition", but you know you're reading, not listening. The medium defines itself.

How does one know they're playing a game? There are "motion comics" now where one has to click the mouse on a particular point of the screen to advance the storyline in front of them, but I wouldn't call that a game, even though it involves the specific and directed interactivity of the viewer.

I don't think he's questioning the value of interactivity - or if he is, I'm not - but it does seem to be a valid question to ask what makes something a game as opposed to some other form of participatory entertainment / art. In this case I think But That Was Yesterday qualifies, for the reasons I spoilered above, but I also expect that some people would disagree.

[Shieldmaiden]

Originally Posted by MosBen

Do motion pictures have to add something over radio plays to be considered worthwhile? Do radio plays have to add something over print? Does print have to add something over an oral tradition?

I'd argue that they all do. Motion pictures have pictures, in motion. Radio plays have sound. Print can be easily reproduced and distributed. Every medium does something that it's predecessors did or could not.

I'm not suggesting that every example of a medium needs to deploy an array of unique devices, but they all have inherent feature sets. Something billed as a game that has no interaction of note is on par with a movie that consists of a blank screen and people talking.

It's not a case of the creator having to justify their choice, it's about expectations of a medium. If I am presented with a game, I will judge it as a game. If I feel that it's a poor game, but it would have made an excellent animation, I'll say so.

[MosBen]

Well, to me, the issue of whether to call something a game or something else is completely irrellevant. My enjoyment of "..But That Was Yesterday" had nothing to do with whether I call it a game in conversation or interactive art, or something else. It is what it is. The question, as far as I'm concerned, isn't "Do I call this a game?" it's "Was the time I spent here worth it?" There are going to be works on the margins of every medium, but categorization really doesn't help one appreciate it better, nor does forcing such a work more firmly into one medium or another necessarily improve it, even if it does have weaknesses.