Videogames: The Sims FreePlay - Audience and Industries

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Introduction

Read this review of Horizon Forbidden West in the Financial Times (should be non-paywalled but you can read the text of article here if needed). Answer the following questions:

1) Why does Guerrilla Games have 'a serious case of bad timing'? 

You’ve got to feel for Guerrilla Games. No sooner had it released its fantastic 2017 open-world role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn than it was overshadowed by Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which launched a week later and turned out to be an all-time gaming great. Now just as it delivers an excellent sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, another phenomenon arrives on its heels to suck away all the oxygen, Elden Ring. Poor Guerrilla, a team of superb developers with a serious case of bad timing.

2) What is the narrative for the original game Horizon Zero Dawn? 

The games take place a thousand years after rampaging machines have wiped out most of humanity. Survivors have clustered into tribal communities who view relics of technology as objects of either suspicion or religious reverence. The dramas of warring clans are narrated alongside the tale of how our world came to ruin.

3) How is the central character Aloy described? 

Guerrilla struck gold with flame-haired heroine Aloy, who balances grit and tenderness as one of the most memorable new characters of its console generation.

4) What is the narrative and setting for sequel Horizon Forbidden West?

Where the first game stretched across a terraformed Colorado, Forbidden West beckons players to Nevada and California with a new threat to humanity that, naturally, only you can resolve. The previous game revolved around the mysteries of Aloy’s identity, which were neatly wrapped up by its conclusion.

5) What does the review say about animation and graphics?

Forbidden West is the first truly eye-popping flex of the PS5’s muscles, with graphics so beautiful that I have often found myself halting the adventure just to gawp at the landscape, whether dust clouds careening across the desert or forest leaves quivering in the breeze. 

6) What do we learn about the gameplay and activities in Horizon Forbidden West? 

Forbidden West’s gameplay offers robust, satisfying combat beneath its good looks. Aloy’s movement feels ultra-fluid as she deftly transitions between sliding, climbing and making use of new tools such as a grappling hook and paraglider. Each fight with a robot enemy is tense and exciting, demanding that players think like a hunter by analysing opponents’ behaviours, deploying traps and elemental attacks to gain the upper hand. Minor irritations from Zero Dawn have been resolved, allowing you to make better use of stealth and melee weapons or manage resources more easily.

Close textual analysis

Watch the trailer for Horizon Forbidden West:

Answer the following questions:

1) How is narrative, character and setting introduced in the trailer?

They are all introduced together along with the landscapes.

2) How is the game's open world / sandbox genre shown in the trailer? 

There is a various amount of different settings shown that can be all be played through.

3) What representations can you find in the trailer? 

The main character Aloy fits the typical hero stereotype who fights evil in order to cover justice.

AQA recommends watching the following gameplay trailer in their CSP booklet:

Watch the gameplay video and answer the following questions:

1) How does the game use media language to communicate ideas about narrative and genre?

Action codes to engage the audience.

Enigma codes to make us question what and why the character is doing what they are.

Bow and arrow and ancient weapons convey western genre.

2) What representations of people, places or groups can you find in the gameplay video?

They present the racial other as sidekicks to Aloy and music is changed to in order to fit setting.

3) What audience pleasures are suggested by this gameplay trailer?

Escapism- Travel through the virtual worlds.

Visceral pleasure- Action conducted by the character.

Narrative and genre

Read this excellent Den of Geek article that addresses elements of narrative and genre. You can find the article text here if the link is blocked. Answer the following questions: 

1) Read the opening to the article. How can we apply Steve Neale's genre theory to Horizon Forbidden West?

Indeed, even some of the most positive reviews of Horizon Forbidden West take a little time to offer a disclaimer that those expecting a substantially different experience from Zero Dawn may be surprised to find that after five years and the introduction of a new generation of console hardware, Forbidden West still feels surprisingly similar to Zero Dawn in many ways. That revelation has inspired some to call Forbidden West “formulaic” and even suggest that it’s not the game we should have gotten after all this time. This contains the heavy conventions from the western genre.

2) How many copies did the Horizon Zero Dawn sell and why did this influence the design of the sequel?

Well, considering that Horizon Zero Dawn has reportedly now sold over 20 million copies, it’s not like this series really needed to change all that much to reach a significantly wider audience. Given the current shortage of next-gen consoles and development complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s also not like Guerrilla Games was in a position to make this a true PS5 exclusive built from the ground up to take advantage of that hardware. From a business standpoint, it makes all the sense in the world that Forbidden West sticks fairly close to its predecessor in terms of most of its basic design decisions. 

3) How does the article criticise the story in Horizon Forbidden West? 

The problem is that Forbidden West spends a bit too much time letting a small army of side characters spout what sometimes feels like an endless amount of exposition. There are fantastic side characters and sidequests in this game, but Forbidden West’s reliance on extended dialog sequences starts to wear you down relatively early into this massive adventure. There are times when you’ll find yourself wishing that Guerrilla Games had simply recognized how impressive the world they created was and found ways to let that world and the characters in it do the heavy living rather than those extended dialog sequences that seem determined to tell you absolutely everything. Besides, the answers are rarely as good as the questions.

4) What do we learn about the gameplay? 

Getting around in Forbidden West still isn’t quite as enjoyable as it is in games like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Mad Max, and Assassin’s Creed where your movements and open-world traversal are an integral part of the open-world experience, but Aloy’s ability to dive underwater, glide, climb more surfaces more efficiently, utilize a hook shot and, yes, eventually fly mean that getting from one place to another no longer feels like this laborious task meant to kill time between the moments that really matter. Being able to find your way around this world in so many more ways is one of the things that helps you appreciate it that much more. 

Mind you, there are still gameplay aspects of Forbidden West that simply do not work as well as they should, and some of those problems are “borrowed” from the original game. On-the-fly inventory management is still a cumbersome process that requires you to learn to love a series of menus and hotkeys, too many platforming sequences make it too obvious where you can and can’t go (even if you choose the “minimal UI” experience), and Aloy’s expanded skill tree features a few too many filler abilities that don’t always make leveling up feel like the rewarding experience it should be.

5) What is the article's overall summary of the game?

There are many ways that Horizon Forbidden West could be a better game, but the idea that its developers somehow took the “easy” road by staying true to Zero Dawn’s core concepts, as well as some of the concepts of the open-world genre, belittles the considerable effort that went into lovingly crafting the compelling characters, settings, and experiences that truly define this experience. It’s easy to get caught up in the familiar and forget that, in this instance, the familiar involves colorful vistas, sweeping scores, a small army of compelling characters, consistently engaging battles against mechanical monsters, and mythos that blend old-world customs with sci-fi concepts in a way we haven’t really from any other work of fiction.

Representations

Read this fascinating Polygon feature on why Horizon Forbidden West isn't post-racial and answer the following questions: 

1) How does Horizon Forbidden West use narrative to create a fully diverse cast of characters?

Horizon Forbidden West is supposed to be post-racial. After human civilization was fully wiped out by a plague of self-replicating machines, a terraforming AI named GAIA rebuilt life on Earth, with the genetic diversity of humanity, but without the history and societal structures that underpinned racism in the 21st century. It’s a clever narrative move to let the developers pack the game with people of all skin colors, a fact that has been routinely lauded as progressive by some critics and gamers.

2) What is orientalism? 

Orientalism is a type of racism in which “the West” — generally understood as Europe and North America — projects savagery and beauty onto “the East,” or the Orient. This allows Western imagination to see “Eastern” cultures and people as both alluring and a threat to Western civilization.

3) How does the article suggest orientalism applies to Horizon Forbidden West? 

Orientalism is embedded at the core of Forbidden West’s narrative of exploring exotic lands. Protagonist Aloy’s Orient is the “Forbidden West” itself: the present-day southwestern U.S. and California, filled as they are with foreign tribes, religions, and customs. In this morass, Aloy is both an explorer and a (white) savior. Only she understands what is at stake in the world, and she has to spend time in the petty politics of a bunch of tribes in order to convince them that the problems she’s facing are more severe than theirs.

4) Who is the player encouraged to identify with in the game and how does this influence how representations are constructed?  

Later in the game, Aloy discovers the final resting place of Ted Faro (the first game’s main antagonist) below San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid. He’s the ruler of the “pyramid,” a survival bunker that he named Thebes, and his name is Faro. It’s a bit on the nose.

5) Finally, what did the writer of the article (an Asian American) feel when playing the game?

When I played Horizon Forbidden West, the game asked me to identify with Aloy and support her mission to save the planet. But to progress in the game, I ended up role-playing different kinds of cultural violence, including Orientalism, which founds and fuels a lot of the racism I experience as an Asian American. Even though Aloy’s world is supposedly post-racial, its developers still repeat Orientalist tropes in their design choices, which paint Asian cultures, and therefore people, as perpetually foreign, mysterious, and threatening.

Focusing on Aloy and the representation of women in videogames, read this Forbes feature on the topic. Answer the following questions:

1) What is the debate regarding Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West? 

This doesn’t spring out of nowhere, however. Aloy has been flamed by sexist gamers for being made “too ugly” in Horizon Forbidden West, which is a debate mainly centered around a single freeze frame from a trailer where she’s making a weird face. This resulted in a famously cursed “yassification” image of Aloy as the “correct” way to do the character. And yet again, this is coming up once more as a result of this article, a debate about what Aloy (who looks perfectly great in every Horizon shot that’s been released) “should” look like.

2) What examples are provided of other female characters and representations in videogames?

Moving into present day, what’s become clear is that there is room for all types of female characters in games. That includes anime women of Genshin Impact (ironically, a game which Aloy appears as a guest star), it includes Bayonetta, Lady Dimitrescu and Chun-Li. It includes Kassandra, Aloy and Ellie and Abby from The Last of Us. Reducing all these women in all these games to “Is she too sexy? Is she not sexy enough?” does a disservice to the entire concept of women in games.

3) What are the issues facing the videogame industry in terms of gender?  

The industry has massive, massive problems with retaining women employees and treating them well within gamedev. And there have indeed been female characters created entirely within a male gaze. But the presentation here, that Aloy is the gold standard, both discounts decades of beloved women in games and simultaneously demonizes “attractiveness” in characters that everyone, even women (often especially women) love in their games. And this debate is not doing anything to solve the real issues these companies face (PlayStation itself is currently facing gender discrimination claims, which the article doesn’t mention).