Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we complete our series on a pair of empathy games, Papers, Please and Cart Life. We spend some more time with Melanie and her coffee hut before turning to our takeaways, shared between both games. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Sections played:
Several days of Cart Life
Issues covered: the tutorialization in the Melanie story, a whole functioning town, replaying the first few days, real world flexibility, entering a potential failure state, adding parenting into the mix, encountering a bug, reading deeply into the simulation, having a meaningful experience without a systemic backing, supporting the illusion of systems, being forced to have your daughter go to her dad's, bugs and not being sure, losing Andrus's cat, dream sequences, having trouble wanting to play the game, adventure game topics and language, high pressure time, topics in other games, keywords, production economy, words as an inventory, life under capitalism vs authoritarianism, depriving a character of connection, choosing coffee due to life choices, not taking baristas for granted, useful friction and life, min/maxing the simulator vs trying to experiment with it, the horror of retail, opportunities for connection, making the game or life go more quickly, getting OCD with espresso, the physical repetitive tasks, "playing anything," what motivates play and games, being naturally empathetic with the character, choosing an abstract aesthetic, production techniques for lo-fi heart and enabling creativity, being glad that such games exist, tactility of game elements, abstraction and QTEs, Easter eggs.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: BioStats, CalamityNolan, Samuel Jackson, Pulp Fiction, Twine, The Walking Dead, David Lynch, Dark Souls, Ultima (series), Her Story, Sam Barlow, Hal Barwood, Return of the Obra Dinn, Mad Libs, howling dogs, WarCraft, Gilmore Girls, The Sims (series), Skyrim, Typing Tutor, Sabrina Carpenter, Receiver, Ian Bogost, Play Anything, Power Washing Simulator, Kim Jung Gi, Sierra, The Last of Us, Cleo 5 to 7, Jeanne Dielman, Chantal Ackerman, David Cage, God of War, Outer Wilds, Passage, Brad, Jason Rohrer, N. K. Jemisin, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.
Next time:
BioStats and CalamityNolan's interview with another host
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