When you stop to think of the most engaging moments in the video games you've enjoyed,
you might reminisce of the epic battles with titanic creatures in Shadow of the Colossus,
gunfighting enemies on a speeding train in Uncharted 2, or barreling through dangerous
space debris in the 3rd act of Mass Effect 2.
Yet the most enduring memories I've had in my experience as a gamer, were those of
everyday or mundane activities you could take part in.
Like your daily commute in Deadly Premonition.
Driving under the speed limit without threat of danger or tension seems like the most boring
take on the Grand Theft Auto formula ever made, but the simple act of getting into your
car and cruising the roads is both soothing and grounding, and adds a pinch of reality
and atmosphere to your experience.
The sense of distance between locations loosens the suspension of disbelief that so many games
hang over their players.
In The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, you can walk across the map in a half an hour.
I myself couldn't even walk my daily commute in 30 minutes, and that's just across town,
yet we are expected to believe we traveled across an entire nation full of towns, castles,
cities, and expansive wilderness.
Without the tentpoles of mundanity, the whole illusion pitched around the player tends to
float away.
In Deadly Premonition, the quiet, mundane parts of an experience help create that stark
contrast to the more exciting moments.
Sipping a cup of coffee at a hotel makes the horrifying chase by an axe murderer an hour
later seem all the more jarring and disturbing.
And there is an apt comparison of this game and Alan Wake, due to their shared influence
from the fascinating 1990's TV show, Twin Peaks.
In this revered series by David Lynch and Mark Frost, one of the most memorable aspects
was the contrast between the humorous, charming and at times slapstick moments of levity set
in a cozy Pacific Northwestern town -- and the nightmarish and macabre murder and dream
sequences -- where demonic possession, disturbing imagery and unexplainable scenarios play out
in sharp opposition to the humdrum normalcy of the rest of the show.
There are a few of these upbeat instances in Alan Wake, but it focuses more strongly
on the horror-filled moments of running for your life through a forest and fighting shadowy
forces, that it eventually bogs down into repetitive action later in the story.
On the flipside, the crude and sometimes hamfisted tone of Deadly Premonition has a more even
balance between the ordinary and the mysterious, and each aspect of its story stands stronger
for it.
Even the act of hitting up a vending machine for a snack or grabbing a hot cup of joe before
hitting the road on your daily investigation adds another layer to your interaction and
immersion with the virtual world set before you.
Movies and TV shows likewise inject moments like this to engage viewers with the characters
and provide context, but they often cut out chunks of real life activities to follow their
all-important plot -- sometimes forgetting that the quiet moments are what make the journey
worthwhile.
In the cozy town of Twin Peaks, Agent Coop's love of a "damn fine cup of coffee" is
just as memorable as the demonic possession and gruesome details he faces in his murder
investigation.
Eating a slice of wholesome pie at the Railroad Diner becomes just as integral to the character
study as the terrifying visions of the demon "Bob", the force behind the despicable
acts haunting the town.
Deadly Premonition borrows this logic and theme wholesale in the adventures of Agent
Francis York Morgan, who too worships coffee and his dreams, and likewise divines clues
and direction from them.
Inspecting the swirls of milk in his java cup to decide on where to investigate next
is silly, but the malformed and nightmarish world the game occasionally gives you glimpses
of are made even more powerful by the levity granted in the activities of his day-to-day
life.
Contextualizing player and non-player characters is the foundation to a convincing interactive
world.
We can all relate to having to pass a car on the way to work, flipping on the windshield
wipers when you're driving in a rainstorm, or feeling the weight of a double-shift workday
and needing some hard-earned R&R.
This baseline helps you relate to the travails of the game's protagonist on a more personal
level, so that later when you are being chased by a 7-foot-tall murderer with glowing red
eyes, you're that much more terrified.
You're not just a spectator with a controller in hand -- you're invested!
One of the staples of the Deus Ex series was the sometimes trivial interactivity with objects
in the game world.
Flipping light switches, turning on faucets or flushing toilets just to see if they would
actually do anything may just be needless busywork that doesn't amount to anything,
but it helps coalesce the world and its inner-functions.
Stopping for a sip of hard liquor or raiding the cabinets of apartments for potato chips
isn't exactly crucial to the cyberpunk adventure at hand, yet the subtle disappointment you
might feel when clicking on an object that you should be able to pick up or use, creates
a wall between the player and the game.
And that wall is the barrier between the game designer's machinations and the gamer, something
we all strive to make as thin as possible.
Some games like Papers, Please are built from the ground up to be a mundane activity.
Comparing passports to other meaningless documentation and checking IDs borders on being an actual
job, but the secret delight in spotting a forgery or catching a suspected criminal keeps
you going.
When you're occasionally interrupted by an outburst of chaos -- someone jumping the
wall only to get shot down, or an attempted bomb attack, it shocks you much more effectively
when contrasted with the monotony of your daily job.
One common complaint about the Sega Dreamcast classic, Shenmue, was the so-called "boring
activities" in the game.
This cult classic put you in control of the life of teenage martial artist Ryo, whose
father and sensei is killed in a dispute over a mysterious artifact -- but in its gameplay
has you walking the streets of Japanese cities, questioning citizens as part of your investigation,
keeping tabs on your schedule, and even killing time waiting for a meeting or for a business
to open.
Judging from this plot hook, you'd probably expect a high adventure of revenge, with the
occasional popcorn-flick plot device like a good Bruce Lee movie.
Instead, we're treated to a low-key life simulator-meets detective game, with only
brief breaks into martial arts sequences.
Ryo's humble daily activities take center stage.
Your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning, you collect your allowance, grab a soda, and
go to work at part-time blue-collar jobs to make a living in-between your investigation
to find the men behind your father's murder.
I'd argue that the mundane segments here are critical in developing that X factor that
made the Shenmue series so memorable.
The sheer amount of detail and painstaking scripting that went into making Yokosuka a
living, breathing city is why these embers of gaming history have continued to burn for
two decades.
Shop owners will roll up their shutters in the morning at opening hours, and though only
the most curious of players would take the time to discover this: every single citizen
in the city will walk back to their own individual apartment to turn in after hours.
Other games have mimicked Shenmue's life simulator mechanics as time went on, with
another Sega franchise, Yakuza, following in many of the same footsteps.
Much larger in scale and perhaps less organic in the way it treats each citizen, with many
throwaway generic non-player characters roaming the streets but, like Shenmue, it does have
many side activities such as playing pool and darts, coin-op challenges and arcade games.
Playing classic Sega video games at the You Arcade within the universe of Shenmue was
mind-blowing at the time -- and the Yakuza series expanded on these ideas with usable
quick marts, eating out at restaurants, and a plethora of other everyday activities available
to do, which remains some of its most sought-after attractions.
Shenmue and its sequel remain potent in the minds of its fans even today.
But I don't think the game would have been nearly as memorable had it been a pedestrian
brawler like Square's The Bouncer released a year later.
Though the latter wasn't a bad game, nobody today huddles in excitement with their friends,
praising its innovation.
It felt more like an iteration of old classics like Final Fight or Double Dragon.
Having been developed around the same time, it makes a solid counterpoint to the design
decisions that made Shenmue so inspiring.
In one of the earlier scenes in the highly underrated 1st person shooter The Darkness,
where you play a young man caught up in a Mafia crime family, you get to spend an evening
with your girlfriend Jenny at her apartment.
The commonplace habit of snuggling on the couch and watching TV is something anyone
could and probably has done, but it is such a warm and heartfelt moment of everyday life
that it helps weld that bond between the player and the game's fantasy world.
It's moments like these that game magic happens.
The everyday activities in Final Fantasy XV steal the scene whenever they crop up: gathering
ingredients and supplies to cook a delicious meal while camping, or saving up a ton of
gil to splurge on a hotel stay.
These segments of muted background chatter, laughter and camaraderie simulated the lifelong
friendship Noctis and his royal guard have.
Relationships aren't built over dramatic cutscenes or monologues, but in the gentler
moments like these -- enjoying a cup of ramen, or staring at the black of the night sky together
near a crackling fire.
A pleasant surprise in the open-world shooter Far Cry 5 was the ability to roam the rivers
and lakes of Montana and go fly-fishing to your heart's content.
The dramatic departure from gunning down a militaristic cult to reeling in a big catch
is both funny and relaxing -- and helps solidify and sell you on the wilderness so beautifully
rendered for this game's setting.
From pouring a coffee for your friends at Café Leblanc, to hitting a few at the batting
cage, Persona 5 marinades in the bliss of day-to-day activities.
It even makes your daily life into a mini-game of sorts, where you plot out your week to
balance your high-fantasy quests and battles with such activities as going out to movies
or hanging with friends at the park.
Similar to Shenmue and other Japanese life simulator hybrids like it, Persona even incentivizes
getting a real-world job like helping out at a flower shop, a convenience store or a
restaurant.
Even eating a huge hamburger boosts your stats, making these activities both fun explorations
into this virtual world, and worthwhile expenditures of your in-game resources.
Whether you're tending to the needs of an orphaned kitten in Shenmue, or feeding and
changing a neglected baby in Heavy Rain, these little moments, while sometimes slow at the
time, stand out in my memory as the most immortal.
Taking care of your son after school, prepping his dinner and getting him off the television
won't be on the back of Heavy Rain's disc case, and it sure isn't as exciting as driving
pedal-to-the-metal against traffic in low visibility, but without the quieter parts
like this, you wouldn't feel quite as much of an adrenaline rush as you would with that
contrast in place.
Many modern action movies seem to have forgotten this point and think not missing a beat, and
ensuring there's an explosion or a gunshot in every single frame of the runtime keeps
the story "interesting", but that couldn't be further from the truth.
It's mechanics and design choices like these which add a sense of grounded reality, where
partaking in seemingly passive activities make the game's climactic story beats stronger
for it.
Though they seem trivial while you're doing it, they differentiate a mere game from a
true virtual world you have the privilege of visiting, simply by inserting a disc or
pushing a button.
Perhaps games seeking that extra layer of immersion can look to these examples for inspiration
-- for you didn't merely control Ryo, Agent York or any of these other characters' day-to-day
lives, you lived them.
I hope you enjoyed my video, and got to hear a take on game design you hadn't heard before.
Let me know your ideas in the comments about your experience with the mundane activities
in games and your thoughts on their integration.
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