Maybe we’re not seeing revolutions since the indie blossoming has settled down, but interesting things keep happening. You devour games fast enough that it may be obscuring you to recent triumphs.
Prey rebuilds the guilt-trip narrative of BioShock, Spec Ops and reframes the sanctioned actions as pre-game start; both the player and the player character have no memory of them. It asks, will you take responsibility for actions you performed? It’s an interesting conversation with modern discussions of systemic racism and the like. It doesn’t stick the landing.
Metal Gear Solid V is the most complete warlord simulator attempted, and makes a solid advance on the techniques of Far Cry 2. The revelatory moment while you are racially segregating your soldiers, becoming fully conscious of your actions, is the best thing that team has ever pulled off (or ever will).
The small human stories the walking sim movement created don’t feel revelatory next to linear media but have opened important palettes to be incorporated.
Kentucky Route Zero brings cross-media influences deeper into games and feels natural while doing so (by the way: new cross-media in advance of the next episode!). Its technical advances in adventure games come from rejiggering dialogue trees as a stage actor’s inflection – the player’s choice obviously doesn’t affect the game state but invites participatory play, and that’s important.
Papers Please and Cart Life (only one of those games is actually playable though) advance ‘empathy through doing’ in a way that games are uniquely suited to. This appears to be tricky ground to cover without feeling voyeuristic so it may not be widely influential, but small games of ‘realistic task implementation’ should be taken up more widely (particularly for AAA pace-breaking busywork that needs to shade character).
Her Story is fragmented and clever and necessarily participatory.
[italicized titles because I’m being respectful here, clearly]
