Gameplay Journal Entry #4
I decided to analyze Carson Lynn’s Dear Eidolon, the reason I chose this project was because it included my favorite game series in its imagery. This modification surprised me in its meaning, its not what I had typically assumed “game modification” was. My understanding was a change in content or gameplay, but by the definition of counter-gaming by Galloway “countergaming often has no interactive narrative at all and little gameplay supported by few game rules, if any. In this sense, countergaming replaces play with aesthetics.” (Galloway 115)
For this example, the aesthetics are certainly the focus of the modification, it uses beautiful scenery taken from multiple games as a background for the words being said. Much of the video is taken from Dark Souls, which pioneered many things in gameplay, but an important part of the game is the moments of peace, beauty that shocks you when the rest of the world is so grim. The creator uses these moments to symbolize his words, to draw parallels of the virtual environments and his relationship to them. He subverts formal structures by showing nothing from the game, but still using imagery to represent it. Even though it does not include any of the recognizable things from the original games, it still represents changes without actually changing anything in engine.
Reference: Galloway, Alexander. “Countergaming” in Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture.
