Session 1: Before Playing | 15-30 minutes
Each of these question aims to get at a general notion, “what expectations (about this game) am I coming in with?” The goal in this reflection is not to test the accuracy of your predictions; rather, the goal is to identify and reflect upon the assumptions and biases you, as an observer, are bringing into the experience, as catalyzed by the games’ promotional material, introductory screen, any other descriptive or suggestive information.
Answer the Questions: With this in mind, respond to each of the following questions:
What will I like / dislike about it? I was looking for visual novel games on Twitch that aligned with my group’s vision for our 3rd person point of view text-based adventure game. I wanted to play Beyond: Two Souls as its theme and gameplay seemed to align well with our project, but I don’t have a PC or a gaming console, and so I kept looking. I logged into the Epic Games store to see what titles were available on Mac, and found quite a few from Night School Games that piqued my interest because of the following description: “Control Milo and Lola with an intelligent conversation system that changes the story and your relationships based on every decision. Uncover their personality quirks and foggy history during the wild events of the night.” I am most interested in playing the game to see how this game mechanic works!
What will I find interesting about it/boring or tedious about it? The premise is fun: outdrink the devil to escape hell. The story seems novel and engaging, and in the ratings of the game people say it is charming and hilarious. I hope I find it more interesting than boring - I’m optimistic about this.
What will I need to do in it? I will need to explore hell and make decisions for my characters, learn more about their personalities and how they work together to use this to my advantage when progressing in the game.
What will I need to learn within it? As stated in previous answer, I need to learn more about my character’s personalities, but also how my decisions impact gameplay to move me forward.
What will it be like / similar to (other games I have played)? I haven’t played a rich graphical game like this in a long time - I’ve played text-based games with a narrative, though. It will be similar to those games, as I will be making decisions for my character as we move through a story.
Session Fieldnotes
At the end of your fieldnotes for session one, craft one or two sentences (no more) that, for you, summarize your expectations prior to playing, and what these expectations are based on. Include one image that catalyzed and/or supported your expectations.
Summary:
I hope to learn more about what gameplay in a visual narrative game looks like. I hope to discover more about the intelligent conversation system that adapts gameplay, and have fun!
Session 2: Solo Playthrough | 45 to 60 minutes
Play the game on your own: familiarize yourself with the controls, mechanics and interface; get an initial understanding of the game’s narrative and its aesthetic. Your goal is to “get a feel” for what it is asking from you, in terms of: inputs, emotion, and attention.Note: If you use outside help at any point, make a note of that. The effort here is not to do anything “correctly”, but to diligently record whatever you do as you try to get a ‘handle’ on the game.
Descriptive Notes
Just write as you play -- write anything descriptive, records of objectives, hints, fragments of ideas, anything. You may elect to write as you play (i.e. pausing the game) or right after you have completed a play session. Try to get at least 60 minutes of play time.
5 minutes in, I realize that the characters are dead. I don’t know how they die, and they don’t, either.
We’re in hell on our way to processing. The employee at processing tells Milo, who is a bit of an introvert and has just mentioned his friends, “I don’t know why you’re pluralizing friends, but anyway…” LOL
I don’t like clicking to move, but holding the arrow key is awkward because then the character runs instead of walks. I don’t know why them running is distressing.
A personality audit before processing, and it’s our own personal demon (Lola and Milo came as a pair and have one demon between them). The demon asks interesting questions. Lola is asked if she wanted to be a wife or the one in charge. I picked the one in charge. (later there is a reference to this by the demon - a riff on Lola wanting to be the marketing director, or something to that effect).
The NPCs and characters speak too quickly - I turned on subtitles - subtitles don’t include curses, but now I can read as I listen and catch more this way. Some of the names and words thrown out that the demons use are either this hellspeak or references to things I should remember from being a literature major.
If I’m slow to select a decision, the option fades away but the story continues. This has happened once or twice as I’ve turned away from my screen to do something else for a few moments.
My characters were turned away at processing, and so we have a chance to explore hell. The next morning hell opens at 6AM, so we find a taxi driver that takes us into town. Maybe you can stay around the processing center, but I decided to go into town - to 1st and Izzard (the taxi driver tells us this, and we had no option, but here we are). The taxi is a boat that rides on the river of fire/lava.
As we walk up a hill into town, people are hanging from dead trees. Eeeeek.
I don’t have many interaction options. Interactions with NPCs are brief and don’t seem to give much away in terms of hints. Sometimes you walk by people and a Twitter like popup, with a profile pic and text, gives insight into what they are thinking. The taxi driver took us to a bar, and instead of going in, I tried to keep walking to explore, but the world stops and I had to turn around and go to the bar.
A drink at the bar and the bartender explains something about the game I need to know - when you drink, you have an extra interactive choice of dialogue, so instead of 2 options you have 3 - the NPCs explain this through our interaction. The drunk choice is an empowered choice - once I have a drink and make a drunk choice, the bartender and another NPC explain to try different drinks for different results and that different drinks affect people in different ways - so this is something I need to learn to play my characters.
The goal at the bar is to get upstairs to Tommy’s death day party, and now we’re playing beer pong with a demon - I get to control how the character throws the ping pong ball into the cup, and I keep missing and after nailing his first two shots, the demon is missing over and over again like I am, so I think I’m supposed to win. The cheers and jabs from NPCs keep coming, and some of them keep saying the same thing, because I’ve missed so many times (ha!) Nope - the pong demon wins, but Tommy invites us to his party upstairs, and we’ve been trying to get up there. Turns out Tommy’s a serial killer who killed 13 boys. Creeeeeeeeeeeepy!
We go to a terrace instead of back downstairs and the taxi driver is there. She tells us how to get out of hell: outdrink Satan. She offers us a ride to his mansion, that we can see from the terrace of the bar. On the way to the taxi, we run into our personal demon, and I catch the name this time: Wormhorn. Wormhorn says it's their job to antagonize us.
The taxi driver lets us know we can summon her at any taxi stand - learned something!
We take demon flown elevator cages up to the top of Satan’s mansion. We basically walk by people, and once a level (there are 4) there’s one NPC to speak to, who tweets, or whose conversation we can listen to as we walk by. We learn that Bicker is the name of the app for the tweet-like messages we are seeing, and we learn it’s a way to learn more about what’s going on in the game. We have to find people who have “bickered” that they have an invite to Satan’s party, because the bouncer at the gate won’t let us in. I tried interacting with him over and over again, but we have to find another way.
We end up going all the way back down to the ground level to call Sam the taxi driver for a ride to see Lynda to try to get her invite. There were options here (screenshot) on where to go to get an invite.
As I wait for the taxi to get to where we’re going, I’m not sure I’m getting anywhere or having fun. The conversation isn’t that witty. I’ll give it a little more play time.This bit of the taxi driver’s conversation sounds oddly specific: “Why won’t Tina call me back?” Is what every song in hell is about - maybe this is a clue.
So we are walking to the bar - the Durdy Hurdy Gurdy for a bit and Lola and Milo are talking - and we finally hear something interesting - singing coming from 3 men who look like monks who are in trapped in stocks as their punishment in hell.
The guys singing say some racist things - they say a few things to Lola and then say something to the effect of “Oh, we’re sorry, we don’t know modern vernacular” - they call her over to them by calling her an Ethiopian. To me it’s the equivalent of saying something ignorant and racist like “oriental” instead of “Asian” and then feigning ignorance that you don’t know better. They ask Lola to hand them their tuner so they can sing in key, and I had the option to pick up their tuner or kick it in the river, and I actually thought hard about kicking it into the river, but I chose to help them. As we walked away toward our destination to find Lynda, the guys keep talking and it seems there might be another interaction with them, but then they stop. Now we’re at the bar, and we go in to find Lynda. A cinematic scene starts but is over quickly.
The character you are playing flips back and forth between Milo and Lola randomly - I wish you could pick which one you wanted for certain interactions - I don’t think the game allows for that, but it would have been more interactive or involve problem solving skills. Maybe Lola can’t get into Satan’s party but Milo could have talked us in…don’t know, it’s not a thing.
We stop for a drink - there are different drink options here from the other bar - and we have to pick one for Lynda. So we send over the one that turns people into a lovable lush one. It’s called a Jeffery Bomber (eek! Jeffrey Dahmer reference, maybe?)
We’re talking to Lynda, and we’ve ordered the drink that turns you into a witty asshole, and it doesn’t seem like she’s appreciating the snark until the drink we sent over smooths things over. She tells us a backstory about her band Mercury Wyrm - and there’s a reunion at Satan’s tonight - her old band is playing his house party. Now she’s a solo artist and you can only perform at the Durdy Hurdy bar, because she signed a contract with a demon and can’t leave, which means we effectively have no invite to the party if she can’t go with us. Lynda is considering finding a loophole for us, and we learn that Ono the manager is who we have to find. She’s downstairs. So we go.
More things happen and it’s more of the same, but eventually we find other musicians to take Lynda’s place for the evening, and this involves a dance off where I have to click different coloured circles that the demon has clicked to make dance moves, and I fail a few times because my mouse sucks. It’s like the game Simon, there’s colors, they make a sound and I have to click them but not with the same rhythm! I’m usually fast and good at this stuff, but you can only use the mouse for this and not the keyboard move keys, so it’s giving me trouble.
Analytic Notes
After playing, consider your experience more holistically -- What problems did it present me with? What options did it give me (to address those problems)? When and how does the game invoke gender, class, race, violence in ways that might be problematic? What about learning? Does anything stand out as a ‘defining’ or ‘unique’ feature of the game?
I tried ordering different drinks, drinking them and then going back to talk to NPCs, like Lynda. She doesn’t react well when we’ve had the asshole drink.
I drank a black death (the witty asshole drink), went back to the bar to get another but instead of being able to pick my drink, it automatically gave me another black death. So I’m waiting to see if when the effects wear off if I can select something else. Maybe It was a glitch.
When you’ve been drinking, the screen movement mimics being drunk - it moves around, you see differently, and even sound gets slower and sounds like you’re in a tunnel.
Holy race issues! In conversation with NPCs, Lola makes a reference to when some people kept touching her hair, Milo and Lola walk away and the guy calls her Ebola!!! Lola is a black female character and Milo is a white male character, and they are the characters I’m playing. When another pair of NPCs are being processed, a man and woman duo, the processing guy says to one of them, “No, it doesn’t change anything that you only ate free range chicken.” The guy says, “But we only robbed Jewish liquor stores.” Ummm, anti-semitic much? The processing guy to the woman: “Your tits will be eaten by snapping turtles and grow back larger every time so when you jog you’ll have intense back pain.” In another scene, the taxi driver says: “I’m sure if you were on the Titanic we’d have a lot more Polish people today” in response to Lola saying she can swim. Another reference and attempt at humour I’m questioning. I have Polish heritage, and now I’m curious about this reference. I know this is an adult game, but this attempt at humour is really weak, and I’m not a fan. You can be funny without being racist, anti-semitic or sexist. Maybe Night School Games should hire Tina Fey.
Affective Notes
Playing and analyzing games are subjective activities -- as you played, you were likely: engaged, irritated, startled, sympathetic, angry, bored, etc. Identify the affective responses you had while playing, and do your best to account for the in-game circumstances that gave rise to them (i.e. where, when, intensity, etc.) Don’t worry about being exhaustive, just mention what you think matters.
I'm engaged sometimes, other times bored. I like when the interactions actually made me laugh, but I’m not sure if other choices I make lead to other scenarios. I wish there were a way to reverse decisions and see if there’s another play - but I guess I’d have to start over or learn more on a replay - I probably should have built in the time to do this, but I got carried away. When the characters were tipsy or drunk the screen moved to disorient you, and sounds were affected, as well. It started making me a little motion sick, and after I played, I walked upstairs to make myself a lunch and felt pretty dizzy for a while. I have gotten motion sick playing games in the past (especially Grand Theft Auto), so I stopped playing after realizing how much it was affecting me physically.
Session Fieldnotes
At the end of your fieldnotes for session two, craft one or two sentences (no more) that, for you, summarize your experiences of learning this new game, and what specific elements/skills/etc., based on your experience of solo play, to be the most important in getting a ‘handle’ on the game. Include at least one image that demonstrated this/these crucial game elements/skills/characteristics.
Session 3: Video observation | 45 to 60 minutes
Watch an online video of your game, either via live-streaming (Twitch.tv) or conventional video (YouTube). Get a sense of how an expert plays that game: see how they understand and react to the game and how that differs from YOUR playthrough; see what it is like to watch the game not just as a viewer, but as a mass media spectator. Again, organize your account into three kinds of notes
Descriptive Notes
Document what the player is doing, paying attention to, ignoring, prioritizing, but also what they are talking about (i.e. what they verbally frame as important during the playthrough). Make notes of what the player is paying attention to, prioritizing, and/or ignoring and if and how that is different from your play.
Swingpoynt is the player on Twitch/YouTube who I’m watching. He’s got over 61 million views on YouTube and 283,000 subscribers - AND he’s from Austin, Texas, where I lived before moving to Canada. Cool!
He starts at the beginning, and that’s why I chose to watch him - I don’t want spoilers. I ended up watching his Part 1 and Part 2 of the play through of Afterparty starting from the beginning.
Just realized I hope he makes different choices than I did, so I can see how gameplay is different bases on other choices.
The player goes on a rant about hating the humour so far - “you know where people take the time to explain the punchline? I HATE IT!” I wasn’t annoyed by this, but clearly he is because he keeps ranting. Let’s see how he reacts to racism, sexism and anti-semitic humour.
He’s playing with subtitles on from the get go. And he’s laughing a lot more than I did, but maybe because he’s playing it up for the video. There are some clever comments from NPCs I missed. The bartender says, “It’s all 2 dollar vodka mixed with 3 dollar lemonade, so do you want one?”
He noticed the red solo cup in the upper right hand corner (the drink cup) but he doesn’t know he needs to drink from it yet by pressing shift. I looked at the game control screen before playing, but he skipped through it. The player figured it out. Now he’s making fun of the character Milo for being a lightweight, because after 3 sips of his drink he’s drunk. Some of the player’s choices have been different, yeah, the dialogue changes slightly, but nothing is changing in terms of gameplay. The player notices that he has an additional choice that is unlocked by drinking.
Watching this first part of the game before the characters find out they’re dead seems to go on forever. Now I’m noticing that one of the NPCs is super rude to Lola asking her “if she even went here.” They’re at a graduation party.
I’ve just noticed this YouTube was a Twitch livestream (maybe) because under the icon of the player speaking, there’s all the chat from folks watching him.
The player thinks the scene where the players find out they’re dead is strange and doesn’t make sense. I felt the writing was really poor here. A group of NPCs comes in and tells Milo and Lola their parents are dead, and the story is really odd: they were run over by a train and if the train moves, their guts will come out. Then those NPCs do the robot and keep talking. It’s weird. The player thinks so, too.
The NPC demon who’s telling Milo and Lola they’re dead speaks in an Irish accent. There are a lot of Scottish, British and Irish accents used by NPCs. The player wonders how they characters died, and hopes they find out. Now Lola and Milo are wondering too.
The characters have just dropped into hell, and the player has to gain his bearings and figure out what to do next. The player says, “I’m so confused.” “Which way should we be going?” The NPC points a direction, and the player runs that way. The player says that the game Oxenfree, also by these developers, was a choice based game that affects the ending, and he wonders if this game we’ll be the same. There’s an option to go downstairs, and the player walks passed it to explore the world, but it ends, so he has to backtrack. I did the same thing.
We’re at the personality assessment part, where our personal demon Sister Mary Wormhorn asks the characters some questions. The player chooses all the choices I did.
There’s a joke equating murder-suicides and moms with albino sons. ?
I forgot that there was an opportunity for the player to shoot a head into a basketball hoop, same as with beer pong. You can control the trajectory of the ball by choosing which angle to throw it. The player made it. I did, too.
The player says, “This feels a lot like the first day of work somewhere, and there’s a lot going on, and you’re like, ‘What’s going on?’”
The processing demon is talking to the pair of NPCs who said they only robbed Jewish liquor stores. Let’s see if this comes up again. Yep, it does. And the snapping turtles biting breasts bit, too. I’m bored, and I can’t imagine replaying to see how things change, because they haven’t change much during this player’s gameplay. The pace feels slow, even though the characters do speak quickly. The player encounters the taxi driver, and when presented with a choice to go with her or not, he chooses to go into town, as I did.
The player makes a different choice, and I *think* the taxi driver’s dialogue changed, but I’m not sure.
Now we’re at the first bar. The player decides to explore instead of going into the bar. The more he talks the more he reminds me of my cousin Arlo. Maybe he just reminds me of Texas.
The player chooses a different choice than I did. Now he’s going to order a drink at the bar. There’s a funny line the bartender dishes out, “If you ate before you came here, you may want to pre-throw up.” I’m still curious as to whether or not the decisions really effect the narrative of the game. Player chooses another same choice I did. There’s a glitch on the drinks, and it happens to the player the first time he mouseovers over the Bloody Stool drink. It won’t let him see or select it - it jumps back to another drink and description. (this happened again a bit later, and the player decided to use his mouse, and that worked, but there’s a clear game glitch here that exists)
We’re at beer pong. The player ignored some NPCs who I interacted with first before going to play beer pong. The demon won the beer pong a lot quicker than when I played it.
We’re now headed upstairs to Tommy’s party, and I’m getting bored. We’re also 48 minutes into this, but I want to keep watching. The player doesn’t understand what “helicopter mom” means and says he hopes it’s not a mom with giant boobs who helicopters them around. Someone tells him what it means in the chat, and he’s relieved that his inclination wasn’t correct.
It’s just a bunch of narrative now, and the player is ending this part of his gameplay 54 minutes.
I won’t make more notes, but I would like to watch a little longer.
b) Analytic Notes
Review your descriptive notes and consider the problems the player encountered and the strategies/solutions that they enacted. Furthermore, consider how the player navigated/commented on issues/structures of race, gender, class, and violence. What did you notice about the game when you watched, as opposed to when you played? Hold off on making any big conclusions for now.
Even after an hour of gameplay, strategy does not seem to be something this game is demanding from the player. Either we haven’t had enough time to figure out a strategy or one isn’t required of us.
There was a glitch with selecting drinks at the bar, and the player found a workaround - instead of using his controller he used the mouse, and he was able to select the drink he wanted.
The player interacted with the character’s phone - you can do this at a taxi stop apparently - and is reading Bicker (the Twitter-like social app). There’s a lot of clues there - about what drink to get Lynda at the bar - I’m not sure which one I got for her, but it worked. We’ll see when he gets there. He’s spending a lot of time looking through Bicker. There’s the Social tab, Map and Photos. I wonder if those are for screenshots - there are only two photos in the phone so far. Turns out, a player can access the phone at any time during gameplay to read Bicker or look at the map. I didn’t know that.
The player didn’t have any reactions to the racist, sexist or anti-Semitic jokes, and he also used sexist language when referring to what he thought helicopter mom meant. He saw a woman with short shorts and commented on it like to catcall her. (in a later part of the game he does react, and I've posted this in the summary).
c) Affective Notes
What affective responses did you observe the streamer having while playing? What evidence did you have of their affective response/s? What did they choose to focus on? How were they different from responses and focus/foci you had? Pay specific attention to instances where you were surprised by something the video streamer said or did. And if possible, reflect on how affective responses impacted the ‘learning’ or ‘engagement’ you think can be recognized and documented from this observed play session.
I think the player I observed and I had a lot of the same responses and wonderings about gameplay, the narrative, and decision making and whether it affects the gameplay.
He says, “Okay…?” a lot when he’s confused by the dialogue in terms of not understand the reference or joke. So they are falling flat for him, too. He’s paying attention to mechanics and is explicitly talking about his learning moments. For example, when he encountered the drink selection glitch the first time, he noticed the problem and didn’t try to find a workaround, but he did find one the next time. I experienced the same glitch and tried using my keyboard keys to move between options, but discovered my mouse was the only way I could jump between them. The glitch never happened again for me.
He was quicker than I was to pick up on the extra dialogue while drinking option but slow to realize how to drink after receiving one. We both did some of the same things like try to explore the world for another interaction option instead of just taking the first one we encountered, and this effected my gameplay because after the first few times of seeing there wasn’t another interaction option (option to go into or outside of a place or interaction option with NPCs) I just went with the first opportunity I saw.
While I watched him in his Part 2 video, I saw that in one scene he completely passed up an opportunity I took to find another I didn’t even consider. When the player has to find another band to take Lynda’s place at the bar, I interacted with the band that had been playing on stage when I initially encountered Ono and her demon friend. After realizing the challenge - to find a replacement for Lynda - I went upstairs where that band was sitting in the bar, and I convinced them they could have a second try out. The player went outside the bar to the men in the stocks and convinced them they could perform at the bar.
Session Fieldnotes
At the end of your fieldnotes for session three, craft one or two sentences (no more) that, for you, summarize your observations of a more skilled player playing this game. Include one image that supports your conclusions.
Watching Swingpoynt I noticed that from the beginning, he was paying attention to all the things I was paying attention to for this assignment - game mechanics, the story, the dialogue of characters and NPCs - and turns out, when I returned to his video to grab a screenshot for this summary, I noticed he did indeed have cringe-worthy reaction to some of the dialogue that mentions gaydar and bisexuality. We’re both interested in the same things in finding out more about why the characters are in hell and what’s going on with Satan. It’s really awesome to see players thinking critically about games as a job or hobby, and this opened my eyes to a whole community and and way of thinking about the games we play.
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