The only “walking simulator” I had played and liked before Gone Home for this class was What Remains of Edith Finch (which was phenomenal). It was always hard for that genre to impress me, and Mrs. Finch was the first to show me that the storytelling potential of this genre was immense. At first, Gone Home did not impress me. I felt like it was thoroughly average and didn’t give it much more thought. Then I read this article, titled On Gone Home by Merrit Kopas. It was interesting to see such a different perspective on the game and it brought light to certain things that I was ignorant about. Now I see this game in a slightly different manner. I still don’t personally love this game and don’t think I ever will, since the content in it is something that I simply do not connect with. However, I now recognize just how important this is to people who relate with these issues. To me, Gone Home was just an average story about adolescence and coming of age at first. To the people that felt connected to it, however, it was something far greater than I could understand.

Even with this, the one part of Gone Home that I was able to relate to was the nostalgia and a desire to go back to the past. This part of the game is undeniably brilliant. You play as an older college student who is returning to home from her studies. While wandering around the house, you see all these things reminiscent of a person growing up. It creates a sense of longing. For both innocence and the past. To see someone catalog their experiences with their first love, writing their own stupid short stories, making their own awful grunge knock off music, etc.. Despite the rather adolescent themes present in the game, it does feel like a game that is made moreso for people in their 20’s. It seems like it is meant to be a flashback for these people who are older in their age. Looking at two people who grew up in the same household through at two different points in time.

This relates to the paragraph at the end of the article. “I don’t want to be Katie anymore. I want to be Sam. I want to be present in my youth.” I never realized exactly how much my childhood represented until I looked back one day and realized it was suddenly over. No more sitting around for 8 hours a day playing World of Warcraft or League of Legends. I just woke up one day to find that I had changed, and the things I had wanted before weren’t working for me anymore. I still find pieces of my past, such as an old journal I would write random stuff in, around the house from time to time when cleaning up. That was the feeling Gone Home invoked for me.

I really don’t have a specific thing to point out with this. It’s just some random thoughts I threw down.