Throughout this week, we spoke about twine games. Twine is a free tool that can be used to make a storyboard game. This is a very interesting idea to me seeing as I usually play FPS or MMO games. Taking a step back and getting into a good story can really change your perspective if the content is good enough.

As far as examples of twine games, we took a look at several. To start off, there was depression quest. This is a game where you quite literally play some living with depression, you go through their job, relationships, how they manage their illness along with possible treatments. What this game does is shows the user what a person living with depression has to go through on a daily basis. This shows that depression isn’t a phase, it is a serious problem that many people have to go through. I thought that this game was very commendable due to some of the proceeds being donated to the Nation Suicide Prevention Hotline.

There was also a platform shared this week which I have never heard of. This platform is called “itch.io”. On this site, users can find all sorts of games, specifically games made with twine. This is a very cool way to share indie games and a great platform for those who are up and coming story tellers.

Another thing I noticed about itch was the diversity they had in all of the games listed on the site. This gives an opportunity for niche games and genres that would not typically be listed on steam or seen on something such as epic games launcher.

On top of the showcasing of games, we learned in class a little bit about what twine is and how to use it. This makes me think about the next phase for the class and what I will use for my creative project. Twine will definitely be in the running for something that I will use in my final project. As far as other topics this week, from “nymgamer.com” there was an article written by Bianca Batti and Alisha Karabinus about gatekeeping in video games. I found this article to be a good read since this seems to be a new term thrown around a lot. This article talked about gatekeeping and the hold on certain games. Some games have been thrown into the category known as “walking simulator”. This has been suggested to be offensive towards certain games and used in a negative connotation meaning that there is nothing to do in the game but walk around and go through prewritten dialogue. As far as gatekeeping goes, it went deeper and talk about not just gatekeeping games, but those who can study and produce them. This idea to me is very strange and I do not understand why this is becoming a contest. I think all games deserve a spot in anyone’s library for whatever reason, at the end of the day they are for entertainment.