Gameplay Journal Entry #4
While browsing through gamescenes.org one game mod I found compelling was called “FEATHERFALL”. In this modification, the design of the aesthetics is changed to resemble a dream, more accurately a nightmare. The mod takes the aesthetics of games like GTA, Destiny, The Division, and more and displays them as falling. This incites a nightmare like panic formed by the empathy for the alter ego of the playable character. A secondary attribute of the mod affects the level of technology within the software. This is achieved by altering the gravity of the gameplay to create the falling sensations.
I think this modification critiques mainstream titles by exploring the relationship between reality and space. Simulating a dream-like state and changing the gameplay space offers a deeper form of escape from reality than mainstream games. I think the creator of this mod is doing something very similar to the concept of “Multiple diegesis” as described by Galloway, “when directors mix and overlay different spaces and different times, they are engaging the counter cinema technique of “multiple diegesis,” something rarely seen in the more mainstream narrative cinema.”(Galloway pg.111)
Works Cited
Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
“FEATHERFALL”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lxsEwWfrvM&list=PL1cXh4tWqmsG5ZdDJZNSBO-2qjuFGYIFs
