The Potential of Mundanity

Because they have tremendous potential in terms of interactivity, even an action as simple as picking and pouring a glass of water can make for satisfying gameplay experience. Not thanks to the act of doing so itself, but because it’s a great way to immerse players into the game world. If that weren’t the case, I don’t think Death Stranding would’ve made peeing a gameplay mechanic.

There’s only so many ‘’the world is in danger, you’re the hero, save it’’ stories devs can throw at us before it becomes boring. There’s so many of them that, paradoxically, saving the world from some unspecified threat becomes as banal as washing your teeth in the morning before heading off to work.

Again, this is not to say that games with ‘’conventional’’ premises are boring or creatively bankrupt, and to their credit, the majority of developers are actively trying to put an interesting spin on their work.

Divinity: Original Sin 2, for example, features a relatively bland premise – you’re basically a demigod who’s working towards ascending to divinity and become a true god -, but it has a great cast of complex characters, good humor, a healthy degree of self-awareness.

In other words, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, as proven by some of its side-quests, which are quite low-stakes in the whole scheme of things.

Texture and Tactility

When it comes to the issue of mundanity, there are two types I’d want video games to feature more. The first one has to do with what games academic and designer Ian Bogost calls ‘’texture’’. In his intriguing piece for Gamasutra, he talks about Go, a game whose main pleasure stems from grabbing the pieces and playing around with them.

For obvious reasons, this sense of tactility is quite hard to replicate in virtual form because the players are a few billion-pixels removed from the action. The game that managed to come closest to replicating, according to Kotaku – who’ve also cited Ian Bogost’s piece about texture – is Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar did this not through the use of ground-breaking technology, but through a series of minute, repetitive chores that ‘’give the game some sort of texture’’, in that everything is ‘’rough, gritty and breakable’’.

Guns degrade and get dirty, and the player can always stop whatever they were doing and clean them. Another thing players can do is set camp and have Arthur Morgan and craft ‘’split-point’’ bullets, a type of ammunition that offers a slight damage boost. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with seeing the dirt disappearing from the surface of the gun, or stopping and oiling your weapons.

When it comes to video games, it’s these tiny, minute details that make a fictional world truly believable, even more so than the writing and the characters. The second, and final issue I want to address is designing games around mundanity. Though such games are more widespread nowadays, the titles that best executed this concept are Papers Please, Gone Home and This Grand Life.

This Grand Life is essentially a ‘’personal finance simulator’’ that has players create a character and manage their day to day lives. The core gameplay consists of balancing short-term needs – hunger, fun, hygiene, health – and long-term goals – happiness, education and wealth. As you play it, the line between real life and the game world gets blurrier, as the game is designed in such a way that your strong points, as well as your biases and flaws, are reflected directly in the game.

For example, if the player lacks the ability to manage their personal finances, their in-game progress will be reflective of that. This Grand Life is one of those rare titles that creates a direct feedback loop between the player and the game and, in some cases, can be a real eye-opener.

The Genius of Gone Home and Papers Please

Speaking of eye-openers, there’s no talking about mundanity without mentioning Gone Home. Released in an era when walking simulators were in full-swing, Gone Home brought something fresh to the already-stale genre.

You assume the role of a young woman who just got home from a year abroad, only to find the house empty. As you’re rummaging through your family’s personal effects, you uncover, piece by piece, why the house is empty.

The real hook of Gone Home is how the developers, through good writing, world-building and a high degree of interactivity, a seemingly mundane premise into something truly unique. At its core, Gone Home can seem nothing more than an overly-pretentious walking simulator that exploits mid 90’s nostalgia. And believe it or not, its mundanity is probably its strongest point.

Even though the game doesn’t shy away from throwing a few red herrings, there’s nothing special about the Greenbriars – they’re as mundane as a family can get.

There’s no satanic cult, no dark secrets – except a history of mental illness and abuse that is slightly hinted at but not fully developed. They’re normal. And that (the mundaneness) is exactly what makes gradually discovering bits and pieces of their stories and personalities so satisfying, even though you never discover that the father was a warlock all along (maybe in a sequel, but don’t get your hopes up).