Touché, bitches!

The Path: indy & pomo, but is it a game?

And so the debate rages—is The Path a game or not. Judging from several recent blog posts, people demand that it be one or the other.

See, I don’t agree with this. In fact, I think The Path is so freakin’ postmodern that its whole purpose is to challenge classification. And, therefore, whether or not it’s a game is irrelevant. Let me explain…

We’ll begin this by considering some of the ways The Path differs from “traditional” games. Well, firstly, the game sort of lies to you. You’re told to go to your grandma’s house and stay on the path, but if that’s all you do, it’s GG; you must do the opposite. Secondly, The Path has no clear, overarching narrative. As you explore the woods, gather memories and encounter a “wolf”, you notice that there is nothing clear tying these occurrences together.

So as you can see, there is a tension in The Path between the purported aim (get to grandma’s house; stay on the path) and what you actually have to do (leave path, gather memories). Similarly, its title (The Path) implies some linearity, but there is none—so we can assume, at least, considering there is no apparent cogent narrative.

This tension highlights the boundaries by which players will define The Path. A game, intuition tells us, gives us coherent objectives or, at least, leads us to find them. Likewise, games will tie certain points together and give us some indication of how to make sense of the connections. The Path throws these out the window and challenges our complacency with them. By drawing our attention to how we read and define video games, the contradictions in The Path deconstruct the category “game”—a hallmark of postmodern texts.

Upon playing The Path, no longer can the player take for granted what is and isn’t a member of the category “game”; they must objectify and reconsider. And this, I believe, is a major concern of the game. The developers refer to it as a game thus bringing this notion to the fore: we expect it to be a game and, upon playing, question why it is or is not a game. It is designed to raise a set of specific questions, or at least it does so very well:

• Is the notion of “video game” changing; in the wake of The Path, does it need to change?
• Are our assumptions about “the game” wrong?
• Where are the definitional boundaries of “video game”?

My arguments are supported by the fact that The Path has stirred such a debate. Whether or not I think it is a game is irrelevant, but following on from my arguments above, I don’t think it has to be either—it depends on how you define “game” and interpret The Path itself. And this is the brilliance of The Path—it has involved gamers in a critical debate about video games and forced them to question and justify their own classifications.

So debate-on, my fellow bloggers! I look forward to the weeks ahead.

A demo of The Path is available for Mac and PC. It’s brand new and not actually part of the full version. It’s a prologue.

http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/