Games that Make You Part of the Ecosystem

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👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/AutoModerator 📅︎︎ Aug 07 2023 🗫︎ replies

Why no love for Rain World? You're part of the ecosystem!

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/dijkstra- 📅︎︎ Aug 07 2023 🗫︎ replies

I disagree with caption message. Your contribution to environmental sustainability is VERY important and so are you. However, you are no more important than everyone else and should respect both yourself and them :)

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/sugarforthebirds 📅︎︎ Aug 07 2023 🗫︎ replies
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There are two moments in “Planet of Lana” that  made me realize I was playing something special.   The first was, literally, a big moment. The  camera pulled back and an unfathomably large   creature swam under my boat. Its body seemed  to keep going and going and there was a sense   I’d surely be capsized and eaten — but instead it  simply passed on, leaving me with an overwhelming   feeling that I wasn’t the center of this world.  The second moment was small: I misjudged a jump,   and a predator caught me. Okay, time to try again.  After respawning, I decided to outrun the enemy,   since that’s… usually something you can do  in video games. I didn’t even get close.   It's rare that a game makes you feel  truly unimportant — like you’re just a   tiny part of a much larger environment. When  a title successfully instills this feeling,   it can be like witnessing a sort of magic  trick. So what I’d like to do today is take   you backstage and explore how different games  succeed in making you part of their ecosystems…   Okay, so how do you get past a predator in  “Planet of Lana?” The answer is you have to   move slowly — learning the route of an enemy —  be they biological or mechanical — and finding   a way to evade them altogether. From very early  on, the title establishes that you’re much too   insignificant to overcome dangers directly.  Instead, “Planet of Lana” is a game all about   understanding the ecosystem: knowing how different  threats operate, and putting that knowledge into   practice to escape creatures much higher up the  food chain than you are. The character you play as   is not particularly skillful. Your fastest running  speed is a leisurely jog. Your jump is just barely   enough to cross most gaps. You fall and stumble  down cliffs most video game characters wouldn’t   even be remotely bothered by. Unfortunately, the  land itself feels hostile. Eyes peer out from   the darkness of most environments. And with no  health-bar, you’re always one wrong move away from   game over. But if you pay attention, you realize  the game is constantly teaching you about how its   ecosystem works. Early in “Planet of Lana,”  there’s a part where a tiny creature scuttles   under a rock as you wander by. Later, you pass a  giant rock, and it lumbers after you on hundreds   of tiny feet. The game is full of these little  moments of internal consistency. And once you   learn the rules of how the environment functions,  the path forward becomes clear. [web sounds]   But what about a game where you  experience an ecosystem not as a human,   but something a bit smaller. Introducing:  “Webbed.” A physics-based platformer where   you play as a peacock spider. Moving around in  “Webbed” is quite difficult. At least for me,   I found my first attempts at traversal wildly  messy. Instead of gracefully swinging on webs,   my spider careened around at high speeds, crashing  repeatedly into the foliage. My initial attempt   at spinning a fly-catching web was equally sad —  yielding a crummy, asymmetrical disaster that was   utterly ineffective. And this was a real problem,  because in the virtual ecosystem of “Webbed,”   nearly every insect is larger than you are. And  the ultimate goal of the game is to rescue your   mate from a relatively titanic bowerbird, a task  that seemed downright impossible at the start.   But to succeed in the environment of “Webbed,”  you can’t think like a human. You have to think   like a spider. Once I got used to having a body  light as air, I began to swing about with much   greater success. With practice, I even managed to  pull off some rather fancy movement techniques.   My fly-catching webs also improved. At first, my  few meager strands only ensnared a meal on rare   occasions. But the more I crafted wider networks  closer in design to those of real-world spiders,   the more I found my food came to me. One of the  most impressive aspects of “Webbed” is how game   mechanics come together with its virtual ecosystem  to make you inhabit a perspective you otherwise   might never consider. Granted, “Webbed” is not  trying to perfectly simulate the experience of   being a spider. Spiders, generally, can’t fire  off a never-ending barrage of webs like they’re   Spider-Man. They also can’t do sick tricks on a  skateboard, which is something you can eventually   unlock. But the core gameplay truly does excel  at making you feel like part of an ecosystem.   Another game that can successfully hijack your  mind is “Gibbon: Beyond the Trees.” In this game,   you live the fast-paced, high stakes life of a  gibbon swinging full tilt through the rainforest   canopy. Like in “Webbed,” your method of traversal  is unintuitive at first, but with practice it   starts to feel unbelievably natural, with every  movement a glorious expression of momentum.   There’s a certain feeling you get when you  perfectly sync up with your fellow ape, releasing   at just the right moment for an incredible rush  of speed. It feels astonishingly good to grab a   vine and hold it for a long swing, letting go  at the very top and gaining tremendous height.   Though the ecosystem itself is less interactive  than some of the others in this video, it’s still   deeply immersive, with other animals finding  their own path through the branches, and the   weather changing at unexpected times. “Gibbon’s”  sense of spontaneity is bolstered by the game’s   use of procedural animation — or animation that  responds dynamically to an environment, instead   of following a predetermined loop. It’s the same  animation method that makes the creatures of Rain   World feel so unpredictable. Since I’ve already  covered “Rain World” in detail elsewhere on the   channel, I won’t say too much about its simulated  ecosystem, but it’s another example of a game that   can be so mechanically immersive, it changes your  perspective as your play it: making you think and   react like a prey animal living in an environment  that isn’t centered around you. “Gibbon,”   similarly, has these moments that convey your  character’s utter insignificance. There are places   where the camera zooms all the way out to capture  an incredible leap across an immense chasm. Part   of what makes these moments so breathtaking  is the knowledge that you aren’t watching some   predetermined animation — if you make a single  mistake, you will absolutely fall. If you stop   thinking with your gibbon brain and miss a branch,  you’ll come crashing to the floor below, which   isn’t such a big deal when you’re close to the  ground, but definitely is in the high canopy. The   effect is a world that is not only expansive, but  indifferent to the player in a way that makes the   environment feel all the vaster. “Planet of Lana”  has its own share of zoom-out-moments that let   you soak in the sheer scale of the world around  you. But unlike in “Gibbon,” it’s not just the   environments that are massive — but the entities  that inhabit them. Amidst a graveyard of giant,   fractured skeletons, you can find, in the gloom  of a cave, the many glowing eyes of a monstruous,   spider-like entity — who towers over you to  such an extent it seems… unfair. Some mechanical   entities stand even taller, and while for much  of the game the largest units appear only in the   background — there are some sequences where you  get up close with these machines that are just   spellbinding. Rarely have I felt less significant  to a game’s world than I did during these   sections. But the most stupefying expression of  scale in “Planet of Lana” doesn’t involve robots   or giant monsters. Instead, it’s a relatively  quiet moment where your character runs through   an empty expanse with their animal companion. The  camera starts pulling back: revealing the stars   overhead. You watch as your character appears to  grow smaller and smaller, and you think surely the   perspective can’t get any wider, but the zoom-out  just… keeps going. You become nothing but a tiny   dot in a corner of the screen, and still the  frame isn’t done expanding as the sun starts   to peak over the horizon. I timed it, and it takes  almost three real world minutes for the sequence   to conclude. But absolutely I could not have told  you this number while playing, because while I   watched the sun rise over the distant mountains,  time just sort of… lost all meaning. The rest of   the world faded away, leaving only myself and  the infinite vastness of the cosmos above.   Though there are other parts of “Planet of Lana”  that are technically more bombastic and cinematic,   it’s this section that made me truly feel  like a small part of something much greater.   I’ve gotten a similar feeling of… ‘smallness’  while playing open world games, sometimes due   to the density of their worlds, and sometimes due  to the sheer scope. Many modern titles can instill   a sense of insignificance simply from how long  it takes to cross their map. But where most open   world games differ from the indie titles mentioned  so far is that while the player is typically a   minute part of the environment, they can often  change the ecosystem around them to a significant   degree. This can cause players to feel above an  ecosystem rather than part of it — but it can also   pull them in deeper. And one open world I found  myself particularly drawn into was Hyrule from   “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.” The  land of Hyrule isn’t just varied or simply ‘big’   but also a world that requires you to understand  and interact with its systems to progress. As you   play, you learn to chop down trees to cross  gaps, and to cook meals. You find ways to   overcome the freezing cold of the tundra and the  blistering heat of the desert. A lot of people   have already talked about how immersive this world  feels — and I certainly agree. But I think I felt   even closer to the world when I played “Tears  of the Kingdom.” A direct sequel to “Breath of   the Wild,” “Tears of the Kingdom” takes you back  to the same Hyrule, and yet I found myself more   immersed in the cell-shaded environments than I  ever was in the game’s predecessor. A big reason   for this difference is Fuse, a super bizarre new  mechanic that lets you merge practically anything   in the environment with whatever’s in your hand.  It’s an ability that made me think more about the   world around me without even realizing it. Because  most objects in the world now had a special   utility that Fuse could bring out, I found myself  engaging more with the virtual ecosystem around   me. I explored each section of the world more  thoroughly. I started to know different types of   berries by sight alone. I learned more about all  the different elemental interactions the game’s   psychics system makes possible. The simple act  of experimenting with different in-game-systems   became one of my favorite activities. I also found  myself seeking out different enemy types just to   discover what sort of Fuse materials I could  obtain. My curiosity was further encouraged by   the greater variety of creatures in “Tears of the  Kingdom,” which exhibit a wider array of emergent   behaviors that make the ecosystem feel more  unpredictable. I felt like the game was rewarding   me for learning how its world functioned,  pushing me to discover all its hidden networks.   There’s another, blockier open-world game  that rewards you for intimate knowledge of its   ecosystem. Like Zelda, Minecraft balances huge,  lonely environments with deep systems of learnable   interactivity. While much of Minecraft has to do  with… mining, it’s also very much a game about   knowing what plants are edible, what types of  animals respond positively to what types of crops,   what can be turned into your ally and what sees  you as food. It might not immediately strike you   as a game that makes you part of its ecosystem,  but personally, when I’m in the early stages of   a playthrough and I hear the vocalizations of  giant spiders my brain is still conditioned to   go on alert like a prey animal. Knowing things  about the world like ‘don’t get too close to the   weird green guy,’ or ‘don’t look the lanky  fellow directly in the eyes’ are absolutely   key to survival. Minecraft also puts emphasis on  different biomes, encouraging the player to learn   what can be found in which type of environment as  they navigate a near-infinite landscape. Tears of   the Kingdom similarly incentivizes knowledge of  different environments — retaining not just the   different biomes present in Breath of the Wild,  but adding two all new ecosystems that feel   radically different from one another. The game is  essentially three worlds stacked on top of each   other: the bright and sunny islands in the sky,  the vast and varied surface world, and the dark   and eerie depths below. Even more than different  Minecraft biomes, all of these ecosystems have   their own rules, and their own aesthetics that  reinforce those rules. The depths are meant to   be this hostile, lost realm of foreboding flora  and fauna, which is why I thought it was clever   that the plants here seem to take inspiration from  prehistoric species. Even the insects down here   look more like something from the Cambrian era.  And what you find in each realm encourages you to   explore the others. The Sundelion flowers of the  sky islands give you resistance to the depths.   Likewise, the Brightbloom Seeds you find in caves  in the sky and on the surface are absolutely   crucial for lighting your way when exploring the  dark underground. And when exploring the depths,   you’ll find powerful fuse materials that make you  feel more equipped to take on challenges in the   other two realms. Minecraft has its own parallel  realm in the Nether, a fiery dimension filled with   creatures and biomes completely different from  the overworld. As is the case in Zelda, if you   aren’t careful, the different rules of this domain  can catch you off guard, and lead to disaster.   There’re other open world games that succeed  in making you feel like the underdog. “Horizon:   Zero Dawn,” with its artificial ecosystem  of towering machines, and Subnautica,   with its Thalassophobia-inducing ecosystem of  undersea nightmares, both fit this category   nicely. As was the case with Rain World, I’ve  already covered these virtual realms in detail,   but if you want to feel like a very minute part  of a large food chain — they would be among my   top recommendations. It's also worth noting that  as you progress through both Minecraft and Zelda,   you might start to feel less and less beholden  to the food chain as your abilities grow. Indeed,   there’s the argument to be made that  you’re not part really of these ecosystems,   but conquering them. It’s a feeling that can arise  as you near the end of a lot of open world titles.   But even in the late stages of Minecraft and  Zelda, there’s no way to fully disconnect from   the world around you. No matter your experience  level, you can pretty much always be caught off   guard by something in the environment. As games  with a significant amount of player freedom,   how much you disrupt the digital ecosystems of  Minecraft and Zelda is ultimately up to you. In   the end, the option to keep the land around  you green and unspoiled is always available.   Life in an undamaged ecosystem is not an option  in the game “Endling.” “Endling” didn’t begin the   way I expected. Based on screenshots, I thought  it was a relatively innocent game about a family   of foxes. But when I booted it up, I was greeted  by these two dark shapes floating against a red   background. The camera pulled out and I realized  those were embryos in a mother fox’s womb, and   the world outside was on fire. Almost immediately,  I found myself inhabiting the perspective of the   mother fox I controlled, reduced to the single  instinct of moving forwards. A burning deer sent   me hurtling off a ledge. Still, I pressed onwards,  limping, through the smoke and the rain. At last,   I made it to shelter, and as a scene played of  the mother having her cubs — I took what felt   like my first breath since pressing start. But  the scene wasn’t over, because then the camera   panned up out of the den to remind me just what  kind of a world these cubs had been born into…   “Endling” is a game that traps you within its  setting. Ingeniously, from here, the gameplay   changes into a stressful cycle of finding food for  your cubs before the night ends. To reflect this   new format, the raging inferno is replaced with  desolate snowfall. Tracking down food in this   barren ecosystem is a constant challenge, and  to make things more challenging, before long,   your cubs start coming with you to learn how to  hunt. Trying to remain alive while also protecting   your pups requires constant vigilance, pulling  you further into the world. Though technically   post-apocalyptic, “Endling” depicts a future  much closer in time than most works of sci-fi,   one ravaged by the mistakes of humanity. As  a game rooted in the perspective of a fox,   no dialogue communicates its themes  of environmental degradation. Instead,   the devastation is felt in the bareness of the  ecosystem itself and the decaying remnants that   make up the landscape. Humans themselves are  rare, their gas masks making them feel alien,   and helping you think of them as threats the  same way the fox does. To drag you further   into the psyche of an animal, one of your cubs is  carried off early in the game by a human survivor.   But though the game teaches you that the world of  humanity is best avoided, as food becomes scarce,   you find yourself taking greater and greater risks  just to keep your cubs alive. This all came to a   head for me when one night, starving from lack  of things to hunt, I allowed my cubs to feed on   noxious-looking garbage, not knowing if it was  toxic. It’s a moment that wouldn’t be nearly as   powerful if I hadn’t felt forced to make that  choice myself due to the ecosystem’s scarcity.   The later stages of “Gibbon” uses in-game systems  to convey ecological devastation in an analogous   manner. After a while, you start seeing plumes  of smoke and clear-cut groves in the background.   Swinging itself begins to feel different  as the number of trees decline. Eventually,   a full-scale fire breaks out, sending the forest  ecosystem into a panic. Missing a branch holds   new weight, as falling into the forest below  now means succumbing to the inferno. Crossing   large gaps are now key for survival — turning  what was once a joyous expression of freedom   into a grim necessity. Even later, the natural  forests give way to rows of monoculture crops   that are difficult to swing through, which then  transition into urban areas. Here again, “Gibbon”   doesn’t need dialogue to convey its themes.  The simple mechanical awkwardness of trying to   navigate rooftops instead of the branches you’re  accustomed to says more than a direct statement   on environmental destruction potentially could  have. Maybe it should be no surprise that games   that make you part of an ecosystem can get you to  think more about the world around you. After all,   humans are already part of an ecosystem, even  if it doesn’t always feel that way in our daily   lives. Though we are a relatively insignificant  part of Earth’s history on a cosmic scale,   we have the capacity to profoundly influence our  environment in the present. And after playing   through some of these games, I can’t help but  wonder what kind of ending we’re headed towards.   If there’s an ecosystem-focused game with a  more hopeful — if bittersweet — conclusion,   I’d say it’s probably “Planet of Lana.” It’s  a game that exposes you to constant imagery of   the mechanical interrupting the natural world, and  yet it’s also very much a story about how you can   learn from the mistakes of the past to create a  better tomorrow. As you progress through the game,   educating yourself on the ins and outs of the  environment, you gain a tremendous appreciation   for the world around you, all without a single  sentence of dialogue spoken. And while I won’t   spoil the final moments, I will say the ending  stayed with me long after the credits rolled.   Ultimately, there’s no single way to create  an effective ecosystem-based game. Across many   different genres and art-styles, game  studios have made a startling variety   of worlds ruled by interactive systems. And  there’s plenty of games with unique fictional   ecosystems that I wasn’t able to cover here.  If you’re interested in virtual ecosystems,   I’ve got a full list of the games featured in  this video down below. And as always, thanks   for watching. If you enjoyed this entry, please  lend your support by liking, subscribing, and   hitting the notification icon to stay up to date  on all things Curious. See you in the next video.
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Channel: Curious Archive
Views: 449,107
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Curious Archive, rain world, zelda, breath of the wild, tears of the kingdom, Minecraft, skyrim, open worlds, rainworld, speculative biology, speculative zoology, future, story explained, secrets, Rain World, synthwave, Curiousarchive, Curious Archives
Id: ZFBUFFr4GmQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)
Published: Fri Aug 04 2023
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