Do Video Games Count?

Video games have been gaining mass wide popularity in the past few decades.  Many video games get a bad rep for being destructive to a person’s attitude and personality.  A lot of people think that they are just a violent pastime for kids, however many of them can actually be very educational. It has been added to a lot more recent games the dilemma of morals and making choices that affect the stories.  Video games are coming more in touch with reality than they have before.  Many early video games were based off of fantasy, and while that still is very prominent, many games today run off of reality.  There are some games that are story driven, meaning that the core part of the game is the plot.  Until Dawn is a prime example of this, and contains the atmosphere of a horror movie.  The most action done in this game is walking around and decision making, not much else.  There are multiple endings to this story depending on the choices the player chooses.  The answer to the simple question, “do video games count in the field of digital humanities?” is yes.

One video game we looked at in class this week is Galatea by Emily Short.  This is an entirely text-based interactive game where you, the player, are completely in control of the outcome.  The situation in this game is that you are in a room with a statue that comes to life.  You are to type in commands and each time you do, the story continues.  With seventy known outcomes, you are most likely to reach a different outcome each time Galatea is played.  When playing this game, a person can spend a few hours just trying to get one ending.  There are only certain words that will trigger the story to progress, and it can be a struggle to figure out those words.  This game itself can become frustrating if people can’t figure out what words will make the story progress thus making the game take a very long time.  To make a complete walk through of the game could take a few days to accomplish and a lot of repetition.