6 ms·

I enjoyed the game but I think its exploration of the topics was pretty shallow. It might be better received if it's someone's first dive into such topics, thou

by Jach 4mo ago

I enjoyed the game but I think its exploration of the topics was pretty shallow. It might be better received if it's someone's first dive into such topics, though. I still enjoy ice cream the nth+1 time eating it, so I can't complain too much about games or anime or books that cater to parts of my interests, even if they fumble some things. Someday I'd like to play a game that plays with the ideas from Robin Hanson's Age of Em book. One of those is just the multiplicity of artificial minds, so many mind-upload stories revolve too much around one or perhaps at most two (and boring debates over "who is the copy") instances, unless it's a parallel worlds colliding thing which is pretty different. We've seen some of the multiplicity stuff play out in the real world with our non-human AI "agents". Spin up a bunch of artificial minds to work in parallel on some task, let them make notes that stay behind, but then they're all shut down except perhaps one that continues guiding the overall project and making decisions when to spin up more or not.

the_af 4mo ago
> I enjoyed the game but I think its exploration of the topics was pretty shallow Really? Interesting. I'm a die-hard scifi fan since forever, and of course I know the topic of consciousness and identity are well explored in scifi (and philosophy), but I thought SOMA did something genuinely deep and unique with it: It put it you in the center of the experiment. It's YOU who's experiencing all sides of this, you who get to be surprised by the consequences. This is very different from reading about it in a scifi novel or even watching it in a movie. By making you the protagonist, and having it be an ineractive experience, you get to experience first hand the cognitive dissonance and confusion of... the thing. SOMA (re)convinced me that videogames can be art. Not saying it's the only example, of course!
- andai 4mo ago
  Yeah it makes you be the guy who has to unplug the thing. Which implicitly forces the decision: is this thing human? Or sufficiently human that I ought to feel bad about this... (Or otherwise sentient — I would probably feel bad about unplugging animals too.)
- Jach 4mo ago
  It's not you, it's Simon. And Simon is.. kind of dumb. He at least doesn't seem at all familiar with the sci-fi and philosophy topics, so perhaps his reactions are closer to such a person? His confusion and cognitive dissonance might make more sense? (At least the first time -- I'd bet a lot of players got annoyed by his repeat reaction during the ending.) His reactions are to an annoying extent forced onto the player, whether the player identifies with them or not, and the choices are quite narrowly constricted. I didn't share his reactions, or particularly have any confusion or cognitive dissonance. There were choices I wanted to make, or dialogue I wanted to say, that the game didn't make available to me. There also aren't really any consequences to anything, it's pretty much entirely up to you to think about them and whether your actions even did what you think they did, because the game itself is mostly unresponsive to what you do or don't do. (There's not even particularly much consequence to losing to a monster.) That's not such a bad thing, it would be unfair to compare the game to something that is designed to give quite a lot of player freedom of choice in actions (like Deus Ex) or something constructed more explicitly with different choices and consequences in mind (insert favorite RPG here). SOMA, like the rest of the studio's games, is constructed to be a story-driven walking simulator with horror and puzzle elements. It does quite a bit better than most of that type of game. But I think overall it falls short of the studio's even older games, like Amnesia and especially Penumbra: Black Plague, even if I enjoy the sci-fi elements and setting more and of course the graphics are better. The latter has you controlling a named protagonist as well (Philip) but it leans much more towards the "silent protagonist" trope and that helps make it easier to insert yourself into the experience. (Enough that I had to go and remind myself of his name, even.) It's a different, arguably weaker, plot and has different themes, but it executes really well, especially the shared horror and psychological manipulation aspects. (The overt attempts at horror might be SOMA's weakest point. It didn't need them, the subtler existential horror of everything was good enough.) I agree it's artful, and again it's not a bad game and I enjoyed it. (I think it took me until maybe 2011 or so to fully realize but I usually enjoy it when a piece of media collects a bunch of topics I like in one expression, even if it's well-trodden ground (at least individually), or even if sometimes the execution is lacking. I like it all the more when the execution is masterful, though.)
  - the_af 4mo ago

by Jach 4mo ago

the_af 4mo ago

> I enjoyed the game but I think its exploration of the topics was pretty shallow Really? Interesting. I'm a die-hard scifi fan since forever, and of course I know the topic of consciousness and identity are well explored in scifi (and philosophy), but I thought SOMA did something genuinely deep and unique with it: It put it you in the center of the experiment. It's YOU who's experiencing all sides of this, you who get to be surprised by the consequences. This is very different from reading about it in a scifi novel or even watching it in a movie. By making you the protagonist, and having it be an ineractive experience, you get to experience first hand the cognitive dissonance and confusion of... the thing. SOMA (re)convinced me that videogames can be art. Not saying it's the only example, of course!

andai 4mo ago
Yeah it makes you be the guy who has to unplug the thing. Which implicitly forces the decision: is this thing human? Or sufficiently human that I ought to feel bad about this... (Or otherwise sentient — I would probably feel bad about unplugging animals too.)
Jach 4mo ago
It's not you, it's Simon. And Simon is.. kind of dumb. He at least doesn't seem at all familiar with the sci-fi and philosophy topics, so perhaps his reactions are closer to such a person? His confusion and cognitive dissonance might make more sense? (At least the first time -- I'd bet a lot of players got annoyed by his repeat reaction during the ending.) His reactions are to an annoying extent forced onto the player, whether the player identifies with them or not, and the choices are quite narrowly constricted. I didn't share his reactions, or particularly have any confusion or cognitive dissonance. There were choices I wanted to make, or dialogue I wanted to say, that the game didn't make available to me. There also aren't really any consequences to anything, it's pretty much entirely up to you to think about them and whether your actions even did what you think they did, because the game itself is mostly unresponsive to what you do or don't do. (There's not even particularly much consequence to losing to a monster.) That's not such a bad thing, it would be unfair to compare the game to something that is designed to give quite a lot of player freedom of choice in actions (like Deus Ex) or something constructed more explicitly with different choices and consequences in mind (insert favorite RPG here). SOMA, like the rest of the studio's games, is constructed to be a story-driven walking simulator with horror and puzzle elements. It does quite a bit better than most of that type of game. But I think overall it falls short of the studio's even older games, like Amnesia and especially Penumbra: Black Plague, even if I enjoy the sci-fi elements and setting more and of course the graphics are better. The latter has you controlling a named protagonist as well (Philip) but it leans much more towards the "silent protagonist" trope and that helps make it easier to insert yourself into the experience. (Enough that I had to go and remind myself of his name, even.) It's a different, arguably weaker, plot and has different themes, but it executes really well, especially the shared horror and psychological manipulation aspects. (The overt attempts at horror might be SOMA's weakest point. It didn't need them, the subtler existential horror of everything was good enough.) I agree it's artful, and again it's not a bad game and I enjoyed it. (I think it took me until maybe 2011 or so to fully realize but I usually enjoy it when a piece of media collects a bunch of topics I like in one expression, even if it's well-trodden ground (at least individually), or even if sometimes the execution is lacking. I like it all the more when the execution is masterful, though.)
- the_af 4mo ago