Tuesday 16 January, 2018

Day#1 Firewatch (PC)
For this first OPA, I have chosen to play the game Firewatch. This will be my first time playing the game so I'm excited to see whether or not I will enjoy it or not. Today was my first play session with Firewatch and I have to say that the game is definitely intriguing. I'm going into this playthrough completely blind I have never played this game before but, I have heard good things about the game. One part of the game that surprised me was the beginning of the game and how the story was presented. I really enjoyed the setting for the beginning of Firewatch having the backstory of the main character told through text and gameplay was very interesting. Even though it was just text I had an emotional reaction to the fact that Julia started suffering from dementia and Henry had to move on in his life. The cell shaded art style for this game looks fantastic and the atmosphere in this game is very immersive. For this play session, I tackled the Prologue and Day1 on the job. The map mechanic in this game is so cool because it actually has the player looking at a physical map on the screen and not just so mini map in the menu. One of the aspects of the gameplay that was very immersive was the radio mechanic talking back and forth with your companion in the mountains while performing your missions. I didn't seem to catch many ethical arguments in the game but, I will be looking for more in future play sessions. Overall during this first session I found Firewatch to be very immersive gaming experience.

Nick Day

Great work here Nick! You discovered two particularly interesting ethical elements of the game here in your entries: One is how the game makes you think about what you should say to the other character and the other is on the invasion of privacy. To dive deeper into these two observations consider these ethical questions: How is the game making the player reflect on the dialogue choices and how would the answer to the question “what should I say” differ within the game as opposed to in real life? And, why or why isn’t recording someone’s conversations ethical? Does the type of conversation we record (be it conversation or texting or even communicating during online video game play) change the moral implications of recording that information?

Clay