Thursday 30 August, 2018

Today I finished A Mortician's Tale for my third entry. I believe that a simple game like this really had a strong way of putting a message out there about funerals thanks to its strong ties with death and simplicity. The last three levels that I encountered all had a lot stronger narrative and moral implications than before. Charlie is asked if she is okay with burying a young man who committed suicide. There is then the option of deciding whether you want to do an open funeral for this man or not. I chose to do the funeral which was against the young man's wishes of wanting to be cremated. While attending the funeral and listening to the grieving family was sad, I felt worse when preparing the body, because I felt as if I was disrespecting the dead. Later on, Hillside Heritage Inc. has taken over Rose and Daughters and the scummy company practices are displayed before the player's eyes. I never knew that a funeral company had so many ways to deceive their clients. The game also presents this trickery well due to the larger company stylized website and emails from the director tricking a family into buying a package instead of doing a home funeral. The emails from the computer show how the lives of all the characters are doing and also how Charlie not only feels bad about working for Hillside, but also that she wants to respect death through home funerals and green burials. The final level reveals that Charlie has gone on to create her own eco-friendly funeral home, along with the other characters also living happily with their lives with Matthew Jeffery leaving the company to be a bus driver. I think that the way that Charlie decides to leave the company revealed through the emails and website tabs on the computer is a way that the game has the players feel more personalized with what is happening. This way, the game can spread the message of good funeral practices while the player feels as if they can make their own choices in how their or their loved one's deaths can be more respectful to not just the environment, but also to those around them.

Good job Justin! You touch on some interesting topics. For example, you bring up that Hillside Heritage Inc uses a lot of "scummy company practices;" many companies use tricks to upsell or manipulate customers. Is that always deplorable or does the fact that this company specifically deals with funerals make their sales tactics worse than other companies that try to get people to pay for more expensive versions of their services?