The Games I'd Recommend to Anyone New to Gaming

What would you recommend to someone starting games from absolute zero? Not just the first game you’d put them on, but the series of games you’d use to introduce them to the medium as a whole. It’s a tough question, I know, but I’d like to use this video to take a crack at it and open up a discussion on the topic. Throughout this video, I showcase and discuss a selection of games that I think make for great stepping stones to understand the medium at large. Along the way, I also cover some very important video game terminology, including: indexical storytelling, emergent narratives, and transmedia storytelling. If you’d like to know more, you can find links to articles/studies for each game mentioned below. Also, here’s the link to my first video, where you’ll get a more detailed discussion on the parameters used here (Thanks again for all the love):    • Why Getting Into Video Games Is So Damn Hard   _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 📌 Sources: Before Your Eyes: GDC Festival of Gaming Learning From Loss: Designing the Experimental Narrative of 'Before Your Eyes' (   • Learning From Loss: Designing the Experime...  ) Unpacking: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c... Gone Home: https://intellectdiscover.com/content... Thomas Was Alone: https://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.p... Superhot: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper... It Takes Two: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... Telltale’s The Walking Dead: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... Road 96: https://vocal.media/fiction/the-polit... Abzu: https://www.academia.edu/download/309... Minecraft: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/... Doki Doki Literature Club: https://tortoise.princeton.edu/2020/0... _________________________________________________________________________________________________ PlayReplayEssay is a channel where I talk about game design, narratives in games, why we play, and why any of it matters. New videos every week(ish). _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Music Tracks from https://freetouse.com/music: Ethos by Epic Spectrum Life Cycles by Aetheric _________________________________________________________________________________________________ List of other games I thought about including and definitely recommend to new players: 1000xRESIST Baba is You Balatro Oxenfree The Beginner's Guide Behind the Frame: The Finest Scene GRIS Her Story Night in the Woods Pieced Together A Short Hike The Sims (Any one of them) Stardew Valley Firewatch Journey The Witness The Talos Principle VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 00:00 - Intro 02:29 - Criteria for Choosing the Games 06:44 - Game 1: Before Your Eyes (Experimental Ways to Play) 12:00 - Game 2: Unpacking (Environmental Storytelling) 16:03 - Game 3: Gone Home (Indexical Storytelling) 19:32 - Game 4: Thomas Was Alone (Fail States and Platforming) 22:36 - Game 5: Superhot (First-Person Shooters) 25:34 - Game 6: It Takes Two (Co-op Games) 29:04 - Game 7: Telltale's The Walking Dead (Non-Linear Storytelling and Transmediality) 33:22 - Game 8: Road 96 (Games as Political Art) 36:27 - Game 9: Abzu (Experiential Games) 39:29 - Game 10: Minecraft (Emergent Narratives) 42:58 - Game 11: Doki Doki Literature Club (Subverting Medium and Genre) 46:16 - Game 12: ??? (Outro)