In Which We Preview A Videogame Experiment
By Quintin Smith on April 29th, 2013.
“I’m in the front row at New York University’s last “Practice” developer talks, staring at the projector with intense wariness. A trap?”
Walden, A Game could not be any more RPS*. Developed on an arts grant, this is the upcoming tie-in game to Henry Thoreau’s 1854 philosophy book Walden. A book detailing the author’s experience of escaping modern life by living in the woods near Lake Walden, Massachusetts, for two years.
In other words, it’s a first person sojourn simulator.
By Jim Rossignol on May 9th, 2012.
It’s not often that anyone gets to ask “What would Thoreau’s Walden look like as a game?” without it being a rambling speculative conversation in a pub. Indeed, you have to be in a certain sort of position – say a group of academics at a Californian University – for anyone to take that seriously, much less provide a $40,000 grant to make it happen. Fortunately, that’s precisely what has come to pass, via a National Endowment For The Arts project. And so we are to get Philosophical Writer Living In the Woods Simulator or Walden, A Game. One of the speculative few, USC Associate Professor Tracy Fullerton, has been quoted as saying: “We anticipate a rich simulation of the woods, filled with the kind of detail that Thoreau so carefully noted in his writings.” So we look forward to that. We can also check out the trailer, which is below.
(Thanks to everyone who sent this in with a note saying “Jim, this seems like your sort of thing”, and made me worry I am becoming a caricature of myself…)
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