My Personal Experience Going Home

            Gone Home is a game developed by The Fullbright Company. The Fullbright Company consists of former developers who worked at 2K Marin on an expansion pack for the game Bioshock 2 called Minerva’s Den. The game is played via a first person perspective similar to the Bioshock games that preceded it. The games are similar in their puzzle solving nature and perspective. This is where the similarities end. There is no combat in Gone Home. There are no external enemies.

            Gone Home was a very personal experience for me as a player. I will not go so far as to say it changed my life, but it definitely had a hand in changing my perspective about certain life events. Throughout my play through my expectations were shifted, both in the game itself and when dealing with my outside view of the world.

            Videogames (not “video games” as Tom Bissell chooses in his book Extra Lives, a rare point where he and I differ) have been an enormous part of my life. I was born in 1977, four days after the release of Star Wars: A New Hope was released in theaters. I grew up playing almost all of the available game systems. I was gifted most of them by my parents for birthdays and Christmases. I have owned an Atari 2600, an Atari 5200, a Sega Master System, a Nintendo Entertainment System, a TurboGrafx-16, a Sega Genesis, a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a Sega CD and a 32X for the Genesis system, a Sony Playstation, a Sony Playstation 2, a Nintendo DS, a Microsoft Xbox, a Microsoft Xbox 360, many personal computers, and finally a Sony Playstation 3. This list of course does not include my iPhone or my tablet, both systems I find time to play videogames on. Throughout all of these systems I have many fond memories of marathon sessions of Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Super Hydlide, Contra, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, and so many more to list. While some games have tackled some fairly heavy issues, Mass Effect, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus come to mind, none seemed to have the impact Gone Home had on me as a player. The game turned out to be a very personal and dark journey for me. I completed my play session in just over two hours. During these two hours my emotions ran the gamut from outright terror to curiosity to loathing and everything in between. (Bissell)

            Gone Home is set in 1995, this happens to be the year I graduated high school. Some of the puzzles and set pieces in Gone Home seemed almost like a love letter to my generation. From the cassette and VHS tapes, to the older technology (making a comeback) of vinyl records the game nailed the feel of the era.

            The music chosen by the developers was specifically utilized to not only speak to the time period but also the feeling of angst felt by one of the characters, Samantha. Coming of age stories (I’m looking at you Holden Caulfield) are some of the most popular in history for a reason. People are able to identify with characters going through this transition because we have all been there and done that (to stick with the 90’s aesthetic).

            Samantha’s coming of age story is of course a little different. Not just because the story unfolds through the act of playing as only videogames can do, but also because she is discovering she is a lesbian. As some of the authors we have studied this semester, mainly Anna Anthropy, suggest, what does a single, white male almost in his forties (me) know about a teenage girl finding herself. As it turns out, I might just know a little bit. This is where going home becomes quite personal. (Anthropy)

            I got married at age twenty-one. My future wife was seven months pregnant on the day of the wedding. I was divorced just over four years later. A major issue during the marriage involved my playing of videogames. I could never convince my wife of the validity of my hobby and she resented every minute I spent playing. Perhaps she was right. As a young husband and father maybe I should have put down the controller. The point is moot. Because of the attention I had given to my gaming console my replacement was specifically chosen based on missing criteria. Namely he was a non-gamer.

            Fast forward ten years. Throughout this time period I had remained very close to my ex-wife. She remained close to my family and because of our daughter she was commonly at family gatherings. This eventually led to reconciliation. We got back together and quickly moved back in together and were once again a family. My gaming habits had softened mostly due to a lack a time. My ex-wife’s outlook on the hobby had also softened and the activity was no longer an issue.

            How is any of this relevant to an independent and small game about a girl who comes home from college? During my play through of Gone Home I identified with the parents and their attempt to correct some issues in their marriage through counseling. This was something I had attempted in real life and the way the game presented this issue reminded me very much of the few counseling sessions I attended with my then wife. The implied infidelity unfortunately hit close to home as well. Oddly this aspect of the game was not the part which had a hand on my outlook on our world. No, there were other things hitting much closer to home.

            Four years after the reconciliation (and roughly a year prior to this writing) my ex-wife once again decided she no longer wanted to be together. Only this time it was different. I was not being replaced by a non-gamer; I was being replaced by a woman. For quite a while I was unable to wrap my head around this fact. Until I played Gone Home.

            Being allowed to fall into the mind of a girl who is discovering her sexuality changed the way I viewed my own ex-wife’s discovery. It was an impossibility for me to fathom, until I was allowed to see it from Samantha’s perspective. How difficult it must have been for Samantha (and now by proxy, my ex-wife) to come to this conclusion? One of two things is true, either my ex-wife was living as someone she was not for the past forty years, or she was now living as someone she is not. Either way, I have grown empathetic to her shift and I shifted my own thought process from that of victim to that of sympathetic observer. A videogame did that. The irony is not lost on me; I hope it is not lost on you.

            I have seen movies and read books from different perspectives. But reading and watching are not even close to the same as playing. For some unknown (to me at least) reason the interactivity of this story served as a form of catharsis and healing. Seeing a point of view so alien to me but so important to my existence allowed a new path to open up. Similar to how finding a key in one room of the mansion allowed a new path to open up in Gone Home.

            This perspective was further expounded by other aspects of the game. Considering a writing career to be a dream job led to identifying with the father in this story. Listening to punk rock and grunge music led to identifying with Samantha. I found myself identifying with Kaitlin (the character the player controls throughout the game) simply because she was a college student. Not to mention identifying with Kaitlin based on how I used to solve mysteries as a child similar to how she had to solve this mystery. It was almost as if the game was created especially for me.

            Games have a way of profoundly effecting players unlike any media to date. Watching a film is static. With the exception of cheating and using the pause button a movie does not care if you are there to watch it, it exists exactly as intended by its creator with or without a viewer. A book is the same. Once it is written, it simply waits to be read. It will not change. It will be the same as far as the author is concerned whether or not someone picks it up and reads it. Videogames transcend this flaw. They must be played. They must be interacted with. They are a fluid thing, completely dependent on the player. This interactivity is what leads to the feeling a player gets while exploring a virtual mansion in Oregon.

            Toward the end of Gone Home the player finally unlocks the attic. The attic serves as the home base for Samantha and her newfound girlfriend Lonnie’s investigation into paranormal activity. Up until this point in the game I have laughed at some of Samantha’s audio journals. I have felt great sorrow for her. I have felt great joy for her. But suddenly I get a feeling from her, a feeling that something is not right. Despite her joy and happiness with Lonnie followed by her devastation at the prospect of losing her, I feel Samantha is not well. She has been denied by her parents. She has been denied by her peers. She is set to lose her love.

            I approach the attic with dread.

            My pulse quickens.

            What am I going to find up there?

            My mind turns dark; this will not be a happy ending.

            Ask any boy about his first kiss. He will likely be able to tell you where it happened, who it was he kissed, what song was playing on the radio, what the weather was like. I remember the first girl I kissed. I remember the girl’s name, Rachel. I remember the location, after a local YMCA dance. I remember who else was there when this event occurred, Rachel’s sister Chris and their mother Janice. It was cold out.

            By the time I was thirty years old three out of the four people who were at that event were dead.

            Janice, who everyone simply called Mom, was diagnosed with Alzheimer ’s disease. She died of complications from the disease. Chris was diagnosed with Leukemia and died of an infection shortly after Janice. This lead to Rachel waking up one morning, calling in sick to work, cleaning her house, sitting in the bathtub, putting a loaded gun to her chest, and pulling the trigger.

            So I approach the attic with dread. My life experience is effecting my expectations of this game. I fully expect to round the corner in the attic and to find Samantha and Lonnie, eternally locked in embrace, deciding they will never be apart.

            Somewhere in my brain, despite this not being the actual ending to Gone Home, I have seen this scene. I have created a false memory about the ending to his game. In the ending of my version of Gone Home, Samantha and Lonnie are there, they have decided no one will keep them apart. No one can tell them their love is not real. No one can deny them eternity, not Samantha’s parents, not the military organization Lonnie is set to join, not Kaitlin, not even the player, not even me.

            Gone Home changed my perspective on reality. I have changed my perspective of Gone Home. My ideas about what gaming is capable of have evolved. A virtual location, with fictional characters, fictional jobs, a fictional past, has been replaced. A real location, with real people, real jobs, and a real past has been replaced. The two realities have decided without any help from me to coexist, to intertwine the real with the fictional.

            A game has changed reality. My reality has changed a game.

            I have gone home.