Day 178: Outer Wilds

I was playing one of my favorite games again recently and something surprising happened. Next to all my games my computer has a record that tells me exactly how much time I've spent playing them, like it's mocking me or something. All my favorite games have triple digit numbers next to them, which is not exactly a point of pride for me, but that's not the point right now. All except this one. And yet, this one in particular has had a big impact on me. In Outer Wilds, you play as a young astronaut exploring the solar system around your planet. Among the many interesting locations in the system, you can find fellow astronauts and interesting environments, clues about the history of a lost species that predates your own civilization, mysterious interloping cosmic bodies from outside your solar system, and so much more. Flying around from place to place in your homebuilt spaceship to discover the story one little piece at a time, one clue leading to the next, to the next, to the next, with so little in between time to get bored makes it one of the most tightly packed games I've ever played.

With the amount of time I spend thinking about this game, you'd think I had put hundreds of hours into it, but no. I've played it for about 20 hours, less than I've spent reading some entire series of books. Usually I judge games based on how long I play them, comparing the time spent to the money I had to give up to get those experiences. This game breaks that criterion though. It's a perfect game in my opinion, but I've spent less time on it than most games that I would consider great. I think it says something about the nature of fun, and how packing so many interesting details into such a small space and time can effect the perception of the length of an experience. It feels like I spent a lot of time exploring that tiny solar system, full to the brim with more stuff than I can even remember.

I'd love to be able to write a story that elicits the same feeling of having taken a long time without being very long at all, so I've been trying to practice packing as much stuff into as little space as possible. Trying to find a balance between a strong focus to keep the perspective in line while simultaneously passing a huge amount of detail to the reader is really tough. I usually try to make sure my writing is nice and succinct but often I sacrifice the amount of detail to do it, and I think that damages the immersion. It'll take a lot of practice, but hopefully by focusing on more with less, rather than simply more with more, or less with less, my writing will improve greatly.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley