Gone Home, "Too Close to Home" Edition
Mar. 14th, 2016 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI'm having trouble thinking about Gone Home rationally right now. At the end, it becomes clear that the player character's sister has made a very stupid decision, and I can't even begin to explain how much the game's unquestioned celebration of this decision upsets me.
Something that only recently stopped being true is that coming out and being openly gay as a teenager was a sign of incredible privilege. For a lot of kids, coming out would have meant getting kicked out of school and/or getting kicked out of your parents' house. Being a homeless teenager without a high school degree is obviously not an ideal scenario, so silence was traded for parental and institutional support, the idea being that you could come out once you were able to support yourself.
When the player character's sister decides to run away from her loving family's gorgeous house to be with her older girlfriend instead of going to a pre-college program that's mostly funded by a scholarship, I couldn't help being like, Yes, rich white lesbians of the world, tell me more about your struggles toward self-actualization and your unironic love of punk music, please, go ahead.
Honestly, though, I don't think I'd be so upset with Gone Home if it didn't cost a full $20 for less than two hours of gameplay. This inflated price feels very Whole Foods to me. Like, you can only enjoy this offbeat story about gay romance if you can afford to pay for it, and people who can't are shit out of luck, because queerness is apparently some sort of specialty premium product.
Something that only recently stopped being true is that coming out and being openly gay as a teenager was a sign of incredible privilege. For a lot of kids, coming out would have meant getting kicked out of school and/or getting kicked out of your parents' house. Being a homeless teenager without a high school degree is obviously not an ideal scenario, so silence was traded for parental and institutional support, the idea being that you could come out once you were able to support yourself.
When the player character's sister decides to run away from her loving family's gorgeous house to be with her older girlfriend instead of going to a pre-college program that's mostly funded by a scholarship, I couldn't help being like, Yes, rich white lesbians of the world, tell me more about your struggles toward self-actualization and your unironic love of punk music, please, go ahead.
Honestly, though, I don't think I'd be so upset with Gone Home if it didn't cost a full $20 for less than two hours of gameplay. This inflated price feels very Whole Foods to me. Like, you can only enjoy this offbeat story about gay romance if you can afford to pay for it, and people who can't are shit out of luck, because queerness is apparently some sort of specialty premium product.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-14 02:55 pm (UTC)There's commentary about the "universality" of the game that doesn't acknowledge the specific circumstances of this family are by no means universal (white, middle/upper class, stable family, apparently able to travel abroad a year). The game puts a lot of effort into trope subversion and I wonder if the positive player reaction to the ending is partly due to the fact that it's a "good" ending compared to what we'd normally expect from a first-person perspective spooky house game.