The University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab has been working on ‘Walden, a game‘ for almost a decade. In the first person simulation, players take on the role of Henry David Thoreau as he lives on his own in the environment of Walden Pond. Players experience the open world of the game, exploring the social experiment of self-reliance — collecting food and fuel, exploring the natural world — that Thoreau describes in Walden. USC received a grant of $40,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to create the digital depiction of Thoreau’s wilderness retreat to help them design the experimental game with a small development team.
Thoreau’s two-year retreat to the wilderness near Concord, Massachusetts has become the stuff of literary legend. Walden details the author’s experimentation with solitude in order to discover more about the human condition and the individual within society. The author’s philosophical intentions continue to capture the imagination of readers, writers, environmentalists and (apparently) game developers to this day:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
It sounds pretty different from the top-selling video games we see in stores and online, doesn’t it? No shooting, no battling, no candy of any kind — just bird song and a philosophical voiceover reciting Thoreau’s writings on his time in a tranquil American landscape.
The game is short at just six hours long, entailing Thoreau’s brief seasons in the rural landscape of Walden. While still in development, the final product will be free to the public, and the developers hope to have it ready for release in time for Thoreau’s 200th birthday later this year.
Walden, a game is likely to grab players with the lure and enchantment of the peacefully-rendered natural world of the game’s setting — an enticing treat for an increasingly urban global population. Last year, former President Obama’s virtual reality parks experience provided VR users with a similar chance to step into the gorgeous locales of the American wilderness.
We could see more such experiences from experimental game developers in the future, given the positive reaction Walden has received so far. The political leanings of the game made it an apt installation at Davos and the World Economic Forum. It also won ‘Most Meaningful Game’ at the Meaningful Play Exhibition and Competition in 2016. It has also gained notoriety as an ‘interactive documentary’ on the film festival circuit — a genre title that demonstrates how media continues to blend together in the age of ebooks, mixed reality and increasingly detailed, realistic game design.
