Dear Esther

Dear Esther to me felt more like watching a small movie than actually playing a video game, the only thing is that in order to have a story the player must interact with the game. The game at the beginning did not provide much on terms of the goal of it. Usually, at the beginning of games you have a goal or objectives set, so you know how to interact with your avatar and how to move on in the game. At the beginning, the game shows a little narrative and the player sees himself left alone in an island, to move as he wishes.  As the player moves along the game, in some particular places other small narratives appear setting more or less the tone of the game.  With this game I could see Henry Jenkins emergent narratives. The game is set up in a way that the player feels “free” to move where he wants but at the same time it is constricted because some parts of the game do not offer a narrative, so the player is just left exploring through the island. Also, in this game we can see Jenkins embedded narratives, since the player is left to explore the island and the narratives that appear are not shown in order, the player is left doing a detective work, figuring out how to put together the story and finding out the goal of the game. Overall I think this game is really a good example of Jenkins narratives and how game designers are narrative architectures, because part of the story of Dear Esther is the design of the island and the environmental elements of it.