Babeș -Bolyai University [630165]

Babeș -Bolyai University
Faculty of Political, Administrative and
Communication Sciences
Department of Journalism and Digital Media
Media Communication Master I

Student: [anonimizat]: 04.01.2020

Fundamentals of Game Studies

“Her Story ” Game Analysis

Content :
I. Introduction
I. 1. “Her Story ”
I. 2. Objective
II. The gameplay experience
II.1. Story
II.2. Rules and m echanics
II.3. Personal account
III. Conclusion
IV. Bibliography
V. Ludography

I. Introduction
I.1. “Her Story ”
“Her Story ” is a single -player interactive film video game that was developed and released by Sam
Barlow (“Aisle ”, 1999) in June of 2015. The premise of the game is to offer a police procedural
experience that would essentially simulate a detective ’s job. The pla yer has access to a database
of over 20 year old short video clips of several diffe rent fictional interviews of the same woman
by the name of Hannah Smith , played by British actress Viva Seifert. Mrs. Smith is reporting her
husband ’s disappearance . By playing the game, it is obvious that we are meant to search the
database using keywords that are tied to the videos ’ subtitles in order to puzzle out the woman ’s
story and possibly the culprit.
I.2. Objective:
This paper aims to offer an analysis of this game through examining the gameplay experi ence. We
will achieve this through employing two different approaches proposed by Clara Fernandez -Vara
in her “Introduction to Game Analysis ”. We will sta rt by formally exploring the way the game play
experience is informed by “Her Story ”’s rules, mechanics and story . The second approach will
involve having a look at the ludic experience as a subjective analysis building block , using a
“personal account ” (Fern ández -Vara , 2008 ) frame of analysis.
II. The Gameplay E xperience
According to Hector Rodriguez, the rules and resources that a game offers are instrumental in
shaping a player ’s individual gameplay experience. He states that “different types of play can be
distinguished from one another via the structures that underpin them ”, “thus the quality of the
player's experience depends, at least to some extent, on the structure of norms and resources tha t
guide or organize their actions ” (Rodriguez, 2006).
In order to provide a clear account of the experience of playing “Her Story ”, we will follow
Rodriguez ’ definition of the game play exp erience, therefore we w ill now focus on how the story,
rules and mechanics of the story of this game dictate the player ’s ludic experience.
II.1. Story

The video clips feature Hannah Smith, a police investigation interviewee who is married to Simon
Smith , the missing person who is later found to have been murdered. By uncovering more video
clips, the player quickly finds out that Hannah has an alibi for the night of the murder. This sparks
curiosity, as one of the first few videos have her stating that she and her husband had a difficult
relationship.
As the story unfolds, it becomes obvi ous that things are complex and quite dramatic, as it turns out
that Ha nnah might in fact be two women who are identical twins: Hannah and Eve. They both
seem to appear in the police interviews, pretending to be just one of them, Simon ’s wife, Hannah.
The player ’s attention and focus is drawn in by the long list of c lues in every clip: according to
Eve, the twins were separated at birth by Florence, the midwif e, who , just like Hanna h’s parents,
died under mysterious sounding circumstances .
In the end, Eve confesses to having helped Hannah hide the body after an angry jealous altercation
between the married couple turned into murde r. She also states : “all these stories we ’ve been telling
each other … just that… stories ”. At some stage in the game when enough of the videos have been
seen, the player is asked if they are finished and if the answer i s affirmative, the game reveals that
the player is al so a character in the story, Sarah, Eve ’s daughter. Sarah is then asked if she
understood her mother ’s story and her motives and i s asked to meet her outside.
It’s clear that the story is not meant to be fully worked out, since none of the theories that are most
apparent to the story presented in 271 video clips are 100% plausible. What seems to keep t he
player wanting to uncover more and more of these videos is the possibility of finding confirmation
to one these theories: Hannah and Eve are twins and they both had parts to play in Simon ’s murder;
Hannah suffers from some form DID ( Dissociative Identity Disorder) and presents hers elf as two
different characters; or else she is just inventing this other personality, Eve, in order to possibly
plead insanity in a guilty verdict.
Regardless of what theory might suit different players, the way the story gets complicat ed in its
numerous details is meant to keep the player curious and entertained in their exercising of detective
skills.
II.2. Rules and mechanics

Miguel Sicart makes a clear point of underlining an ontological distinction between the mechanics
of a game and its rules , since “game mechanics are concerned with the actual interaction with the
game state, while rul es provide the possibility space where that interaction is possible, regulating
as wel l the transition between states ” (Sicart, 2008) .
When analyzing our game , we need to consider the fact that the ru les of this ga me are not clear
and obvious, therefore, we will follow Fern ández -Vara ’s instructions on the matter:
“we do not always know the rules. The system is a black box and the player needs
to figure out how it works – in fact, this discovery can be on e of the pleasures of playing a
videogame. So it is not easy to write the rules of a videogame; what we write in this case
is the goals of the game and a summary of the core mechanics ” (Fernández -Vara , 2008).
“Her Story ” does not have a precise end state or a fixed declared goal , which means the player is
free to determine what they want to achieve in this game: clarity over the story, figuring out who
the culprit is, exploring theories of twin drama or personality disorders, or simply gather all 271
clips in the database. Walking through the mechani cs of the game might be the clear est way to
explain how the gameplay experience unfolds in terms of the strategy .
When starting the game, the player gets to explore a 90 ’s version of a desktop that contains files,
instructions and a database calle d “L.O.G.I.C Database ”, with “MURDER ” as a previously typed –
in keyword that reveals five short videos of Hannah Smith being interviewed by off -screen
detectives . The instruction page informs the player that upon entering keywords in the database
search button , they will be presented with videos with subtitles that contain said keyword. The
videos duration is under a minute, most of them lasting around 8 -12 seconds.
The database o nly allows the first five videos which r esult from a keyword search to be revealed
and made available, thus ensuring a challenging experience in searching for over 200 videos in
order to get a clear picture of the story. The only way a player can check their progress in retrieving
the videos is by checking another program on the desktop, a database checker , which records the
number of video clips that they have viewed. It does so by changing the color of the boxes that
represent the videos, from red to green. For an achiever player type (Bartle , 1996 ), this would
constitute a challenge to focus on – getting all the green boxes, though the gam e does not directly

reward that, while for an explorer player type (Bartle , 1996 ), this might not matter as there is plenty
to explore when figuring out the story ’s interweaving plot po ints.
II.3 Personal account
As it is stated in “Extending Experiences ”, a game analysis “is not complete without taking the
player into account, a detailed exposition of a player’s experience would not only be a list of
subjective qualities but, ultimatel y, also a view into what the game consists of .” (Olli et al. , 2008)
Consequently, the purpose of delivering a subjective point of view is to offer insight that would
complete a gameplay experience analysis, since “we cannot really measure “fun” objectively ; by
providing a personal approach to game writing, we can tackle and show the variety of ways to
play. ” (Fern ández -Vara , 2008 ) Thus, i n an effort to particularize this analysis , we will now focus
on a personal account of playing this game.
I played “Her Story ” recently and was pleasantly surprised by its mechanics , yet quite disappointed
by the plot and the acting. I think m y experience in playing this particular game might be relevant
since it can offer an overview of a negative ludic experience. What first drew me into this game
was the abundance of stellar reviews describing “Her Story ” as the best detective game ever made .
I should specify, I am not a gamer, which means playing videogames is not a common acti vity for
me.
However, giv en my artistic curiosity and my enthusiasm for going off the beaten track, not to
mention my lack of interest in competition, I can attempt to find my place in the spectrum of player
types formulated by Bartle in his “bla bla ” and declare myself an explorer ty pe, especially given
my interest in puzzles and adventure, but my lack of need for social interaction . Since we are
looking at a spectrum , I am hardly 100% an explorer. I can be a bit of an achiever at times, since
I find setting goals and achieving them quite rewarding.
With this in mind, “Her Story ” seems, in theory, an appropriate game for my type of pl ayer. I can
confirm that since the first hour of playing it was quite enjoyable due to the challenge of
discovering it s mechanics and figuring out the puzzle. One quickly realizes that in order to make
sense of the chr onology of the interview videos, one has to not only pay attention to the time
stamp s, but also come up with key words that are extracted or assumed based on which particula r
interview out of the seven is relevant, but the player is free to choose which interviews to pursue.

What is enjoyable at first quickly becomes a nuisance : every video is littered with clues – the
actress ’ acting, her exact wor ds, her use of metaphors, her facial expressions, clothes, hair, posture,
they all indicate towards the very obvious: there are two characters played by the same woman,
one of which killed the victim in question. I figured this out within the first hour, so the rest of the
time spent playing this game was a frustrating experience because every new video clip just
confirmed what was already painfully obvious, and it gave me time to analyze the acting and the
way the clues are being fed to the player.
I found t he actress ’ performance to be fairly simplistic, lacking in depth and com plexity. To my
eyes, she looks and sounds like a person who is failing at pretending to p lay two different
characters in a way that the clues to be gathered require deciphering her body l anguage and her
words . In other words, I did not see a character to be figured out, but an actress playing a character
that makes no effort t o be cryptic . That takes away from the challenge proposed by this game, that
of using detective and deductive skills.
The multitude of cliché s in the writing is also frustrat ing since they are offering such obvious keys
in figuring out the case : the over-mentioning of fairytale s, the Rapunzel reference s, the Ju ngian
archetypical phases (birth, initiation, marriage, death , the union of opposites defining identity). It
seems as if the intention is for the slow unrav eling of the story to cause shock or awe, yet the effect
is the opposite: the clu es are so self -evident and the performance so s uperfi cial, that the game
failed to challenge or motivate me into exploring it , so the experience of finishing it was simply
exasperating.
III. Conclusion
In conclusion, Her Story ’s gameplay experience analysis is mainly focused on ho w the mechanics
and the story affect it, considering the game ’s lack of levels, rewards, rules and complexity. I ts
unique mechanics are what might draw players in, and the story ’s mysteries and the acting are
what might offer enjoyment to those who have a penchant for the detective genre, however that
might only be the case as long as the player ’s standards regarding puzzles are not too high.

IV. Bibliography:
Books:
1. Fernandez, Amyris, Leino, Olli, Hanna Wirman . 2008. Extending Experiences
Vaajakoski: Gummerus Printing . pp. 1-28.
2. Fernández -Vara , Clara. 2015 . Introduction to Game Analysis . Hoboken: Taylor and
Francis. New York: Taylor & Francis .
Articles:
1. Bartle, Richard. 1996 . Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs .
Research Gate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247190693_Hearts_clubs_diamo
nds_spades_Players_who_suit_MUDs . Accessed January 1st, 2020
2. Rodriguez, Hector. 2006. The Playful and t he Serious: An approximation to
Huizinga's Homo Ludens . Game Studies. Volume 6 no. 1 (December).
http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/rodriges . Accessed January 1st, 2020.
3. Sicart, Miguel. 2008. Defining Game Mechanics . Game Studies . Volume 8 no. 2
(December). http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/sicart . Accessed January 1st, 2020 .

V. Ludography:

1. Barlow, Sam. 2015. Her Story . Microsoft Windows, U.S.A.