http://store.steampowered.com/app/265930/

Description

Goat Simulator is a third-person perspective simulation video game in which you are a goat. The goal of the game is to cause as much destruction as you possibly can. Controls allow the goat to jump, run, head-butt things and lick objects with its tongue, which can stick to objects (including cars) and drag them around.

It contains tons of in-game physics bugs that were deliberately left unfixed. Quoting its developers, “Goat Simulator is a small, broken and stupid game. To be completely honest, it would be best if you’d spend your $10 on a hula hoop, a pile of bricks, or maybe a real-life goat.”

Analysis Introduction

I chose to analyze Goat Simulator because it exemplified everything a game should not be. Yet, it garnered mainly positive reviews, which inspired more simulation parodies to ride on its success. Personally, I would have given it a negative review. In my analysis I aim to understand why some might experience it positively, and some the opposite.

Elemental Tetrad

Buggy animation

• Aesthetics: Semi-realistic 3D graphics are used to create the suburban setting. Judging from the buggy animation, it is obvious that this game was released as a joke.

Everything you interact with is destroyed

• Mechanics: As an open world game, there are hardly any rules. The goat may roam anywhere and interact with any object or person (mainly destroying them). Even the laws of physics are not adhered to. I guess there is one main rule: Everything you touch explodes or dies.

Simple controls

• Technology: No outstanding technology; this PC game has standard WASD and mouse controls that help the goat navigate through 3D space. This made the controls easy to learn.
• Story: There is no story, however, that does not prevent the player from creating his own.

When the substandard aesthetics, loose mechanics, simple technology and nonexistent story are combined, they reinforce the irony of the game and the humour that people find in its brokenness.

My Experience through the lenses

• The Lens of Fun

  • Fun: To me, one of the fun parts was exploring the broken physics in the game. For example, I attached my tongue to a dead man, broke into a house and dragged him through the rooms. My tongue simply went through the walls.
  • Fun: Uncovering easter eggs was also fun. For example, collecting small goat statues lets you turn your goat into a demon goat, giraffe or ostrich.
  • Fun: I also appreciated the crude humour crafted by game developers. I wish there was more.

  

• Not fun: I did not find destroying everything fun. It might have been, for the first few minutes, but that wears off too fast. It became boring and predictable that everything I touched would either explode, scream or die. The game did not feel “alive”.

• The Lens of Freedom

  • Too much freedom: We had the freedom to decide where to go and what to do and I felt aimless because I did not know which direction to head to.
  • Too constrained: The world was smaller than it let on, and cut off without warning. For example, there was a tunnel that was actually a dead end. Because cars would leave and enter the tunnel, I thought I was free to enter. But when I went inside, the screen just turned black.

• The Lens of the Avatar

  • Playing as a goat, I could not relate to it or project any part of myself onto it.

• The Lens of Visible Progress/Goal

  • No goal: The game had no ultimate goal, hence I felt that everything I destroyed was a waste of time. But, there were mini goals, encouraging you to do ridiculous things like performing a backflip. I mainly ignored those.
  • Points: Points were given whenever you wrecked something. But if you closed the game, you had to restart. Again, I felt that I wasted my time when I could not save my progress.
  • Visible progress: There were, however, achievements you could work towards. For example, the “Michael Bay” achievement requires you to explode a petrol station. These achievements were broadcast on screen with a “COMPLETED” sign.

Completing the achievement “Car Accident”

Others’ Experience through the lenses

I then observed two drunk players playing the game together.

• The Lens of Fun

The two players seemed to be having much more fun than I did. They roared with laughter every time the goat destroyed things, screamed when the goat fell from a crane… And sometimes they would pause the game just to laugh at how ridiculous the goat looked.

They also took much more pleasure than I did in destroying objects and torturing the humans in the game. They conspired together to cause as much destruction as possible. One time, they dragged a fainted man through the road to have him run over by a car. But no, they weren’t done with him – they took him all the way up to a crane (the highest point in the city) to push him off of it.

• The Lens of Freedom

The two players constantly had ideas on what to do next with the goat. They liked to experiment with the objects around them. They tried to do backflips on a trampoline which I simply jumped over. They spent over 3 minutes trying to see if they could backflip the goat’s anus into a protruding stick on the ground –an object I also would have simply looked over. They were coming up with their own goals, their own story.

Unlike me, those two did not seem lost or bored in the game and were making the best use of the freedom they were given.

• The Lens of the Avatar

And, unlike me, some could relate to the goat. Especially the goat who wrote the review above.

• The Lens of Visible Progress/Goal

Aside from experimenting with the objects in the game, the two players also tried to complete the goals set by the game, showing signs of actually playing the game the “proper” way. They spent five minutes jumping on a trampoline to try to complete the “360 degree front flip” achievement. Despite their jokes and antics, these two drunk guys took the game more seriously than I did.

Comparison Analysis

• Playing with a friend

Due to this game being a joke, it definitely is much more fun to play with someone beside you so that you can have someone to laugh with, and someone to exchange suggestions on how to make the in-game humans miserable. It’s even better if both of you are drunk – the ideas get crazier. I believe it could have been more fun if I played with a friend.

• No important goal

I am the kind of player who likes a fixed storyline and a primary ultimate goal to work towards. I did not feel like completing the mini achievements because I felt there was no point. However, the two players I observed did not mind working towards them, and even had fun in the process.

• Freedom is best appreciated with curiosity

When I played alone, I felt bored quickly. Interacting with different objects to see their reaction was not interesting to me. Exploring with no goal in mind made me feel unaccomplished. The novelty of a bug-ridden game wore off fast.

However, the players I observed did not get bored of exploring the game’s terrain and seeing what the goat could do with it. Outside of the in game achievements, they actually set their own goals and worked to attain them. And something good game out of their curiosity – they did uncover more easter eggs and secret goat moves than I did.

The game definitely gave us much freedom to explore and I feel it is something only a few people with curious minds can appreciate. I am definitely not one of those people as I prefer to have goals clearly set for me.

Conclusion

Goat simulator, a goal-less, story-less, pointless, broken game mostly appreciated for its novelty, made me bored fairly quickly because I had no goal to accomplish and no progress to save. Though I did not appreciate it, several others did. Their admirable curiosity led them to devise their own goals and explore the game further and as a result, they had a lot more fun than I did.

In a sense, goat simulator is like life itself. Just like how it is up to the player to create a goal for the goat, it is up to us to create a goal in our lives. Even if the goal is to backflip yourself into a protruding stick on the ground.