Gameplay Journal Entry #4

Although I found it quite difficult to locate an actual game modification on gamescenes.org as opposed to machinimas and video game films, one that stuck out to me was MIRIAM ROSS AND HELEN PERKINS’S ASSASSIN’S CREED ULYSSES (2020). This project was created with Ubisoft’s Story Creator mode, and runs on the base game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. AC Ulysses is basically an interactive story based on the book Ulysses by James Joyce. This mod is a great example of the subversion of a video game’s original intentions and mechanics. Although most Assassin’s Creed games are story-rich, their main focus is on the gameplay experience. AC Ulysses completely changes this by shifting the focus to almost purely the aesthetics and storytelling. The aesthetic of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey fits perfectly with the content of the story of Ulysses, since it is supposed to be a parallel story to events that happen in the Odyssey, which takes place in Ancient Greece.

Alexander Galloway’s concept of counter-gaming is fascinating, and definitely applies to the machinima mod AC Ulysses of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Galloway states that game mods can have three approaches to altering the game. In this case, it is option 2, which is altering the actual gameplay as opposed to the game engine or the visual design of the game. According to Alexander Galloway, “The tendency to privilege foregrounding over transparency runs in tandem with another principle of countergaming: aesthetics are elevated over gameplay. This is certainly not a necessary quality of countergaming, yet current work tends in this direction. Conventional gamic form relies on a notion of purposeful interactivity based on a coherent set of game rules. Narrative and form are smoothly joined.” (Galloway, 115). As he states, aesthetics are valued over gameplay in AC Ulysses. Here is a link to a let’s play of AC Ulysses.

Works Cited:

Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, by Alexander R. Galloway, University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp. 115–115.