Despelote: Compact Thoughts

Despelote is the exploration of the childhood memories of the developer through the character Julián during the 2002 world cup qualifications within his home country of Ecuador. These memories are stitched together with that world wide event and its overall effect on its community day by day, week to week and how the community stirs as the event progresses. You can see the impact of the event through his family, his friends and expanding outwards to passers-by that roam the streets of his community.  Despelote is a walking simulator with very bare bone mechanical inputs. Its short runtime spans over one hour and thirty minutes to two hours depending on how you parse through the levels.

My thoughts on this game have been difficult to conjure in a cohesive manner. Everytime I try to carve a path to the core of my thoughts I find myself thinking it would not be digestible for a reading audience. A compelling perspective that is critical and something to be taken away from this experience seems hard to pull together. You're probably wondering why? 

How do I critique a person’s childhood and the fervor for his community that made him who he was? In a piece of art labeled a game that has no winner nor loser. I can’t nor I think most people could. There is no right or wrong in these scenarios. In fact the experiences presented are nostalgic to me as well in my own ways. Times of going shopping with my mother and being told to wait around. Family parties where grown ups are dancing. Hiding under tables in those same parties with siblings or cousins. Being in the backseat of the car while your parents discuss topics that you do not care about staring out a foggy window.

I find myself just returning to a larger question after the experience of what makes a game a game? Despelote stretches the concept of a video game I think to its limit. It has all the components of a video game, story, sound, art, gameplay but the gameplay is barebones and functions as a boat going down a stream of consciousness. I keep returning to the idea that it's more interactive than a video game. But what is a video game? Not too sure anymore.