What is Game Tourism?

Game Tourism is playing a game with the primary aim of exploring its world, without engaging in any active conflict such as combat or stealth. Whether conflict is bypassed with cheats, mods, or built-in functionality, the aim is to refocus attention on the game's architecture, aesthetics, storytelling, and atmosphere. Feel free to think of it as a form of art modding or glitching.

Why Game Tourism?

Violent conflict has been a primary focus of mainstream games for decades now. Many great works have come from exploration in this domain, but the narrow focus and creative constraints that violent conflict imposes on design mean that for a long time games left unfulfilled much of their potential to depict the breadth of human experience. 
More recently games like Proteus, Dear Esther, Gone Home, and The Stanley Parable present 3D game worlds recognizably descended from first person shooter games but give players goals that completely forego violent conflict. Dubbed "walking simulators" with varying degrees of derision, the success of many such wander games suggest that people do hunger for such experiences - a world, compellingly presented, can stand on its own as an interactive statement.
Tourism looks at games that do foreground violent conflict through a filter that gives us clearer understanding of the aspects of their design that do not depend on said conflict - again, focusing on architecture, aesthetics, storytelling, and atmosphere - while also making it clear what goes missing. Celebration and analysis of these things can light the way for future exploration of our medium.
The result is often strange to play, sometimes a very non-idealized experience. The more deeply a game has combat, ambushes, tactical space etc wired into it, the more a tourist play through will feel the uncanniness of the conflict excised. The goal is experimental, though: not seeking to match the experience of an intentionally designed "wander game", but to subvert, to transform, to reveal the overshadowed.
Like tool-assisted speendrunning and other forms of glitching, it's also important to keep a sense of humor about this: you're hacking a game so you can enjoy it in a very specific way. That's kinda weird, right? 




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