Gameplay Journal Entry #2

Phasmophobia!

Phasmophobia, a ghost-hunting game primarily played on PC and in VR, was made by Kinetic Games and published in September, 2020. The game itself was built using the popular game engine Unity, an engine that was originally published in June 2005, by Unity Technologies. Unity is a free program that allows developers and companies to independently create games and programs. Unity uses C# and C++for programing languages, also allows creators to make 3-D games, 2-D games, Virtual reality games, Augmented games, and other programs. The engine itself is completely reusable and it can also be modified (although I don’t know how far the extent of modification can go).

Unity, due to its easy access and widespread resources for help online, falls in line with definition a “game engine” outlined by Henry Lowood; “Although the trial balloon of the licensing concept was a failure, the game engine stuck as a way of designating a reusable platform for efficiently developing several games.” Phasmophobia, using Unity, has allowed the developers of the game to build their own, unique game while also implementing basic features from Unity. For example, the developer team of Phasmo can input their own models, location builds, and audio lines, but Unity helps their models walk, the locations have ground and gravity, and audio lines be heard, and at the right time. The developers also continue to push out updates, something that would take considerably longer without the assistance of a premade game engine.

Deger, A. C., Guins, R., & Lowood, H. (2016). Debugging game history: A critical lexicon. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.