There are only a couple of moments of interactivity, such as when you go diving to look for a lost bracelet that the girl considers to be precious, or you play around with your phone to message a friend, and there's no way to "fail" at those. You'll be able to choose from a couple of different options for responding to the girl as she chatters away with you. As a game, it doesn't do much and is, in effect, a visual novel. Focus on You might surprise as a sharp and quite honest take on a nostalgic phenomenon that we're all psychologically hard-wired to indulge. This is precisely the stuff we need to pay attention to in order to successfully play the cards we have been dealt and to become socially and reproductively successful." Emotions signal the brain that important events are happening, and the teen years are chock-full of important social feedback about one’s skills, attractiveness, status and desirability as a mate. There are reasons that we have a particular predisposition to remember our time at school with particular vividness, as Andrew also notes, this time in the Washington Post: "What is it about this time of life that makes it stand out from the rest of our years? Part of it is undoubtedly due to changes in the brain’s sensitivity to certain types of information during adolescence. Psychology to the rescue here with an answer, too: these particular memories of school are the more powerful and formative ones to our very sense of being. Why would the developers want to reach back into memories of high school then? Particularly when to do so means you end up depicting a teenage girl in a romantic light - something that in the context of video games the way they are now, would mean that your game could be targeted with robust, knee-jerk criticism? The developers have insulated themselves from that to an extent by choosing to release the game exclusively in Japan and Asian markets, so the only people in the west that are likely to discover the game are those who would be predisposed to actively want to play it (though other games have tried this trick and failed to avoid the articles anyway), but nonetheless why go with this story over some floundering sentimental fling that occurs in the 20's or 30's? Most - if not all of us - have had those as well, after all. Everything about this game is shrouded in a warm, fuzzy nostalgia, and it's so utterly mundane that it's easy to take the VR goggles off and be reminded of your own experiences at high school.
There's a sad moment at the end, but it's framed in bittersweet terms, and immediately after there's a short scene to reassure us that the relationship between the two survives. A lift breaks down when you're both on it, and the girl's terrified, but you hold hands and she feels better. Where something "bad" does happen, it's only in the context of a pleasant memory. There are no moments of tension between you - playing as the boy - and the girl through any of the eight chapters. The only memories being shared are the critically happy ones. If our past was good and our future can be even better, then we can work our way out of the unpleasant, or at least mundane, present."įocus on You is very much cut from this mold. "These innocent forms of self-deception enable us to keep striving. (An exception to this pattern would be depressed individuals who continually ruminate upon past failures and disappointments.) For most of us, the reason that the good old days seem so good is that we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the day-to-day unpleasantness. In a nutshell, it means that we process, rehearse, and remember pleasant information from the past more than unpleasant information. Andrew notes: "Cognitive psychologists have identified a phenomenon they refer to as the Pollyanna Principle.
It's an actual, observable psychological function, as Frank T. Nostalgia has a habit of simmering down so that we only remember the briefest, most pleasant snapshots. I'd argue that the game's length is absolutely necessary to its thematic strength. Almost before it's started, Focus on You is over. Across eight chapters, each one scene long, the game relates the deepening relation between the two, which starts as an awkward friendship, because taking a turn to the flirtatious and finally ending up with the big "look at me in my bikini" moment and inevitable confession. Our thoughts on that one.įocus on You is a story of two teenagers a boy, who works at a cafe and enjoys taking photos, and a girl, who aspires to be a fashion designer and needs someone to take photos of her modelling her clothes. Related reading: The other "girl simulator" VR title on PlayStation 4 worth looking into is the Summer Lesson series.
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