A Review of "Butterfly: Legacy of the Light's Guardians" Based on the Environmental Presence Model

Depending on the main objective of researches about videogames, videogame studies fall into three categories. Some of them study the videogames as such, some study the artistic aspect of videogames, and some study the effects of videogames on users, society, environment, and etc. Those researches studying videogames as such, study videogames as a game, those studying the artistic aspect of videogames, study videogames as an art, and those studying the effects of videogames, study videogames as a media. This division forms the structure of videogame studies. One of the subjects which is related to the study of videogames as art, is the sense of presence. Sense of presence in videogame studies is a theory arguing that the climax of videogames is creation of a situation that leads to the unity of the user and the character, so user sees him/herself present in the virtual world of videogames; an exclusive achievement which makes videogames completely different from other forms of arts. This theory explains the necessary requirements which are needed for creating a situation that the user experiences the sense of presence in a videogame. This theory offers some models for analyzing the elements of a videogame individually and in relation to each other. These models are the environmental presence and the narrative presence; the first analyzes the non-narrative elements of videogames and the second focuses on narrative elements. The full coherence between each element in the environment and narrative together, eventually leads to the complete sense of presence for the user. This article, accordingly, while introducing the environmental presence model and its main elements in videogames, analyzes a videogame based on the model. The videogame which is chosen for the review is Butterfly: Legacy of the Light's Guardians; this videogame won several awards including the best video game of the year at the fourth videogames festival in Tehran 2014. The paper, therefore, tries to find out that what are the all necessary elements for creating a situation, which causing the user to become united with the in-game character? Or is there any missing elements which ruined the experience of the user during his/her playing time. In the initial review, when the user had confronted this videogame, this assumption emerged that the videogame due to the weakness in the choice of the proper perspective as well as the improper use of the logic in the game environment that challenged the cohesion of the whole game, is failing to create the environmental presence for the user. To verify this assumption, this article is consisted of two parts; theoretical and practical. In the first part, the role of the sense of presence in the structure of videogame studies is described, and also the main elements of the environmental presence model are explained. In the second part, based on the introduced model, the videogame is analyzed and the reasons for the lack of success of the videogame in creating the sense of presence in the environment is elaborated.