
Interactivity – The Core of Video Game Aesthetics (2015) - Thevet
https://objectivevgaesthetics.wordpress.com/2015/08/11/interactivity-the-core-of-video-game-aesthetics/
======
mlthoughts2018
I like the article but it left out one of my favorite things unique to video
games, _ludonarrative dissonance_ — the phenomenon that the actions you
perpetrate as a character can be entirely antithetical to the internal moral
state of the character or the motivational state for achieving a certain goal.

One example is the recent _Tomb Raider_ reboot. You play as a distressed
teenage girl who is shipwrecked on a dangerous island with no survival skills
or knowledge of self-defense or hunting.

Yet later in the game you are brutally murdering hundreds of enemy combatants
by stabbing them with a homemade ax, shooting them with arrows in the head,
lighting them on fire.

On one hand you are just trying to survive, find missing people, gain
intelligence about the island you’re on. Needing to kill someone would only
happen in an extreme situation, and you would be desperate to run and hide or
use weapons to incapacitate rather than kill. On the other hand you function
nearly as a harbinger of brutal and complete annihilation for the groups of
enemy foot soldiers, mowing down hundreds of them, using anything in the
environment to brutally kill them.

You aren’t a fallen anti-hero in the game’s world though. You are the thumbs-
up, wholly moral protagonist, but the actions you perpetrate go far beyond
anything justifiable for mere survival.

I think this effect is also something unique to specifically video game story
telling, because it’s very hard to depict a character acting directly
antithetically to the moral character the reader/viewer is supposed to believe
they really represent, without entering some type of morality surrealism.

But in the game, since you are asked to _be_ the agent who perpetrates the
irreconcilable actions, you are more willing to engage the dissonance aspect,
and _feel like_ the brutal, unjustifiable actions don’t negate the character,
since you “had to” do it to complete the game.

The _Uncharted_ series also contains a lot of ludonarrative dissonance, as you
are a cheeky Indiana Jones character who at root is a “good guy” just out for
treasure, but who ends up brutally murdering thousands of bad guys along the
way in over the top, morally indefensible ways.

The _Metal Gear_ franchise has components, especially with the Raiden
character, that touch on it too.

~~~
dxhdr
If you're referencing the amount of absurdity that can only be conveyed in
video games then I agree. Ludonarrative dissonance is the uncanny valley of
gameplay plus story telling.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Huh? I don’t see how they are related. Many games ask you to complete
objectives using means that are perfectly in-character, and there would be no
ludonarrative dissonance. But as a medium, video game storytelling creates a
unique opportunity for optionally using ludonarrative dissonance as a factor.

------
disqard
There's this part that is a strength of video games: "One of the most
fundamental principles of storytelling is to have a protagonist with whom the
audience identifies... Video games are better at establishing a connection
between the audience and the narrative subjects ... because ... the audience
does not merely passively observe characters, but rather actively controls
them."

However, _curation_ is also a core component of storytelling. And
fundamentally, it's hard to force a player to look in a particular direction
inside a video game (hence the need for cinematic cut scenes, where the medium
reverts to a movie format). IMHO, this is the biggest weakness of VR, and if
somebody can figure out a solution to this, they will have created the next
entertainment format.

------
s_m_t
I don't think "power fantasy" is central at all to the appeal of videogames.
Rather, the things that can really easily be modeled by computers happen to
be... casting rays from point a to point b, changing an objects position based
on its heading and speed, bouncing two things off of each other, or, to put it
simply keeping track of a bunch of values that interact in a linear fashion...

There just isn't a whole lot more you can do well other than having the stuff
on screen either bump into each other, shoot each other, or punch each other,
or move and jump around (preferably all at the same time if you want something
fun). I don't really find anything empowering about the whole process, it is
just interesting to see stuff happen on screen and solve little puzzles and
there isn't really any other type of game available.

If we had a tea party simulator where you poured tea for virtual friends and
had riveting virtual conversations I'm sure that would be insanely popular
(I'd play it just after I finish this game about ordering lots of dudes to run
around a map and shoot each other). It's just that we don't have it because
your virtual friend needs to be something like a strong AI to carry out a
riveting conversation.

------
pphysch
Ebert was right: games are not art. Video games can be composed of many
different art forms, but the core game-ness and interactivity that make a game
is not art. The rules or game-logic of chess and League of Legends are not
art.

Instead, games are more akin to novel mediums, like musical instruments. A
guitar is not inherently artistic--it _could_ be crafted by an artisan and
composed with beautiful visual design, but it could equally be produced in a
factory without a hint of human emotion. Both cases are still a guitar; they
have the core feature of _interactivity_ : tap a string, hear a sound.

Therefore, while games are not art, playing a game _is_ art. Art in the sense
that the artist is expressing themselves, or performing, on a medium of their
choice. Obviously, this varies across games depending on how interactive they
actually are (as opposed to being mainly movies). Many enthusiasts of chess
see a grandmaster's performance as art, both as a performance art and a
persistant art form (there are books written on single games or even moves,
albeit the latter from a purely analytical perspective).

To me, shoehorning games into a box of art-as-products is not compelling, and
counterproductive to understanding games and the video game industry. That is,
the AAA industry is infamously bad to work in relative to other software
subindustries--it's certainly no game designer' paradise, a free-spirited
realm of artistry. AAA video games are massive feats of engineering, not works
of art (notwithstanding the obvious components of visual and audio design).
And on the consumer side, we see the continued growth of esports,
livestreaming, and other niche performance mediums like speedrunning.

~~~
hcs
I completely agree about the performance art aspect of games, but I disagree
that this means the game design itself is not art. Play within the ruleset is
made possible by the deliberate constraints proposed by the designer, who (if
skilled) has considered the range of performances encouraged and allowed.
Plenty of art is deliberately ambiguous; ceding some part of the work to a
participant doesn't immediately kill the author.

I can't comment on how useful this is for understanding the industry, but it
is essential for looking at the works.

~~~
pphysch
What you describe sounds a lot more like "engineering" than "art". Defining
art as "making things" is not very helpful IMHO, because then everyone and
everything is an artist/art and the terms lose meaning.

Game development is a massively complex undertaking[1] and designers' self-
expression will quickly cede to the large number of technological and
engineering concerns.

[1] [http://www.gameenginebook.com/img/fig-runtime-
arch.jpg](http://www.gameenginebook.com/img/fig-runtime-arch.jpg)

~~~
hcs
I do tend to err on the side of inclusivity, but I don't think it becomes
meaningless to say that anything _can_ be art. Is there anything physical that
can't be made as sculpture? There is engineering and craft in most art to
realize it in a permanent form. I disagree that unbridled self-expression is a
requirement, heck limitation is often the _enabler_.

Maybe I'm missing your point, though, and it sounds like I'm saying everyone
with a paintbrush is an artist. Certainly many games, even those much less
complicated than your game engine diagram, are just made to "work": look
pretty, hook players, shift units, sell replays. But I think we can criticize
these games for what they lack just as we would for poor visible or audible
aspects. We can recognize the existence of an "art film" on the same spectrum
as a popcorn-munching AAA blockbuster, if maybe at the shallow end.

I'm not very well-versed in this argument, though I know it has been going on
for a long time, sorry if I'm boring you with the easily-rebuttable stuff. I
may be trying, as a former game developer and hobbyist game designer, to
appropriate something that is better understood much differently. If art has
to be the pure expression of one mind, unfiltererd through commercial
necessity, engineering, and cooperation, then I have it wrong. I wonder if
there's a better term for whatever it is I mean, entertainment doesn't seem to
do it justice.

(Edit) fwiw I am trying to understand where you're coming from, too, sorry if
this got too argumentative. I was intrigued by your observations about playing
games and just a bit confused why you seem to reject game design as an art, as
small a part of the whole product as it is.

