Gravitation

That transfer isn’t just happening randomly, it’s happening because the author deliberately underlines universal experiences with the mechanics of the game.

How are the rules of the game not expressing the author’s specific points? I mean even though it is absolutely basic like “you inevitably get older and die”, “there are things you can’t do / places you can’t go with a partner”, and “life is richer with a partner.” These rules are obvious and certainly don’t rely on reading the artist’s statement to understand. How could these be more directly stated through game mechanics?

**BigBossSNK said:**
*But that doesn’t mean all art is arbitrary in regards to it’s emotional response. There are specific emotional circuitry in the brain, and so long as an art piece employs those, it creates an emotional response.*

You’re talking about symbolism here, in which case, yes it is arbitrary. **There is no “magic art” that effects everyone in exactly the same way.** You seem to be trying to insist that there is. The “specific emotional curcuitry” you’re talking about is just that… specific. To the individual.

Whether or not symbolism in art is effective in generating the desired response in the viewer depends largely upon the social upbringing of the viewer, their mood at the time of viewing, prejudices, forehand knowledge, etc. On top of that, symbolism in one culture is not going to be as effective to people of other cultures. Even symbolism between classes in the same culture can differ.

Can an artist try to aim for a specific emotional response in his target audience? Sure. But to say that the individual viewers aren’t responsible for their own emotional involvement is just naive.

**BigBossSNK said:**
*But the game didn’t provoke these emotions through gameplay (art-game). They are transferring their emotional experience onto the game world.*

I can think of one very specific game mechanic that elicited an emotional response from me, and that is the inability to pick up certain chests if you have a partner. The first response was frustration, which led to resentment of taking the girl instead of leaving her behind, which led to guilt both at wishing she were gone, and for getting so sucked into a silly little game.

But the game didn’t force me to feel that way. It doesn’t have the capability of directly controlling my emotional state. The game is not me, so my response was my own. I as a viewer supplied that response to the experience.

there is no life

“there are places you can’t go with a partner”, “life is richer with a partner”.
These messages are correct, but only under a limited scope. Partners don’t just limit you from obtaining some goals, they can also expand your goal set. Life isn’t richer with a partner unless you put in the necessary effort. The message’s scope is too limited.

“But to say that the individual viewers aren’t responsible for their own emotional involvement is just naive.”
Emotions arise from biological programming, or social programming. An art piece can use either of these agents to elicit a response.

And as I can see you are uninformed, here is a piece about certain emotions being biologically programmed in humans.
http:// http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080227121840.htm

“I as a viewer supplied that response to the experience.”
True, but there are ways a game can manipulate your state of mind, so long as you are compliant to it’s rules. See http:// http://www.stephanebura.com/emotion/ for a more in depth analysis.

Yes it is a limited scope, if that is what you were trying to argue you should have said so from the start! Whether it is TOO limited is where we seem to disagree, heh.

I think “emotional engineering” is a somewhat ignoble pursuit anyway. What is the reasoning behind “I want you to feel sad” as a goal?

I don’t think either this or Passage are very deep but they are appreciable on a philosophy=mechanics level and that’s something.

I also don’t see them being held up as the absolute paragon of this Games as Art silliness except in the occasional bit of hyperbole…
*cough*
http://grandtextauto.org/2008/02/24/pvp-portal-versus-passage/
*cough*
…and besides, we should concern ourselves with looking at things for their own merits and not their relative popularity.

““there are places you can’t go with a partner”, “life is richer with a partner”. These messages are correct, but only under a limited scope. Partners don’t just limit you from obtaining some goals, they can also expand your goal set. Life isn’t richer with a partner unless you put in the necessary effort. The message’s scope is too limited.”

So, you’ve moved from ‘this game isn’t art’ to ‘okay, maybe this game is art, but the message is **WRONG** anyway’. It seems like you just dislike the thing and are taking any angle you can find in order to declare it ‘not worthy’. Furthermore, I’d highlight that all emotions elicited by things other than real life are ‘artificial’, given they exploit the capacity for emotion we have in order to interact in real life; the presupposition that you alone can know what ‘really’ elicits emotion and what isn’t working hard enough is naive.

“YES OF COURSE IT CAN. But just because it CAN doesn’t mean that it WILL. It depends on the viewer.”
You ‘re taking a point I didn’t make and trying to disqualify it. Hopefully, it’s fun for ya.

“Go screw yourself. Not only are you just being condescending but your example has no relevance to this discussion. You’re just pulling shit out of your ass.”
Your brain is hardwired to respond to certain stimuli in a certain way. Games can use that to predict possible reaction from the audience. Still don’t get the relevance? I’ll bring out the visual aids if you ask nicely.

“So, you’ve moved from ‘this game isn’t art’ to ‘okay, maybe this game is art, but the message is WRONG anyway’”
As I said before, a game is judged as art or not based on it’s message. Art ultimately elucidates, it doesn’t obfuscate. If the message is incorrect or near sighted, the game loses it’s art edge. You getting this?

“Furthermore, I’d highlight that all emotions elicited by things other than real life are ‘artificial’, given they exploit the capacity for emotion we have in order to interact in real life;”
Sure, but that’s your own arbitrary distinction, with which no neuroscientist will agree. The same brain circuitry operates whether talking to someone you know, reading a letter from a lover or watching a movie.

“the presupposition that, by working hard enough, you alone can know what ‘really’ elicits emotion and what doesn’t, is naive.”
There is no formula to make a deterministic prediction for eliciting emotion, if that’s what you mean. But the distinction I’m making between Ico and Passage is that the first creates a world of believable emotional interactions, which is close to “everyone”‘s emotional circuitry, whereas the latter is more of a conduit for emotions for people who are so inclined whenever presented with specifics symbolisms (no game required).

I normally avoid jumping into these discussions. But I just have to clear something up once and for all.

In Passage, you can

WALK UP AND DOWN TOO

Really, 99% of the people who claim Passage is not a game (calling it a screen saver, or whatever) think you can only walk right. If you think it’s not a game, play it again, and try pushing the DOWN ARROW.

There’s a score, and you make choices that affect your score. Thus, it is a game.

This whole conversation above pisses me off too much to comment on it. But because of that I feel like I have to state the obvious…

This game is incredible. It’s moving, powerful and a huge step for games, or rather… interactive art.

Passage was interesting and moving as well, but lacked the amount of interactivity to personalize the experience. I think Gravitation exposes an incredibly widespread problem of the human condition and does so with simple interaction.

This piece comments on life with actions, actions that you dictate, making the experience incredibly personal. It makes me want to quit everything, work a shit job and makes my own games like this. But then who would I play catch with?

This just gives more weight to the notion that an interactive experience of extreme simplicity and more or less archaic artistic representation can affect people much much more than many other forms of art TODAY. This is very important, because as a society, we humans are fickle, and to touch humans, they need to experience new things, such as the immaculate sculpture of the renaissance and baroque did. Other forms of art and expression are tired and lifeless, i.e. modernism, post-modernism etc. Nobody gives a shit about art gallery’s anymore. Humanity needs to feel something again, and they will feel it in interactive art.

heheh, great observation Pnx :D

**BigBossSNK said:**
*blah blah blah blah i smell my own farts hurr `*`BELCH`*`*

I give up, so I guess you win by default. Not because you’re right, mind you, but because I just remembered I have better things to do than argue with dimwits on the internet.

So congratulations. You win. Your prize is it sucks to be you.

This game would be a lot better with a hi-score chart.

“blah blah blah blah i smell my own farts hurr *BELCH*”
It’s interesting how faced with a superior logical point you resort to pettiness. Evidently, your frustration in coming up with a legitimate answer was greater than your willingness to win in a logical argument.

“My point was, your analysis of the message was your own”
No. I talked about specific game elements and mechanics, physical facts, not interpretation of facts. Postmodernism has many facets. Not all of them are correct. Ultimately, science can be applied to game design. The end-user result will always pass through the statistical filter of social and biological programming, but that doesn’t make the end result random, only stochastic.

“your objection to deadeye’s explanation of his own experience is meaningless”
If the subtleties of using game mechanics to create emotion on willing players eludes you, go ahead and call it meaningless. The fact remains, this is an underused tool.

“I fail to see how any of this blind assertion is valid if the work ultimately succeeds in eliciting emotion from people who aren’t bent on unclothing their imaginary emperor.”
Same result, different success rates. Either way you are using preexisting emotional circuitry. But there’s a physical difference (on the amount of neurons and the connection they have between them) between actively building emotional connections through gameplay, and relying on gamers to have a predisposition for emotion through symbolism. Which basically means you’ll forget one game easier than the other, even if the intensity of emotion is the same while playing them.

I like the games well enough but I also recognize that a BigBossSNK is right about the emotional reactions not being from the game itself, but rather what a person expects and what they associate it with.

Still, I think we should at least give the game credit for allowing people to bring in their own emotions and feel them, even if the game isn’t the source of those emotions. That itself is valuable, even if it’s just their expectancies and experience that’s causing it. There are plenty of games that do people do not extend their own emotional experiences onto and attribute it to the game.

But I do agree with BigBossSNK that those reactions are probably not due to the mechanics, they’re more likely due to the story, the situation, and the expectancies of the player. If people expected to be deeply touched by Metal Gear Solid 2 or something, they would be. I think a great deal, maybe even 90%, of how much people like something has to do with how much they expect to like it (or how much they expect to dislike it) rather than due to anything in the thing itself. And I’m not excepting myself from this, often I expect to like something and I do, and often I don’t expect to like something and I don’t. It’s hard to stop oneself from that.

(Also I think that ad hominem attack on BigBossSNK was pretty awful and it’s terrible to see this argument come down to ‘you’re an idiot and I have no time to discuss this with idiots’.)

You described the mechanics, asserted that they work in a particular way, explained the psychological mechanism by which this works in the case that the previous assertion was correct, and then further asserted that as a result the game is not ‘art’ and that people who claim to experience something are deluding themselves. There are two fundamental disconnects here.

This has gotten more heated than I intended. I can to a certain extent agree that initially projection is critical to the games working at all; it’s a direct consequence of the games’ brevity and simplicity. I cannot, however, agree that your own detachment is sufficient to denounce the things as meaningless; the context or receptiveness of the responder may be significant in determining their experience, but I don’t feel this diminishes it. What it comes down to is that art, hell, experience, is so subjective that I can’t help but feel anyone who seems to act as if they’re the final arbiter on these subjects is being a wanker. I respect your right to explain your own gripes, but stating categorically that something is emotionally ineffectual is just not rational. That is, had you framed your argument as the reasons why you disliked them, rather than as the definitive reason why they’re completely useless, I doubt half as many hackles would be raised as have now been.

“You asserted that people who claim to experience something from the Passagre are deluding themselves”

This “delusion about emotions” is something you added to the conversation, not me. I only said people are operating under emotional transference. If you don’t see a difference between the two, google it.

“What it comes down to is that art, hell, experience, is so subjective that I can’t help but feel anyone who seems to act as if they’re the final arbiter on these subjects is being a wanker”

Experience is subjective. I’m not talking about experience. I’m talking about the game as a physical manifestation. And using that physical manifestation as a basis for my argument before it passes from any distortion due to social programming filters. Whatever the case, a correct argument is based on facts.

“stating categorically that something is emotionally ineffectual is just not rational.”

I can see you can’t tell the difference between “emotionally ineffectual” and “emotionally evocative only to a certain group of people”. If you did, even the slightest hint of rhetorical prowess would inhibit you from confusing my claim for the former.

“You have stated it fails in creating an emotional connection through its interactivity; that it is nothing in itself, hence emotionally ineffectual”

There are ways to create emotion other than interactivity: music, graphics, symbolism etc. Not employing emotion through interactivity doesn’t mean not employing emotion at all. I was specific in my wording, yet you were not in your understanding.

“I would also suggest “making arbitrary connections” fits very well with the concept of deluding oneself.”

And you’d be wrong. Arbitrary claims aren’t necessarily false. They might still be true depending on the circumstances. Deluded claims on the other hand are always contrary to physical fact. Don’t confuse the two notion.

“As I have stated, there are two unsupported assertions in your argument”

And yet you don’t say what they are. You provide the bottle, but not the message.

*”Passage isn’t going in a new direction”*

Of course specific elements will be similar to other games, but I have seen very little work similar to it, so it seems fairly new to me.

*”Not only that, it also fails in the direction it chose.”*

What direction did it choose?

Certainly there seem to be ways it succeeded (it received a decent amount of press and interest, some people found it very fresh and interesting), so I don’t think it can be called a failure in general. I’m not sure what aspect you consider a failure. Was this aspect a stated goal of the project?

*”Passage creates NO such connection. If you feel something while playing the Passage, it’s because you’re transferring your own emotions for situations you are aware of in your own life, rather than in the game world.”*

So? To me Passage creates a multi-faceted metaphor for life, and so gives a framework for reflection; the gameplay is what defines the metaphor itself, so if the emotional connection comes from ties to my own experience that doesn’t bother me. The gameplay has still served a purpose.

*”The game fails to illicit emotion based on it’s game mechanics, and thus fails as game-art.”*

Only if you have a very specific definition of game-art, which I think must be very arbitrary because I have no specific definition for art at all. Instead of arguing about an ill-defined concept such as “game-art”, which the reader is likely to interpret differently from you, why not instead define clearly what properties are lacking, and why these properties are critical for a positive experience.

I assume the main property you would like to discuss is whether it ‘evokes emotion through gameplay,’ but I’m not sure why this property is particularly important.

*”As for Gravitation, I found no game mechanics pertaining to “mania”, “melancholia”, and the “creative process”.”*

I did. Hooray for me!

*”The game only makes sense as such AFTER you are told about this, but then you are just making the arbitrary connections the designer directs you to make, rather than thinking for yourself.”*

The game made sense to me before being told anything, and playing it certainly did inspire thought. However, even if those clues were necessary for sense to emerge, there is enough vagueness in what Jason says to leave plenty of room for personal contemplation, if that is something you demand from a game.

I think we need to make a distinction here between a game with elements that are art (music, graphics, symbolism, etc, “The dark eye” comes to mind) and an art-GAME, which utilizes gameplay to promote contemplation and deliver a message, or excite the audience’s senses (“I have no mouth and I must scream”).
The Passage is certainly the former, but not the latter.

“I assume the main property you would like to discuss is whether it ‘evokes emotion through gameplay,’ but I’m not sure why this property is particularly important.”

No, evoking emotion CAN be part of, but isn’t necessary for art.

“As for Gravitation, I found no game mechanics pertaining to “mania”, “melancholia”, and the “creative process”.”

I did. Hooray for me!

Woohoo! What were they? I really hope you can provide a logical argument here, without overextending the game’s elements.

“The game made sense to me before being told anything, and playing it certainly did inspire thought.”

Wonderful. Please explain the thought process you used that allowed you to link Gravitation with “mania”, “melancholia” and the “creative process”. Since it made SENSE to you. It doesn’t have to be about declarative memory alone. You can give examples of any procedural memory that made the connection clear.

“Passage seems to have promoted contemplation, and seems to have a message (a simple model of life) conveyed in gameplay.”
Passage’s gameplay wasn’t different in it’s simplicity than Donkey Kong’s. It’s the symbolism that got people thinking and passed any message, not the gameplay.

“It’s all in metaphor; my interpretation goes something like this:”
Please make a mental distinction of design elements that work as symbolism and GAMEPLAY. The elements you speak of might be part of the design, but not part of the gameplay, even if they restrict or expand my gameplay options.

I’m not saying Passage didn’t work as art. I’m saying it didn’t work as an art-GAME. If art-GAMES don’t base their art state on the gameplay, they are just art delivered through the new medium of games, not art-GAMES. Whatever your definition of art is, that’s a distinction you can make.

“I don’t think I understand what exactly you mean by “gameplay.””

For the purpose of this discussion I will refer to gameplay as the control, direct or indirect the gamer has over the game world. Game design on the other hand is mainly the rules of the game, an example of which is the restriction of visibility you mentioned. The designer sets the rules and the gamer uses the gameplay options open to him to reach a certain state. Gravitation doesn’t have any gameplay mechanisms that elicit the response art does. But it’s game design is symbolic.

“I don’t think the term “art-GAME” means anything in particular, either, though.”

Well, maybe this will be clearer. You can have a game that has artful graphics, exemplary music, staggering symbolism, an engaging but linear plot etc. Each one of these elements is art, and they are woven into the game. But the GAME itself isn’t art, it isn’t an art-GAME. It’s just art presented through the medium of games without a significant gaming element.

On the other hand, a game that elicits the same response as art through gameplay, is an art-GAME, where the game itself is art, not just it’s visual, audio etc. parts.

“Game design itself is integral to deciding games as art.”
No. Literature can propose rules for the world it creates, too. If you’ ve seen Death Note, you know what I’m talking about. But it’s the control within the game world, the GAMEplay, that makes the game an art-GAME, and not just a collage of artistic components within a game.

*”For the purpose of this discussion I will refer to gameplay as the control, direct or indirect the gamer has over the game world. Game design on the other hand is mainly the rules of the game”*

Is there a clear distinction between these things? I can say, “the game increases player jump size when the player interacts with the kid,” (so it sounds like ‘rules of the game’) but I could alternatively say, “the player interacts with the kid to increase their jump size” (so it sounds like ‘indirect control the gamer has over the game world’).

*”But the GAME itself isn’t art, it isn’t an art-GAME.”*

I think I have some understanding of what you mean by “art-GAME,” but it’s not a term or definition I have really seen before. Did you make it?

If someone said, “This game fails at QWEPOIUEQWR,” and went on to define QWEPOIUEQWR, they might be right … but I would naturally ask, “So what?” Was the game trying to be QWEPOIUEQWR? Why is the property of QWEPOIUEQWR important?

“My concept of games as art is unfairly narrow, I don’t understand why people don’t agree with me. Also, non game art in games isn’t games as art.”

“My concept of games as art is unfairly narrow, I don’t understand why people don’t agree with me.”

It would be unfairly narrow if it weren’t true. Do you consider a game as art just because it has impressionist graphics, or an award winning plot? Since those elements can exist independently of the game, the fair thing is to declare the elements art, and the game only the medium for that art.

“Whether you can jump high, sounds more like a game state than a game rule.”

It’s a mutable game rule. It isn’t part of the game world (as in the assortment of in-game elements that the gamer can interact with) or it’s various states.

“Those two things sound different to me.”

Then let me make it clear. Art can be delivered through the medium of games, or games can BE art. Passage uses symbolic design to deliver it’s art, and is as such a game that operates as a medium for art.