Hi droqen
I was thinking about how I love starting Animal Crossing, I love starting Fire Emblem games, I love so many games to begin with, but then quickly become disillusioned! With any game there is an initial period of finding your feet, of aligning yourself with the feeling of controlling it. I guess I’d call it something like “developing your routines”
– Droqen in non-gamefeel content
For a long time I, like you, have felt a dissatisfaction once the GAMEFEEL CONTENT of a game is done, and there is nothing more to chew on besides repeating the ROUTINES I have established for myself – often over and over and over again. (Yes, non-gamefeel content may exist there, but I miss the GAMEFEEL CONTENT.) Last time I wrote an introduction to the HAIKU games idea: of investigating minimal forms of gamefeel and some of the ways that games can evoke a more personal meaning in the player. The conceit is that GAMEFEEL – while engaging and satisfying in its experience and beautiful in its design – is merely a MEDIUM without a MESSAGE. It is somehow missing a form of beauty that I crave. GAMEFEEL games establish and teach us a mode of play, and then help us play in it. But because these play systems are so meticulously designed to facilitate this form of bootstrapped play, they end up feeling contrived. They fail to impart anything relatable to me as a human; they feel as pure machinery.
Now, with that restated, on to my first point:
(1) I’m not even sure how much I agree with this!
Design can be defined as the aesthetic unification of form and function, where the aesthetic appeals to human values. GAMEFEEL already achieves this unification – PLAY is a human value that GAMEFEEL facilitates. A game’s systems are the function, the form is the way the game is structured to facilitate exploration of the system space, and the aesthetic value is PLAY, EXPRESSION, among others. The games give us a novel space to experience these valued experiences. Doesn’t this give us more than enough to reflect on ourselves and learn something? It seems not to me, but why? What is this lacking? Why doesn’t this appeal to play satisfy the kind of natural beauty that I am craving? Is it just too limited? Every game just reiterating the same values, with the same perspectives on those values, over and over again? Is it’s form on its own incapable of presenting broader ideas? I’m not sure, this doesn’t seem right.
But if I accept this craving and inspect it closely, a curious symmetry seems to appear:
(2) Discovering the game’s systems through GAMFEEL is a very similar process to discovering meaning in a poetic presentation!
During the GAMEFEEL CONTENT of a game, there should be enough clues for the player to piece together a model of a system that EXPLAINS the way that the simulated system works (or at least mostly). It explains the systems of the game, and provides a scaffolding that helps the player explore the system. It explains it enough so a determined player can learn and master it. In HAIKU games, I imagine that the game ends at this point, the moment of mastery, at the peak of the player’s engagement and understanding. A momentum carries the player into the second phase of ‘reading’ the game, finding another ‘system’ that EXPLAINS the aspects of the game’s system that were left unexplained by the GAMEFEEL CONTENT. This other system is less operational, it doesn’t have to stand up to the scrutiny of the simulation. It is more flexible. But still, there should be enough clues for the player to piece together a model of a system that EXPLAINS the gaps in the player’s model, tying any loose ends up in a satisfying manner. Much like GAMEFEEL, it is another instance of following clues to find a system, but the looseness of it perhaps lets you fit some slipperier ideas in the game, past the demands of the simulation. And since it is not checked or simulated by the game at all, players can posit their own, unique system and satisfy themselves with it.
There is something curious to this symmetry, something totally self-resonant. It ties the whole package together, establishing a single mode of media interaction, defining a MEDIUM that can hold a MESSAGE.
Writing this all reminded me of Increpare’s ‘Heaven on Earth’, which gracefully makes this leap at peak momentum, or maybe a little afterwards, from (an admittedly clunky) gamefeel to meaning, and then follows through to leave my craving satisfied.
OK so, I wanted to make sure that I understood this:
> During the GAMEFEEL CONTENT of a game, there should be enough clues for the player to piece together a model of a system that EXPLAINS the way that the simulated system works (or at least mostly). It explains the systems of the game, and provides a scaffolding that helps the player explore the system. It explains it enough so a determined player can learn and master it.
I think I get this. You play a game, like Cruel World, and in addition to getting good and enjoying it, you also form a mental model of why you are good In HAIKU games, I imagine that the game ends at this point, the moment of mastery, at the peak of the player’s engagement and understanding.
and then,
> A momentum carries the player into the second phase of ‘reading’ the game, finding another ‘system’ that EXPLAINS the aspects of the game’s system that were left unexplained by the GAMEFEEL CONTENT.
By “reading” do you mean after you play the game and it ends, you reflect on the game you just played? For example, Heaven on Earth ends and I think “ah, it comes full circle in a kind of pleasing way because of the way your digital devices become like a field of stars at night” and also, “the game encourages you to rush through the going to work bits, but pause to consider your consumer decisions”.
Is this the second phase you are talking about? Reflecting on the meaning of the thing you just played, as constructed by both the GAMEFEEL and NON-GAMEFEEL CONTENT?
So when you say,
> (2) Discovering the game’s systems through GAMFEEL is a very similar process to discovering meaning in a poetic presentation!
This second phase, this “reading” is what you are comparing to discovering meaning in a poetic presentation?
Right, I am comparing the activity of ‘reading’ the game through gamefeel to ‘reading’ the – I guess it is non-gamefeel content? (still thinking about this) – through the reflecting/thinking you do. The pleasing full-circle type of things clue you into considering your relationship to both fields of lights, and maybe you settle somewhere and develop a model for it. It is a pretty standard ‘relation to art’ thing I suppose! – but connecting it to gamefeel in this way is helpful to me in some way, it seems.
Cool! In that case I want to point out that gamefeel and reading are both (I think, and I think Swink thinks) results of being “jacked in” to the cybernetic circuit of game/player. They happen continuously, so I’d say that the player is reading while they are gamefeeling. The reading can continue after the player has put down the controller, but arguably so can gamefeel (nausea, the Tetris effect, etc…)
So that’s my real comment: I’m not sold on
I think I’d rather think of these as modes than phases. Even modes ignores the ways that they are deeply tangled… How about threads!
Yes, good point – ‘threads’ is a better word!