The ‘Resolution Problem’ of videogames is an interesting framing for the way that we get bored after some time exploring gamefeel games. But I have some question about it.
… HAIKU games made me think “ah yes, videogames: stay in your lane”. Be polite, be expressive, be real; don’t overstay your welcome, don’t pretend to be a piano, or a novel, or life itself. Be Videogames. Videogames have a resolution problem (I insist, there is no escaping it). I take Jack’s suggestion as a call to work with that constraint rather than against it.
-Zeigfreid (Brevity is the dark souls of wit)
I mean, I agree, we do get bored of gamefeel games after a while, and that eventual boredom I think sours the experience for me, the way it ends as an empty slog. You could just stop playing before it becomes a slog, maybe. But until it is a slog, you are having fun – why would you stop? Haiku games is, I suppose, one hopeful way of designing gamefeel games that stop before they become a slog, without feeling dissatisfying. They are interested in working within the constraints of this ‘resolution problem’.
But. I want to know more about why we get bored. What is different about videogames compared to the many subjects in the real world we might spend a lifetime exploring? The ‘resolution problem’ glosses over this as known and understood, when it isn’t. And likewise it exaggerates the real world’s depth. I agree with Mer here:
The world is not deep. We decide voluntarily to look at it in that way. We decide to give importance to some things and others not, and those we don’t know about, is like they don’t exist. We invent meanings, goals, interests, reasons. They’re as fictional as the rules of a game, and just as meaningful (as we let them be).
-Mer (On life, games, and everything else (42))
I think we can give this same amount of care to an individual game. One source of the seemingly infinite depth of the real world comes from working out how it all works. You can do the same for a game really, but as you go deeper, you start to leave the game, and start thinking about game design in general. You enter the real world of systems design, psychology, practice, and all the rest.
Another source is working out what you can do with it. Maybe you don’t venture out into game design in general, and you search for increasingly hidden consequences of the programming of any specific game. Glitch-hunting. Speedrunning is a great competition and community for motivating this way of playing a game (among others), and for digging deeper into the game itself. But yes, this is separate from the standard in-game space for exploring. It is a way breaking through the bottom-level resolution of the in-game space to find hidden tunnels down there. But what is this threshold it is breaking? It is curiously hard to define.
There is definitely the additional invented goal of going as fast as possible, at whatever allowed cost. Speedrun categories are invented as they are deemed interesting or meaningful. But it is still playing within the game’s rules – those aren’t changed. So, has it gone beyond the original resolution that we got maybe got bored with by the end of our normal playthrough of the game? I dunno. It is certainly a different way of playing. Less guided, more difficult. It has a lot more failure than the guided playthrough. Is this the line?
You can learn to play Mario really well, or you can learn to play the piano really well.
-Zeigfreid (Brevity is the dark souls of wit)
What would it mean to ‘perform’ in Mario? Is it speedrunning? Completing Kaizo levels? Does there need to be a spectator? Or could we perform for ourselves, or just for the joy of doing it? Is that playing the set-piece levels of the game? Inventing our own challenges in it? Participating in some unstructured play in the play space?
What does it mean to perform in other games? Let’s consider standard sports. We can appreciate the grace that players display while making winning moves. Competition and spectator sports seems like a well established avenue for performing in an expressive system with individually controlled elements – like gamefeel games.
Or, hmm. What does it mean to perform with the piano? With a piano you can create an auditory spectacle for others to hear. Music has its own curiosities and interest and methods of enjoyment, different ones to games or even to playing the piano itself. Can playing a game present the same spectacle? Can it do it outside of a competition?
Or let’s get back to the act of playing the piano, since that is more like playing a game. Learning to play music with the piano is a massive game we can play with the piano. The depth comes from the wide range of expression we can perform, and we can appreciate both the physical motions and mental gymnastics that go into playing AND the musical output. In videogames, I suppose we only have the ‘for-my-brain-only’ physical motions and mental gymnastics – perhaps also the spectacle of precision or strategic challenges (voyeuristic windows into the ‘for-my-brain-only’ stuff, perhaps): e-sports.
There is another interesting thing to consider in this comparison of Mario and Piano. Both were designed to be played. You can design instruments just like you can design games. The functions of each design are different though.
Recently I have been reading Artful Design by Ge Wang – it is a fascinating exploration of design in all its forms, and the way that designed Things can speak to our own humanity as we interact with them – this is what makes them ‘artful’. It definitely has overlap with my goals for haiku games, and definitely gets a ‘recommended’ from me, though it isn’t perfect. The reason I bring it up though is that it talks about some very strange instrument designs: some are quicker to get you making some jams, others are just meant to be fun to use. There is a lot of different forms for musical instruments, they can even be gamified to an extent.
Instruments are meant to make music, but how you do that can take a lot of different forms.
Videogames are meant to … uh … –
But how you do that can take a lot of different forms, too. Both instruments and games can consider how much guidance they provide as you explore, how much ‘gamefeel’ systems contribute to learnability or the moment-to-moment feel of their play.
I guess my point is: the piano was designed with a very deep resolution. (Singleplayer) videogames maybe less so. Is it just that the piano is easier to perform with? Well, let’s not forget about very simple instruments that I think you could say have a ‘resolution problem’ when compared to piano. Like maybe the recorder? Can you go glitch-hunting with the recorder to find some new techniques of play? Is that breaking through the resolution wall?
And when we give them meaning (notice the play between “definition” and “something that matters”) we learn about them, cause learning is a way of caring.
Maybe it’s not about running out of things to explore, but of running out of love.
-Mer (On life, games, and everything else (42))
I don’t have a lot to say about this, but I really appreciate this thought. When digging into all the reasons that we get bored or not with something, it’s good to remember that it is also a product of how much we put in, how much we care. And it makes me reconsider: why do I stop caring about jumping around in Mario’s world? Is it simply the lack of novelty in its challenges? And if so, why aren’t I making up my own challenges? What is stopping me?
