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BOOK CLUB: Games: Agency as Art - Intro (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-11 17:43:50
Edited:
2024-02-16 20:58:48
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

[Pictured: Absurdly fuzzy .jpeg of the Games: Agency as Art cover]This is a discussion thread to post quotes and feelings and thoughts on Chapter 1 of Games: Agency as Art (or GAAA or GA3 or G3xA or GAaA)

A discussion thread for what? Huh?! WAKEUP dummy its Book Club Time again check your emails more frequently stay vigilant and sleep with a rapier within reach. This is a dip-your-toe-in checkpoint before the three coming discussion threads:

JAN 18th: part 1 discussion (chapters 2-4)JAN 25th: part 2 discussion (chapters 5-7)FEB 1st: part 3 discussion (chapters 8-10)As with the other book clubs, the discussion post will appear upon the stated day and we will all swarm to its banner BUT one could and should arrive as fashionably late as suits their schedule, as well as pilgrimage their way through the checkpoint threads 2 months late or go back and start a new fight in an old thread. You are highly encouraged to engage w myself and Ellen and each other at your leisure. Here at the CJ The X Patreon Book Club deadlines exist for no one except me. And Ellen.

*gunshot* and we're off

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CHAPTER ONE SAYS WHAT:

Nguyen sets out his thesis, working vocabulary, outline, and hard sells you on the book you're already reading (because academia makes you write abstracts it's not his fault okay - Ellen). He's a cozy communicator and makes technical points clearly, and he will repeat them compellingly until you understand,.

THE AFOREMENTIONED THESIS:

Y'know how a song is art for your ears, and a painting is art for your eyes? Nguyen argues games are art for your AGENCY. You CHOOSE to care about some arbitrary goal in order to experience what it's like to BE the person who cares about that goal. Games are pre-designed sets of goals, limitations and attitudes that we take on willingly to experience different states of mind.

This means games use the resources of their medium to DO a Thing to YOUR BRAIN. Instead of care about eat food get money, you now care Collect Cardboard Square.

But why? Collect Cardboard Square does not typically Compel Me, and also it's hard to Collect Cardboard Square. Also it's a lot easier to win a game if I ignore the rules, it's so much easier to get the basketball in the basket with a ladder. 

Nguyen posits that the temporary voluntary change in our own agencies in games allows people the "experience [of the] precise texture of struggling..." (14), and that accepting this "Struggling On Purpose" as a live art form opens our understanding of games, and leads us to interesting philosophical places that are applicable to other areas of our lives.

 "...the goals, the rules, and the environment that these various parts animate into a system of constraints... the medium of the game designer is agency." (17)

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Some Vocab:

Goal - "the target we aim at during the game" (5)Purpose - "our reason for playing a game" (6)

Suitsian Games - "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." (5)

Striving Play - "...goal and purpose are skew." (9)Achievement Play - "...goal and purpose are aligned." (8)

Aesthetic Striving Play - "...game play engaged in for the sake of the aesthetic quality of the struggle." (12)Practicality - "The satisfaction of finding an elegant solution to an administrative problem, of dodging perfectly around an unexpected obstacle." (13)Aesthetic Striving Games - "games designed primarily for the purpose of providing aesthetic experiences of practicality to their players." (13)

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HARD SELLING YOU ON THE BOOK YOU'RE ALREADY CLUBBING

Back in July I interviewed Nguyen for almost 2 hours and I highly recommend that you go rewatch that interview. We have different approaches in the way we talk about art but have plentiful intersecting interests. If he said something to me you thought was interesting but we didn't unpack very much, then he's probably said it longer and more completely in GA3.

This is Nguyen on his own terms. If you liked the first chapter then you'll like the book. And if you're this deep on the chapter 1 discussion post, the contract is signed, your fate is sealed etc. Your turn to talk.

What'd you think of this introductory chapter? What tickles your curiosity? How you feeling?

Ellen & I will be in the comments!

Files

Comments

valentin

I didnt have time to read this the last few weeks bc of school stuff but now I've got a lot of time on my hands so I thought why not start reading this! I enjoyed the first chapter quite a bit. I didnt expect this book to be this funny, definitely am sold on the book I have already bought. I'm reading this on my kindle and it's been kinda funny bc this thing literally gamifies the process of reading by telling you how many minutes it will take you to read the next chapter and gives you a percentage of how far you are in the book. Had to turn all of that stuff off bc it is quite distracting. So yeah, I'm excited about what's to come. See you at the next checkpoint!

annie liz

At the time of this posting I’m working through Braiding Sweetgrass with everyone else in book club, a biweekly process that’s allowing me to be patient and hold community with this group in a really honest and beautiful way. However. There’s a whole other book I missed! A book experienced by this dope group of patrons when I was in the purgatorial state of Having A Lot Going On. And, in my absence from participation, I have felt the call of my patreon roots: to go through a book club book MONTHS after it has occurred at a probably unhealthy speed, posting my thoughts long after folks have passed it by, blurting musings only to the void and possibly CJ’s notifications (my apologies to CJ’s notifications). Anyways. Very excited, very intrigued. Really liked the intro, and understood a lot of the references made in the Conversation With interview. Nguyen’s writing style is clear, precise, and rich with comparison and metaphor, a language that is far more malleable to my brain comprehension than other academic works. I know he WILL go very in-depth on pretty much everything he mentions in the intro, so I’ll refrain from commenting too much on the meatier points for now (but I WILL…. ohhhhh but I will…) What I DO want to comment on: I VERY much liked the careful build-up of terms and definitions. I don’t always like being treated like I know nothing, but in this framework of games and philosophy…. I know nothing. So I appreciated how he started from the ground up on vocabulary that will likely become a little more second nature to me down the line. As a more personal tie, really big fan of the dance/rock climbing comparison. My Dance Brain was immediately turned on and understood his explanation far more innately. I also compared it to another one of my recreational games, which was rowing in college. After I left the ballet industry, I was pretty lost with what I wanted to DO with my body, but it needed to be SOMETHING. I joined the rowing club on nothing more than a whim, really, and I got so much joy from it, partially for the teamwork, partially for the physical exertion, partially for the competitive aspects, but ALSO for how aesthetically satisfying the sport is. It requires a very specific type of coordination, collaboration, and a successful result is difficult to describe; the boat GLIDES when perfectly balanced, and everyone working together is flawless choreography in its own right. It’s an aesthetic as much as it is a means to a finish line. I’m very curious to examine more of the connections to art, aesthetics, and the artistic medium of “agency” he explained towards the end. I wasn’t completely overwhelmed by it, but I don’t think I fully Got It quite yet. It’s the title of the book tho, so I’m gonna guess that he’ll probably get more into the topic over time. Consider me very sold on this book I bought! I love love love how excited he seems to be writing it. I am always a sucker for people who are passionate and CARE about what they’re doing… the ironic apathy becoming more and more predominant in online spaces has been wearing me thin over the last few years. It’s so magnetic to read someone getting pumped about something they WANT to think about and write about and talk about with joy and care. That’s probably how I ended up here, too :)

Chandler Sterling

Excellent title; pleasant first chapter; overall, great first impression. The title really does deserve its moment to shine. As someone who grew up in the age of the "The Last of Us PROVES Video Games are Art" video essay, I've had enough of the glorification of the narrative video game. Glorifying one medium for how it can compare to previous ones is boring and kind of really bad. Outlining that agency is what makes games art is already winning brownie points from my biases. (And yes, I know this chapter makes it clear that video games are not the only type being discussed, but just look at the cover art. Just going off of that and the cover I think it was fair for me to think video game). I am grateful for all the definitions. I am even more grateful for the *italicized* terms! (Note to the reader: if I understood how Patreon comments worked AT ALL, I would've italicized the word italicized. However, I have spent lifetimes [like 10 minutes] trying to discover the ancient ways of the Patreon italics, and have come up empty handed. If you have learned these sacred arts, please guide me as a parent would their child. Otherwise, feel free to join me in my lament.) Why is it so often that only the boring textbooks know how to highlight the important terms? Nguyen has earned even more brownie points. At this point, I should probably go ahead and preheat the oven, the brownies are not going to stop coming. One thing I found really interesting about how striving play is discussed is just how similar it is to how "rules lawyers" describe what they like about D&D. To paraphrase, "The fun is in making an improvised narrative within the constraints of the game." As someone who delights in reading the rulebook for a new board game, (not because I love rules, but because it means I can advise my family on all the clever strategies I can see floating around me like that card counting meme from that one The Hangover movie) I can say for sure that I didn't need much convincing around the existence of striving play. I had this concept for a while, but it's nice to know its name. Maybe now it'll come when I call it. I think the addition of *aesthetic* striving play (again, I would like you to imagine aesthetic as italicized) really adds a layer to what I liked about D&D for all the years I couldn't play it. I was just binging D&D podcasts, and enjoying the aesthetics of someone else's striving play. I am very excited by the coming ideas and the descriptions of so many new games I can buy and read booklets for. I really just wanna have a board game night now. Someone hit me up, my family is not going to be able to handle my Twister/Bag on Your Head combo.

mouse

I'm finally catching up on the reading lol, brain Bad, life A Lot, for a while so I'm happy to be doing it and learning, eventually. I hope it's ok that I'm just posting thoughts right now! I tried Lila, and I failed at it 😬 zen was a real challenge for me but really really great, and I'm definitely keeping Lila on my reading list for the future, but for now I'm skipping it (almost exactly a year behind lol). 1) I really like Nguyen's voice in this book, it's easy to read and understand and it feels like im being calmly led through really difficult concepts, and I love it so far its very fascinating 2) sooo many of my friends who are my age (late 20s early 30s) want to play games all the time lately and it's kind of a strangely wonderful vulnerability to participate in that type of community? I grew up with card games and word games with my family, so it's nice to have a community of people who value that too right now. lately my family has been playing Connections from the new york times and we text each other our results every day, and it's so interesting to see which of us struggled, which categories we succeeded or failed in, even what order our brains came up with the answers. our goals aren't winning, it's striving, it's just the challenge of exercising and taking a couple minutes every day to play a long distance word game. it's really nice. even the UI of the game, with little rounded squares and random words is visually calming? when I was in inpatient a year and a half ago, and outpatient a year before that (brain bad) a pot of what pulled me out of the badness was playing games and laughing uncontrollably with people who also spent the day being extremely vulnerable with each other. pool noodle tag, my beloved stupid game. coming from varied painful backgrounds didn't matter for those hours, what mattered was the focus on something other than feeling out of control and a severe lack of agency. playing games really is a language and a library of agency, it can be so healing, which is such a warm reassuring concept that I hadn't identified before. preserving that freedom is really important to me lately. Nguyen defines that warmth really really well. 3) quote i particularly liked: "...nor do I pull out the Monopoly set by myself, and roll myself around in heaps of Monopoly moneyl, glorying in all I command." lol 4) really love the idea that aesthetic performance is fun for humans to engage in and see in each other 5) things I'm curious about: why do "wellness" apps that focus on rewarding productivity or meditation and keeping score of your "progress" work? or do they actually work? I'm curious about the appeal of those insidious gambling apps directed at people who are interested in sports betting, and the gambling apps directed at children. I'm curious about the gamification of the Grind and hustle culture, also sold as "owning your own business" in the context of multilevel marketing scam-cults. the quote "games threaten us with a fantasy of moral clarity" feels applicable here. 6) I loved the interview with Nguyen!! very cool to read and then see the expanded explanations in the book. pairing those together is really helpful anyway! sorry for posting so late! and a too-long comment 😬

ellen

feeling good tbh! perhaps unshockingly!! the persistent enthusiasm in this chapter charmed me very much--I love when somebody is going into a critical analysis with ALL their feelings equipped. there's a line right at the end where he states a conviction that it's important to draw on examples of games from all types and textures and that he's played every one and you should too (and you should Love Them), which to me, is an attitude that absolutely earns trust. I'm a fan of semi-bitchy academic footnotes. I ate well in this abstract. looking up into the future with the face of a Victorian orphan extending their bowl for Please Sir, Some More. I also thought it was great that so many vocabulary terms are laid out and then used to define new terms within paragraphs of this genesis. ZMM and Lila did a similar thing where the author clearly had a high level conception of truth that he then realised needed to be stepping-stone ladder-runged towards. Also please God. Somebody tell me they will play Bag On Your Head with me asap. urgently waiting online and all that.

Còiseam

So, I read (most of) this book last year, in something of a mad rush, so I'm looking fw to being able to go through it at a more leisurely pace. The part that most intrests me is Nguyen's discussion of submersion - there is some mode or layer of agency that we submerge ourselves into for the sake of doing something, but can pull ourselves out of as and when required. (This is mostly in ch6 iirc). It seems like a very neat way to individuate kinds/structures of agency and then talk about them separately, but it also lets us think more clearly about how our agency changes over time. The obvious avenue that comes to my mind is as an analysis of how moral corruption works. (He talks about moral danger in games, but that is a chapter I didn't read last time so idk if this is the direction he goes in, didn't sound like it). Games aren't the only time we submerge ourselves in layers of agency, and sometimes we forget that we're submerged. There are jobs where we deal with other people's interests all day, at such volume, that you kind of have to deal with those interests in the abstract. But over time this can train you to think about other people's interests as only having abstract status, it can make you blunted and unfeeling towards others. We can become unteathered, floating lost in that kind of agency. A particularly vicious employer would be able to prod and tweak one's work environment to produce different kinds of moral mistraining in us, if they wanted (say) to suppress union activity. If I particularly wanted to corrupt people, I might drown them in a mode of agency that was ill-suited to virtue. I'll look fw to ch9. I wonder if this is the avenue he goes down. I also loved his little bit at the end about how much detail he's going to go into on some games. Like, yeah, this is all fascinating and excellent philosophy, but part of the reason he wrote this book is also just to geek out about a bunch of games he thinks are cool xD. The most noble of academic motivations!

maddy mars

I am feeling very pleased about this introductory chapter and await more! A thing my brain tends to do when reading well, anything I guess, is constantly question and come up with combatting scenarios, or rather scenarios to compare to the argument at hand. An example of this came about when I read on page 8 that "The value of those in-game goals is temporary." Which made me think about professional athletes. For them, the goal of Their Particular Sport becomes less and less temporary, as their financial income begins to rely on it. Them Being Good at Game leads to them possibly gaining notoriety, fame, and most importantly obviously, Brand Deals. This was something I wondered about a lot, even more so when Nguyen brings up the comparison of someone playing for exercise, vs someone just playing for leisure. One last argument that poked at my hell brain was, video games that mimic the player being in the NFL or NBA. These games are massively successful where video game fans and sports fans intersect, and it makes me wonder if certain personalities are drawn naturally to different types of games, and play them for differing purposes. Sorry this is so unbelievably rambly, I'm shocked at how much I have missed posting to discussion threads.

halley

This chapter got me thinking about the different kinds of games I play and some of the underlying purposes they serve. I find myself doing sudoku puzzles in airports or trains, to pass the time and give myself a purpose during the waiting periods, or when I'm really upset or stressed it can be the perfect thing to calm myself down and direct my focus on something completely irrelevant. I think I like the feeling of success that comes with completion; to counteract the feeling of failure. Theatre games can help to explore all the possibilities of what one could do in a situation, and can be used to rehearse situations and be more confident to take action in reality (i.e. Theatre of the Oppressed, or self-defense practice scenarios). They can also act as an excuse to inhabit roles you might normally not feel comfortable showing to others. When I reached this quote, something clicked for me: "Games can be a way that we collaborate in the project of developing our agency and autonomy." I remembered that I actually have extensive experience in game design, in designing activities for youth at peace education camps, from which I have learned many worldview-shattering/life-altering lessons myself through these kinds of activities. Being able to facilitate that for others is the most amazing feeling- to know that I've learned enough of this world to create an experience that can teach a big concept to a little person. The camps would usually start with name games, proceeding to get-to-know-you games, communication games, and running games, until the group trusts each other enough for simulation games, and possibly even trust games. The simulation games are the most fascinating- in just under two hours participants can learn through experience things like peace and war, inequality, scarcity, disabilities, etc, all in a controlled environment. Then we'd all come together to discuss what happened, reflect, and connect the experience to real life. Often the kids who struggled the most during the game or had a 'bad' experience had the most profound things to say afterward and learned the most. (I was inspired to revisit some of these after reading this, and in case anyone else is interested here's a link to a gamebook: https://copilariefericita.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/cisv-gamebook.pdf) I also just started reading Art as Experience and I wanted to share some quotes from the first chapter, which I found relevant to Nguyen's writing about the experience of harmony: "Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it- either through effort or by some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed." "The moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intensest life. "In a world like ours, every living creature that attains sensibility welcomes order with a response of harmonious feeling whenever it finds a congruous order about it." (John Dewey)

cedarwheat

Appreciated that the author spent time defining definitions up front. Made this an extremely clear read. The points on the aesthetic experience of "flow" and the joy of being able to perfectly surmount challenges reminded me of why I like tough games. There really is so much joy in coming up against a challenge, running against a wall, and then beating it after hours of work. I view these brutally difficult games as a wish fulfillment type thing because of their difficulty. Any hard challenge in a game is at least theoretically beatable, unlike real life. Had a nitpick on a smaller one of their claims, that games strictly expand agency and are not about rules and obstacles. They gave the example of Portal as a game clearly without obstacles, but that game is all about having to overcome puzzles using a limited set of capabilities! I also agree that games create new forms of agency that you can't normally experience in real life, but I don't think it's mutually exclusive. ("The Stanley Parable" is a very simple walking game that really digs into the question of to what degree games can actually give players real choices that matter, worth checking out if you're interested and haven't played.) Apologize if this is too off-topic, but I wanted to shout out one of my favorite games of all time, and I think one of the biggest examples of games as art through agency, an artwork that couldn't be a movie/film/etc and only makes it's point within the medium of agency. It's called "The Outer Wilds." There is no combat, and only one permanently unlockable item. The player is a space explorer trying to understand a tiny solar system and an ancient alien civilization that's vanished by the time the game starts. The game depends on you, the player, deciding where to go next, learning everything you can there, and then using the knowledge you learn to explore and learn more than you could before. It takes most people 15-30 hours to piece together everything and reach the true end. It made me experience this powerful feeling: scientific discovery leading to almost religious awe about how wondrous the universe is, to be alive, the cosmos observing itself, etc. Very similar thematically in that way to a lot of Ted Chiang's short stories. Because the game is trying to get you to explore and experiment and test and figure things out, it's best to go in completely blind and it can only be played once. Reading this chapter made me just rethink about how much I loved playing it.

Emi P

Nguyen has a way of writing that is very compelling to me. He lays out the themes so clearly and beautifully you have no option but to go along with the ride. Read now think later. Even tho he barely mentions it I really liked the way he refers as art as ways of framing reality with a medium. I think that’s a good bite sized way of defining something very broad, even though it lacks a little bit. (but every definition I’ve read does) Agency as a medium is such a great concept. When I start thinking of games trough the lens that Nguyen presents some really cool realizations start to appear. Like how we all have used that medium before, as kids we create games all the time. It’s almost the first medium in which we learn to relate to other humans (excluding maybe language), then come the crayons and the flutes and other things. When I think about that, i can’t believe we have not thought about games as such powerful art form until now, like how is Nguyen the first person to present this. I think this is a sign you are standing in front of a great Idea.

Amor Sciendi and Shakespeare Play by Play

I think he did a great job of limiting and defining his scope in the opening chapter. I read the chapter this weekend as I was also making an unnecessarily complicated lasagna recipe and I couldn't help but draw connections between that activity and some of the scenarios he brought up (the struggle/obstacle examples like a marathon or a hike). The purpose and the goal are in some ways aligned, but there is also the purpose of struggling with the materials and ingredients involved in the recipe. I've thought about food as an art form before (like tea ceremonies as art, for example), but this chapter added a layer to that for me... thinking about the actual process and agency we have within the constraints of the dish or the recipe and reflecting on my interaction with those constraints I'm looking forward to reading more this weekend.

Adison

hello! jumping in, i was drawn right in by nguyen’s accessible writing style and i’m feeling quite excited to continue exploring his ideas. going in, i was a little nervous that i wasn’t going to connect with the subject matter as i am not an avid gamer nor have i spent much of time playing (specifically computer and video) games. however, i was pleased to learn that one, i have lot more experience with games than i thought, and two, there is a whole lot more to the medium being discussed here. i want to hyper focus on one quotation - “Consider the difference between two superficially similar activities: dancing freely and rock climbing. Dancing freely—as I do by myself with my headphones on—can be an aesthetic experience. My own movements can feel to me expressive, dramatic, and, once in a rare while, even a bit graceful. I also rock climb, and rock climbing is full of aesthetic experiences. Climbers praise particular climbs for having interesting movement or beautiful flow. But, unlike many traditional forms of dance, climbing aims at overcoming obstacles. The climbing experiences that linger most potently in my mind are experiences of movement as the solution to a problem—of my deliberateness and gracefulness that got me through a delicate sequence of holds (Nguyen 2017a). Dancing may occasionally be a game, but climbing is essentially a game. It is unnecessary obstacles, taken on for the activity of trying to overcome them.” as a dancer, rock climber, and all around movement freak, i enjoyed the comparison between the two. framing climbing as a movement game rather than simply a sport put words to why i have found climbing to be a lovely counterpart to my dance career/training, and why games in general offer value. “Games can be an existential balm for our practical unease with the world. In games, the problems can be right-sized for our capacities; our in-game selves can be right-sized for the problems; and the arrangement of self and world can make solving the problems pleasurable, satisfying, interesting, and beautiful.” really excited to continue exploring these ideas and happy to be back reading and posting!! P.S. I also loved the discussion of stupid games!

Natthew Lee

Hello! New book! “We have a significant capacity for agential fluidity, and games make full use of that capacity.” (5) Very interested in agential fluidity. How and why do we switch between and train different agencies? He talks later about how games can train us in types of agencies. I hope he goes more in depth into this theory of agencies more broadly, for when we’re not playing games, because idk if I understand it completely. The idea of developing agencies from games reminds me of Piaget’s Developmental Stages of Play. Through play children learn the limits of their world, how to move without hurting themselves physically or socially, problem solving, etc. Is everything children do play, until we have enough agencies developed to follow a goal we would be upset if we failed at? (i.e. we grow out of exclusively striving play) “In any game without a time limit, if victory were in our grasp, it would be entirely reasonable to delay the victory in order to have more of the activity of striving” “The son just wanted to extend the experience, to keep on beating his father forever” (11) I do this shit all the time. I love playing the game and don’t want it to end, and become desperate to extend it. I always feel foolish and short-sighted for not recognizing the larger goal of the game afterwards. There are two acts of desperation as a game nears its end, one is trying to extend the game if you’re striving play, and one is cheating to win if you’re achievement play. “So: consider the category of aesthetic striving play - that is, game play engaged in for the sake of the aesthetic quality of the struggle.” (12) On first glance, this idea makes me think of Patricia Taxxon’s video essay on the game Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy which, iirc, argues for the aesthetic experience of a game conveying frustration and work. I was very very interested in the talk on page 20 about the limits of gamification irl due to a plurality of unknowable motivations. In even the most complex game we are motivationally coherent to each other, there’s no guessing at what the other player is trying to achieve - not beyond the short term - if you know the rules. This makes so much sense to me and clicked right away as the key difference that makes games a simplification of complex reality(?) “When we gamify our ordinary lives, we will be tempted to shift and simplify our ends for the sake of the struggle - but then we will no longer be aiming at the same target” (21) Makes me think of when I got a letterboxd account to gamify my movie watching in a bit of a social media sense, to help me expand my horizon of film taste, but as I watched the movies rather than paying attention to how it affected me, I would pay attention to how my star rating of the movie would change as the plot developed, or what quips I could write about the movie. I guess that’s true for all of social media, as a gamification of sociality. What Bo Burnham said in Inside about venturing outside to mine content for the much more real digital world - the gamification shifts our ends for the sake of the now gamified struggle/striving play that is socialization. Rather than socialize more and connect for meaningful connection, we do so for the metrics and signifiers of social interaction. Cart-Horse orientation etc etc Overall really enjoyed it! Most excited for ch. 2 and ch. 9.

Rowan

I really enjoyed this first part of the book. I haven't read ahead but I am looking forward to it. I am about to commit a cardinal gaming sin and invoke The last of us part 2. If any of you haven’t played the game, the important thing is that one of its biggest controversies around it was player agency and empathy in the game. You play on two opposing sides and are forced to commit murders in order to reach the goal. To me, the most revealing thing about this game is that it disproved the former theory I had: That games could be the way to manufacture empathy for people who have a harder time putting themselves in other people's shoes. Games, especially RPGs, are different from other conventional media because they require a more active role. Even if limited you do have some input into what happens unlike in a movie. Nguyen quotes Mary Flanagan: “games can be worthwhile as conceptual art, comparing them to avant-garde performance art”. I actually really like that descriptor for games “virtual performance art”. The kind that requires audience participation. There is a level of structure that goes into performance art but there is still some level of spontaneity that makes each performance different. And unlike theater, those changes usually come from the audience. The virtual part is still important (at least for now), the characters you interact with are not real ( as Nguyen points out that aspect gives birth to a different set of morality). “In games, on the other hand, we sculpt artificial structures of practicality to suit the kind of practical activity we wish to engage in. But it is not just the environment we shape — we shape our motivations, our goals, and the goals of the world’s other inhabitants, in order to shape precisely the kind of practical activity we desire.” This was, to me, the most interesting line. My goal when I play is to surrender and lose myself to this new world I am entering but for most other gamers it is the opposite. Empathy is hard to achieve when the medium is based on the player being able to bend the game to their will. Agency in games is the most desirable trait and games (like The last of us 2) that force their player into a situation they don’t want to be in are betraying this sacred unspoken pact.

Ricardo Aguilera

Yay, I finally finished chapter 1! I thought this was really cool! I'd thought a lot about games as letting you occupy a certain role during a fiction, but I hadn't realized that by talking about goals and abilities (instead of just roles) one can encompass a much winder array of even gameplay-heavy games. It surprised me how much the notion of goal clarity in games resonated with me. There's definitely some comfort in holding the hyper-definite values that you put on yourself when playing a game. It reminds me a bit of, like, "trying on" philosophical positions and trying to see what a full commitment to some theses can lead you. I also could relate to his experience with racquetball. I play Dominion with my partner all the time and I try not to investigate too much about the "meta" because (a) discovering what works and what doesn't is part of the fun of striving in dominion, and (b) I wouldn't want one of us to beat the other consistently. (That's also something that randomness helps with). I think I disagree with his analysis of Octodad, at least if Octodad is anything like Getting Over It. The aesthetic of games with clumsy-but-learnable-controls strikes me as less a "negative" agency that highlights the coordination we take for granted, and more of an agency that, like, elevates the simple by making it difficult. An agency that's mechanically impoverished (qwop, getting over it, octodad) is a kind of niche language that accentuates the striving and can make it more beautiful.