this is a now a space for discussing game design in whatever way you wish. from crude off-the-cuff analysis, random commentary on modern attempts at 'the video game', truly anything goes here. I'll begin:
===
I had a thought, video games are ghostly imprints of the people who make them. how creative these humans are, to leave such constructs lying around.
sometimes I feel like we living humans are enthralled by these ghostly things. its like stepping into the articulating shell of a great crab and finding yourself ready and able to control the various joints and pistons. if you can only memorize the correct series of hand-wavey motions like some kind of cheap wizard, this crab becomes yours to pilot. yet there is a give and take, here, and when you step out of the crab gundam you leave some flesh behind
The articulating ghostly construct that is a video game is dead upon arrival. no matter how many AI, RNG, SIMULACRA layers, the end result is always a brightly colored pachinko machine.
The only life within them is that which we give, reflected back at us.. ritual life, donated in massive quantities, that is returned in the form of a story that we can tell. A history is generated.
what form does this ritual life sacrifice take? it is varied depending on what you are playing, of course, and could be anything (games are infinite media, all-encompassing to other forms, since they represent this bubble world where anything might be placed within) but these days, the sacrifice most often takes the following forms:
1. description, analysis and application of various species of logic internal to the game's world-mechanics-setting-space
2. repetitive input disguised as busywork disguised as productive labor.
regarding point 2, because the game does not truly obscure the fact it is wasting your time, instead layering it as above and thus creating a pleasing hologram of desire, most players adopt a certain ironic perspective and pursue these time-wasting activities regardless of how pointless unrewarding mindnumbing they can be. see mining in, uh, literally any game genre, Minecraft, WoW, you name it
it seems like some games waste this ritual sacrifice of time, while others bring great rewards if the sacrifice is carefully managed, and so
now that 'the game' as a medium has established itself as the anti-medium, that which consumes all else, even the physical world itself (see: Amazon's giant data centers) it is up to the zoomers and so on to realize just how powerful the above tools are, to control and manipulate players into various avenues of existence.
entire societies and structures of thought and life are being developed in these video games, and having raised myself inside various video game worlds i can attest to the lasting impact these ritualistic sacrifices - transmuted into narrative - have on developing minds.
anyways . . been playing too much Dwarf Fortress again I think
Author
Topic: games as a medium (Read 258 times)