droqen's forum-shaped notebook

On art => Close reading => Topic started by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 07:59:06 AM

Title: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 07:59:06 AM
Regarding C. Thi Nguyen's
"Games : Agency as Art"

(This is the 2nd read. Link to my 1st read here (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=833).)
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 08:20:44 AM
Preface:

When I first read Games: Agency as Art, I hated it so much. I didn't finish it. I read some of it and encountered so many things about the content, but mainly about the form/style, of the book that I could not stomach that I just had to put it down and step away. Recently I had an experience with Art After Money Money After Art (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=2633) that has me feeling more open to penetrating a text that is 'unpleasant' in this way, and Matt B has suggested many times that I should give the book another try.

So here I am, giving it another try: I've placed a hold on it at the library. However, there are 8 holds ahead of me and they only have 4 copies, so it may be a few months before it arrives.

I expect (and hope) my experience with G:AAA goes something like this.

Phase 1- I read it, noting down here every complaint and irritation that passes my way, while passively consuming all the raw data presented by Nguyen.

Phase 2- I step away, mad, but at least certain what I'm mad about.

Phase 3- I come back, madness named and placed neatly on a shelf to the side, and summarize the essence of what Nguyen is saying through all his actions -- every word, every tone, every example -- and what I think about it.

But this is all months out. I have to wait for those other people to finish up.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 08:52:35 AM
Update: Despite all the holds, I was casually browsing the book location tracker on the Toronto public library website and saw a book at a very local branch not marked as on hold or taken out or for reference only... so I took a chance and biked over there. Long story short, I now have a copy of the book in my hands. Cool.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:16:23 AM
p3
QuoteIn many cases [the arguments for the value and importance of games] assimilate games into some other. . . category of human pratice.

. . . a type of fiction. . .
. . . a type of cinema, one that adds a new technique--interactivity. . .
. . . a kind of conceptual art, which is valuable when it offers social critique. . .
. . . a special way of making arguments, which can criticize . . . systems by simulating them. . .
. . . a kind of procedural rhetoric, making arguments by modeling causal systems in the world. . .

But I worry that overemphasizing these sorts of approaches may also suppress our appreciation and understanding of the truly unique potential of games.

p3
QuoteOver in the philosophy of sport, the value of game playing is usually spelled out in terms of skills, excellences, and achievements. But notice that this also cashes out the value of games in some very familiar currency.

p3-4
QuoteTom Hurka argues that games are valuable because they enable difficult achievements. But difficult achievements are, obviously, not confined to games. . . . This leads Hurka to conclude that playing games is generally less valuable than engaging in more useful non-game activities. . . . Games can offer us only difficulty (Hurka 2006).
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:17:29 AM
My commentary here - I agree with some of what Nguyen is saying! I think Hurka's argument is interesting because I've gone down this path of thinking myself (though not about difficulty). I am more interested in what Nguyen is going to say about games than what he is going to say about what games are not, but I'll read through the chapter to make sure there isn't something else I need to keep an eye out for in order to not miss his point.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:22:18 AM
Quotep4-5
Changing my core values would take, at the very least, significant time and effort.  . . .But game activity is different We can change our in-game ends easily and fluidly. . . . When we play games, we take on temporary agencies--temporary sets of abilities and constraints, along with temporary ends. We have a significant capacity for agential fluidity, and games make full use of that capacity.

Okay, so what I see here is a straightforward argument for role-playing in games. Other art forms do allow this - a writer, i think, does this when writing characters, for example. A designer does this when imagining the person or persons for whom they are designing. Unique to games? Not really, but it's fun, I like it as a thing that we can use games for -- that games can play with -- that games can allow us to play with.

It's not how I would define 'agency', generally I associate agency with the ability to have influence on things, actual things. I've often thought of games as 'agency fantasies' or as creating 'the illusion of agency', but if we define agency as instead the feeling of having influence on things, i.e. agency as that very illusion, then sure, games give you agency.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:25:33 AM
QuoteFor the remainder of this book, I will focus on understanding those games and playings that fit the Suitsian definition. For the sake of brevity, whenever I simply use the bare term game, I can be taken to referring to Suitsian games.

As a skimmer, I am not a fan of this. A book really needs to make sense even if you miss some random sentence in the middle of page seven in the middle of chapter one. This is seriously a broken nonfiction writing pattern in my opinion: if something on page 200 can be totally misinterpreted because it relies so completely on something on page 7...

Well, I'm glad I read it anyway.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:30:06 AM
I have read Suits, and I feel that this next bit is basically summarizing The Grasshopper for people who haven't read it. I can't tell if it's a particularly sparkling summary. I don't love it, I don't hate it, it's just not necessary for me.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:37:31 AM
p13
QuoteIn ordinary practical life, we catch momentary glimpses, when we are lucky, of harmony between our abilities and our tasks. But often, there is no such harmony. . . . we can design games for the sake of this harmony of practical fit.

This seems to dance terribly close to Hurka's line of reasoning given on page 3-4 above, which Nguyen decries, and also "cashes out the value of games in some very familiar currency." If indeed this is the, or even merely part of the, "truly unique potential of games" to which Nguyen aspires, then as in Nguyen's own summary of and counterpoint to Hurka's argument, can we not say (p4, but edited) "Science and philosophy are valuable in the same way as games in offering [harmony], but they are also valuable in other ways. They give us truth and understanding or at least some useful tools, as well as [harmony]. Games can offer us only [harmony]."
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:38:40 AM
Nguyen next attempts to describe or define "the artistic medium of games" which amounts to a discussion I don't much care for ('what are games???'), so I won't touch any of this.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:42:43 AM
Earlier I noted I wouldn't define 'agency' the way Nguyen appears to, and here he addresses what is definition is. sort of. Mostly he rejects the idea of defining agency at all, which is not very useful to me.

p18
QuoteWhen I speak of agency I am generally thinking in terms of . . . intentional action, or action for a reason. . . . I think that investigating how games work in the medium of agency will actually teach us something about the nature of our agency.

Rather, given his line of thinking here, I think that the title is saying very little at all. If we are spending all our time defining games and handwaving agency, we might retitle this book 'Agency as explored through the lens of games'. Agency is not foundational here, and the particular way Nguyen avoids that problem is very frustrating to me.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:44:39 AM
p18
QuoteI don't think we need a full definition or metaphysical account of "paper" to usefully say that origami uses the medium of paper folding, and I don't think we need to settle on a particular philosophical account of "agency" to usefully say that games use the medium of agency.

This is the last I'll touch on this point for now. Seriously disagree. Look, if you don't want "agency" to mean anything in particular, don't place it in such a pivotal place in the book title, man. Paper is a lot simpler and we can very easily come to an understanding about paper as it relates to paper folding and origami. Paper as it pertains to paper folding is just not a metaphysically complicated thing. Agency is. This is a terrible, terrible false equivalency.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:47:19 AM
OK, next section.

p19
QuoteBut games also offer one more promise. They can function as a refuge from the inhospitality of ordinary life.

Literally, escapism. Nothing more to say or quote from this section.

He offers a summary of each of the chapters in the book next, and I think I'll use this to see which, if any, I plan to read.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:49:47 AM
I'm interested in...

Chapter 4: "Games can communicate modes of agency. And when we play games, we can learn new modes of agency."

Chapter 5: ". . . the aesthetics of agency."

Chapter 10: ". . . aesthetic striving play might offer us some protection against the fantasy of moral clarity."

That's it.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 09:57:02 AM
Chapter 4

It is what it says on the tin! It's good and offers a few terms like 'agential mode' and 'library of agencies', but the basic point is more or less that by playing games we expose -- no, immerse -- ourselves in different, potentially new, 'agential modes' (or new modes of 'thinking and doing' as Frank Lantz describes what games are the art form of), which we can apply in life, especially paired with the fluidity afforded by choosing to both start play and stop play, which are effectively transformations in agential mode.

Of interest to me is that Nguyen definitely suggests that a person can only embody one agential mode at a time, though is capable of switching, which is something I believe in as well.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 10:08:33 AM
Chapter 5

Nguyen's way of writing is so defensive! He opens not with paragraphs but pages of "Someone might disagree with what I am about to say in this particular way, and they may have a point, but I may also have a point, and here is the way of looking at it which may endear you to the point I will make a few pages from now."

Out with it, man!

When he does finally get to it, he is basically talking about the "harmony" given earlier. Or as was once commonly used in game design circles, "flow". Again, despite his initial disagreement with Hurka, this is difficulty and achievement, only he argues that the aesthetic value of games is worthwhile (rather than as Hurka values unworthwhile) because of the rate at which games can deliver the good feeling. But Hurka's argument remains unaddressed.

I am not saying that Hurka is 'right', but Nguyen's point is very close to compatible with that framework; Nguyen claims that the aesthetics of games are basically accessible in the real world and in our real lives. There are other more 'useful' activities, 'real' agential modes, which can (if rarely) produce this harmonic beauty.

I would have liked to see an explicit claim from Nguyen about the value of that aesthetic experience.

As far as I saw, he did not give one.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 10:10:16 AM
One more chapter, then perhaps a conclusion, and I'm done. Chapter 10 piqued my interest because Nguyen suggests it explores achieving "protection against the fantasy of moral clarity". Interesting! However, I feel that it may be purely defensive claim following Chapter 9's suggestion that games may produce such a fantasy. Let's see.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 10:17:11 AM
Chapter 10

p221
QuoteAesthetic striving play [Suitsian play]. . . develops the capacity to submerge ourselves in temporary agencies. But it also helps to develop the capacity to manage and control that submersion. It helps us assert our own values and interests against the pull of the temporary agencies. . .

p221-222
Quote. . . it is not only games that expose us to sticky and seductive agential modes. Our professional roles and institutions do it, too.
(I would argue here that there are many sticky and seductive agential modes provided by many other contexts than our professional roles and institutions. I will not enumerate them here, but I think it strange that Nguyen gives such a narrow example.)
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 10:17:16 AM
~
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 10:26:24 AM
And that's it, actually! There's no concluding chapter; Chapter 10 is the concluding chapter. I don't think I need much time to extract what it is that Nguyen is saying or trying to say, I think he's saying things that I mostly already feel, and a bunch of stuff I don't necessarily agree with.

Here it is, without that awful word 'agency': without any of the words used in the title of this book, actually:

- play is practicing modes of thinking and doing
(especially when there are no present stakes)

- play is practicing switching between such modes
(especially between narrower and wider modes)

- we may design spaces to facilitate such play and practice

- we may communicate new such modes to play and practice

- we must use different modes of thinking in life so this has obvious practical usefulness, and it is also just plain enjoyable to us humans.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 10:45:17 AM
Oh, and by writing those bullet points I realized that at the very heart of my frustration with the book is the title: Nguyen's title takes the form of three completely intangible words organized into a claim that one is some fusion of the other two.

What is a game?
What is agency?
What is art?

I don't think the answers to any of these are even attempted at all. So then what is at stake?

. . .

To be fair, I suppose Nguyen attempts to define games, I simply disengaged because I was not interested in reading the same discussion I've heard a thousand times. Games are some combination of doing things, things you can do, things you can't do, things you want to do, things you don't want to happen, things you can do things to, blah blah blah.
Title: Re: Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]
Post by: droqen on July 05, 2023, 10:47:08 AM
By removing games, agency, and art from the equation completely, it becomes easier to ask and answer: what is the actual human experience we're talking about here?

I leaned on Frank Lantz's 'thinking and doing' in this case. I don't think my summary above is great, but it's a halfway point between G:AaA and what I suppose I'd like to say if I had better words for it. I'll get there.