Art is Life-Changing

[droqen]

my main criteria for liking a game is "did this game change my life" (but the bar for changing my life is low)

|| | || ||||| ||| is a game I played recently where I enjoyed playing it in the moment, and I believe that it objectively is a good game, but when I had finished it (100% even) it left me feeling underwhelmed because it did not change my life

it did not present me with a single new idea to think about

don't take that as a condemnation. it had a number of very neat ideas that blew my mind the first time I saw them, just not this time.

Mokesmoe said this two days ago in Paradise and I woke up thinking about it for some reason. "Did this game change my life?" "Did it present me with a new idea to think about?" As I get older and am exposed to more things, I suppose it's a mathematical inevitability that finding works that do this for me will become harder and harder. Maybe at some point I'll have to give up on expecting the feeling from anything at all, and find something else to like about stuff.

It is still the goal I aspire to with my own work -- art.

I want to present someone with a new idea to think about, one that's sticky and relevant and novel enough to change their life in a positive way. Not in a concrete way, perhaps. I don't expect to make an educational or self-help piece. Maybe a more modest way to put it would be to say I want to make art that helps a person grow.

[droqen]

I'd like to say that the quote came amidst a conversation about addictive games and marketing and whether these things are 'good' or 'bad' or whatever. And I don't think I care. If it changes my life in a positive way, if it helps someone grow, a game can do, or be, anything else it wants. I can forgive art anything so long as it aspires to this, the true horizon break. And if it does not, then maybe I feel like nothing else it does is worth judging in the first place.

[droqen]

Further thoughts -
There are a lot of games I've enjoyed because they changed my life 'as a game-maker' or 'as a game-player'.
This feels insular, circular, but maybe I can forgive myself for enjoying making and experiencing these moments.

[droqen]

If art changes your life, what keeps it there?

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[droqen]

Transformation (Game as catalyst for personal development): The sense that one's understanding of oneself and/or the world one inhabits has changed, irreversibly.

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[droqen]

a garden's paramount goal is to reward a curious fellow with new ideas, with life-changing ideas, with transformation, with beautifully sticky memories. If there is an evil system at the heart of a garden it is that it wants to live forever in your heart.

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[droqen]

~ SYNAPSE I don't make art to make people happy, I make it to provoke epiphanies.