Games : Agency as Art [2nd read]

[droqen]

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.

[droqen]

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.

[droqen]

Chapter 10

p221

Aesthetic 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

. . . 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.)

[droqen]

~

[droqen]

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.

[droqen]

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.

[droqen]

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.