The Beauty of Games

[droqen]

Re: Frank Lantz'
"The Beauty of Games"

[droqen]

[AB]

[droqen]

Why am I reading this book?

bleet

frank lantz' The Beauty of Games  has come up a few times for me in context of kill gameplay, im going to read it deeply soon not just because the title posits the opposite position -- but because i suspect lantz is kind of coming from the same place as me, and is trying to find the light.

the real question i have is . . . has he found it to my satisfaction, or does the book come from a place of beautiful denial?  remains to be seen

I heard about this book casually at some point, and was not too sure I needed to read it, but I heard Lantz speak about the book briefly in an episode of Eggplant (I believe it was his first UFO 50 appearance), and in this mention he -- or one of the hosts perhaps -- offhandedly joked that his next book needed to be called [TODO, FIND QUOTE] something like "The ugliness of games" (???). This was the first time I was really interested in reading the book.

[droqen]

Second, a friend recommended it after beginning to watch my kill gameplay rant -- and this brought it back on my radar. This friend (hello secret friend) has lots of interesting and good thoughts and cares about my work, and so, this was enough to set me off.

Finally, I did a quick ol' droqen tarot card reading with my unreleased app (which may forever remain unreleased, thanks Apple) asking,
what will I get out of this?

I drew THE SUN. My particular little mini intepretation mentions confidence in the future, along with radiating hope and strength and whatnot (all the usual sun shit) and asks, what unspoken truth has been illuminated by the light? There is a little guy on the ground, ready to fly but not flying, another in the middle in a beam of light, and a third in the middle of the sun (perhaps glowing, perhaps the sun itself, perhaps punching the sun, whatever).

This felt nice. I want to know what happens, and which role I will play. Am I the sun, illuminating -- or am I a recipient of light?

I'm looking forward to finding out.

[droqen]

Oh, that's right. I also read Lantz' substack post about Fractal Block World, I don't have a 'close reading' thread for this post but my loose response was that his finding beauty in FBW is not a step forward (in terms of my 'kill gameplay'), and is perhaps a key aspect of why I suspect him of what I call 'beautiful denial.'

[droqen]

p7?

"On Thinking Playfully"

This page is from the editors of the book series of which The Beauty of Games is one part.

"video games are such a flourishing medium," they write.

"this is what Playful Thinking [the book series] is all about: new ways of thinking about games and new ways of using games to think about the rest of the world."

i wanted to be cynical about this but i like it, haha. okay, time for the book proper. Lantz' argument.

[droqen]

p9?-10?

. . . how your brain works when you play a game. . . . you internalize the behavior of the game's objects, how they move and interact. . . . Playing a game means learning this language, the game's semiotic system, and then using it to assemble larger ideas and meanings.

It's no surprise to me that this is what Lantz expresses liking, about games! In some  interview somewhere, another thing on the internet that I will not go out of my way to find, he speaks of the hooks that games get in you, the way that you get hooked by a game, and you can be of two minds -- you can be hooked, and you can examine your hooked-self.

That's not really the most relevant thing. I'll speak to the quoted text above, the part pulled out of a larger position on the beauty of Serpentes; learning this language is exactly what I find exhausting, even wasteful, about gameplay, what leads me to kill gameplay... We have a lot of languages! Importantly, we have a lot of real languages, languages that are dying, languages with long and beautiful histories. I'm not opposed to language, as I'm not opposed to desire; but don't we have enough?

If I want the pleasure of learning a language . . and then using it to assemble larger ideas and meanings--well, we have a lot of those already, don't we? This strikes me as an obsession with the medium over the message, and I have a lot of thoughts about that. I understand some people like the medium, I'm familiar with the phrase the medium is the message, it's not what I'm looking for. I want to know what Lantz feels about the message--what makes games beautiful? What makes games beautiful?

Perhaps I misunderstand the title.

Does "The Beauty of Games" refer to what it is that makes games, as a whole, beautiful? Or does it refer to makes one game, as a game, beautiful among games?

p13?

[I love] Serpentes because of its brilliant candy rainbow colors, the chunky electric buzz . . . the slippery feeling of sliding between two instincts and deliberately choosing between them using the power of conscious thought. . . . This game is juicy . . .

For my part, I agree with what Lantz writes -- but I am questioning the instinct. I understand what is delicious about candy, and the sensation does not need to be described to be acknowledged as pleasurable. But what do I get from it, as a person? Not as a player.

[droqen]

But this was only the introduction.

1
Games as an Aesthetic
Form

[droqen]

This chapter is the true structural introduction. In these pages Lantz describes his goals. His hopes. I will come back to check on these, the hopefuls that he expresses. These are the things that he wants the book to do which I want to see how he does:

I want this book to give people [on the outside] a window into this world and help them understand . . why some people find games deeply beautiful, and why the particular way in which they are beautiful may be historically and culturally important.

I find myself in this position: on the outside, where I have now placed myself. I am not especially out of touch with why people find games deeply beautiful... I'm not an outsider in the sense that I do not understand that. Still, I'm interested in Lantz' argument about the why. Why is it important? Lay it on me.

(Lantz expresses a desire to "provide a theoretical framework" -- I am not interested in this, myself, and I expect I will skip over a lot of this content.)

. . . I want to do what I can to push games themselves in a certain direction. Because to propose an explanation of how games work as culture is to describe a way they could work and suggest a way they should work.

I'm not a fan of the resigned nature of this aspiration. I want to know, what is the 'certain direction' in which Lantz pushes, in which he would choose to push, in which his pushing goes despite not particularly making a claim here or even making a stand as to having any desire. He is resigned to push games in a certain direction. What is that direction? Why is he pushing? I'm intrigued.

Games matter . . . because we love them, we refuse to live without them, we weave them into our lives and sometimes build our lives around them.

This is a completely insufficient argument for me. If Lantz falls back on this often -- an appeal to obsession as his core argument -- then I might stop reading before I'm done. It's not that I can't recognize the obvious on-the-face importance of things that people themselves choose to make central as part of their lives, that this literally does mean that they matter, but it doesn't get to the heart of my estrangement from the art form.

[droqen]

To recap. Here's what I want to see this book's answers to:

". . . why [do] some people find games deeply beautiful?"

Why is "the particular way in which [games] are beautiful . . .  historically and culturally important"?

Finally, Lantz loosely supposes he will, whether he likes it or not, to some degree "push games themselves in a certain direction. . . . describe a way they could work and suggest a way they should work." What is this 'certain direction'? What is this 'way' (or are these 'ways')?

[droqen]

earlier i wrote, "i suspect lantz is kind of coming from the same place as me, and is trying to find the light. . . . [but] has he found it to my satisfaction, or does the book come from a place of beautiful denial?"

lantz writes, "Games are beautiful, and understanding the particular ways in which they are beautiful is the purpose of this book."

my reading is that he has taken as a precondition that games are beautiful, and this assumption is what raises questions for me. are games beautiful? this is also what i wanted to question in the Playful Thinking introduction. there was a sense that i got that 'why are games beautiful?' was beyond reproach, a question not to be questioned.

what if games are ugly?

p7?

"Why is play both so important and so powerful?"

what if it's not?

[droqen]

p17?

"games are an aesthetic form. Which is to say they are something we do for their own sake" -> i really hate this phrase that keeps coming up in games discourse. "for their own sake" makes no sense at all. lantz follows up...

"they are something we do . . . in search of beauty, pleasure, and meaning" -> great! thank you for saying what you are actually doing the thing for! 'for their own sake' was just noise.

sorry, it's getting late and i'm only 17 pages in. i should chill out, but reading this stuff sets me on fire.

[droqen]

i am an avid reader of things i dislike and disagree with. i am still working out the best way to do that. i have relaxed and am flipping idly now through this book. will anything jump out at me to love, rather than to pick apart? i am looking for that thing that resonates.

[droqen]

p27?

"what looking is to painting, thinking and doing is for games"

im ready to fall asleep, into a deep and beautiful slumber. when we look at a painting... what is that experience of looking? would i make a painting to... hmm... the expressive engine, that is what interests me, and idon't see it in this theorywork.

i am not a painter bt when i produce art i think, what is the feeling of this place? not in words, not crudely. but i adjust and adjust and adjust, paying attention closely to the vibe of the whole. i may touch it, i may not

the act of looking, the act of thinking, of doing, these are the domain of the player, not the artist.

zzzzz

[droqen]

hi good morning! sorry that "zzzzz" reads like an "i am SO bored of this" dismissal, but no i literally went to sleep because it was late and i was tired.