Possibilities in Games

I’ll concentrate on the games this week in the discussion of readings, though I’m interested in pursuing some of the issues Golumbia raises in particular regarding how games make possible certain kinds of interactions and approaches (i.e., aggressive) and how and why we characterize such activities as “play” (201).

But for the most part, I’m interested in Mountain. In playing the game, I found it captivating to enter a world in which I have limited agency as a player. I had very little to manage or control. My sense of purpose in the space of that game shifted from “I need to accomplish/do something” to a much more receptive disposition. I did very little in this game. The game did it’s own thing, and I went along for the ride. What I did have control over is interesting to examine a bit closer. I was able to choose what I could hear. And I could create sound in addition to just hear what the game chose to broadcast. I could choose, in part, what to experience (“Thoughts” and “Dawn”), and I could choose the quality and size of the experience. Also the perspective with the ability to scroll above and below the mountain.

What I could not choose, in the game play, is what appeared and what happened. Sure, I could choose not to see the trees, elements, and life flow if I panned to the underneath of the mountain, but they still happened in the game. And I had no impact on those elements at all (i.e., the weather, trees, revolution of the mountain, the backdrop of the sky and, at night, the universe. I had no opportunity to be aggressive, as Golumbia discusses. What did this game allow me to do, or be? Rather than solve something, I observed something. Rather than accomplish or conquer, the game opens a space for contemplation and reflection. I really liked it.

Stick Shift and Hurt Me Plenty are fantastic games as well, but I want to take a moment to discuss Queers in Love at the End of the World. It felt like a compressed version of Choose Your Own Adventure, and I loved it. Unless I was playing it wrong, it drove me to think through the micro-cognitions I pass through at any given moment, those barely noticed consciousnesses that bubble to the surface and quickly pass, recede, or shape the course of my conversation, thinking, or actions. There’s more here to mine, and I’ll be happy to discuss this, and the experience of playing Mountain, in seminar. I know Nathaniel will be eager to discuss the games as well based on back channel conversations we’ve had, but I’m struck, too, how the issues of control and agency we’ve discussed in seminar and the blogs—Aden works over Galloway’s Protocol here—play themselves out in the gaming experience.