Comment by kibwen
1 month ago
> So, the way it's different is that it's you, in a way it can't be when you read a novel, or look at a painting.
I disagree.
Consider what it's like for a non-native speaker to read a novel. Yes, the novel that they're reading, all the words on all the pages, are identical to what a native speaker sees. But they might lack basic vocabulary to get all the meaning. They might lack cultural context to get all the idioms. The artifact is the same, but the experience each reader has is different.
Now consider someone who's a fluent speaker, but who's new to the genre. They possess the vocabulary of the language but they lack the vocabulary of the genre, so they won't understand when the author deliberately plays with tropes, subverts them, etc. Compared to someone who's genre-savvy, the experience each reader has is different.
Now consider someone who's both a fluent speaker and genre-savvy, but who is jumping into a work in a long-running universe with decades of history, e.g. Star Wars or Star Trek or any comic book superhero. They won't get the deliberate references or callbacks, so again the experience the reader has will differ.
And of course there are a million other ways by which interpretations of a novel will differ, based on the life experience of the reader. There's a reason that it's common for people to argue about the interpretation of even straightforward books, well before you get to something like Joyce's Ulysses.
So while it may be true that the words of a novel are all delivered in the same order to all readers, which isn't analogously true for the experience of a video game, that doesn't really set video games apart as a medium. All art is interactive.
The variation in interpretation is the same, but that's not really an interaction. In a video game you're not just the audience you're a participant. There are other forms of art like that, and they too are difficult to review.
Reading "Blue Prince" [if you're thinking "the book is actually named Red Prince in the game" and you are still playing stop reading this, right now, I'm serious] is a very different experience for a new parent than someone like me. But that's just a variation in interpretation.
In contrast Ascending is a different experience if you've half-arsed it - maybe even somewhat without quite realising what you're doing, versus if you've meticulously planned (as I did) or again if it all came together by chance on the day. A movie could have attempted this pay off but it doesn't land the same as for those three different experiences.
> The variation in interpretation is the same, but that's not really an interaction. In a video game you're not just the audience you're a participant. There are other forms of art like that, and they too are difficult to review.
I think you participate in all art. There are novels where you have to bring a lot of yourself to the table to form meaning. There are video games where you may superficially control the character on the screen, but your participation doesn't significantly alter the meaning. E.g. i think super mario brothers is less participatory than most novels because despite controlling mario there is really very little of yourself you are bringing to the game.
Its all on a spectrum and i dont think video games are necessarily any more participatory than any other medium. Some are more and some are less. Interaction and participation aren't the same thing.
late edit: to give an example, take a game like doki doki literature club. This is probably on the extreme end of interaction in a video game, you make almost no choices and those you do largely don't matter, and yet it feels (or at least felt to me) very participatory much more so than your average game where you do get to make choices that do matter. I guess i would say you participate in making the experience what it is to you.
Ultimately I do agree there's a spectrum.
I am aware of Doki Doki Literature Club but have never played it, however I have played SMB and several related Mario games. And I think actually tiny ways in which you do make a difference as the protagonist in SMB actually did draw me into that more than say, "My Cousin Rachel".
I am not a plumber, I do not inhabit the mushroom kingdom and AFAIK I am not engaged in rescuing a princess. Nor am I a wealthy young orphan (I was older and poorer than the protagonist decades ago when I first read "My Cousin Rachel") who is infatuated with a woman who may or may not have poisoned another cousin of his. Nevertheless, I am playing Mario. The choice to jump on a Goomba is mine and mine alone, whereas Philip is going to sleep with Rachel even when I think, as I turn the page, that this is an extremely unwise course of action. [Spoilers but, like, she wrote that novel a long time ago, you should have read it, it's pretty good]
I don't so much like video games where I periodically lose control so that the story the creator wanted to tell happens anyway. In a Metal Gear Solid game for example I find it annoying that I know Snake shouldn't pull the lever or whatever but the moment I lose control of him Snake is going to pull that lever. But I see this loss of control as a betrayal of the central idea. If Kojima wanted to make a movie about this idiot who follows orders from people who obviously are lying to him, he can do so - that shouldn't be a video game IMO. On the other hand, when I'm given narrative choices, even if they don't matter to the big picture story, they do matter to me. It is not important that I do not control their ultimate consequences, after all that's not how choices work IRL either.
> In a video game you're not just the audience you're a participant.
I'm not about to say that games don't occupy an interesting point in space to the degree that they invite (or require!) you to actively participate in the art rather than passively observe. But I still contend that such a stark division is artificial.
When I spent my youth running around the worlds of Mario Sunshine or The Wind Waker, whatever narrative or gameplay experience the games presented was secondary to the worlds themselves that stoked my imagination. My fondest memories were imagining myself being in those worlds, at which I spent hours upon hours, using them as a canvas for creativity well beyond what the limited game mechanics could allow. And that wasn't directionally different from how I experienced the Harry Potter series in that same era, spending countless hours daydreaming that I was in that world. It didn't matter that the latter was a book, it was interactive to me nonetheless, as well as to legions of others, as the piles upon piles of extant fanfiction can attest.