Comment by bawolff
1 month ago
> 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.