Exploring aesthetic ideals of gameplay (original) (raw)

Making Sense of Game Aesthetics [Panel Abstracts]

2009

In recent years, game studies scholars have brought an expanded conception of aesthetics to bear in the study of digital games. Far from being limited to speaking about the visual presentation of games and graphic styles (with the negative associations of “eye candy”), game aesthetics has become a perspective that allows us to examine the overarching principles and qualities of the gameplay experience. Our aim is to contribute to a fuller picture of what games can hope to become.

Panel : Perspectives on aesthetics and player experience Poiesis and Imagination in the Aesthetic Experience : The Moment of Grace in Computer Game Play

2012

What is the nature of a computer game player’s experience? To have a computer game experience is to have a functional experience, one that is tailored to its function as a computer game. This function is defined by the sum of the properties that produce the meaning of a computer game experience, distinct from the other experiences of human existence: the player ascribes this particular meaning to his experience instead of another. The properties of this experience can be divided between its many dimensions, such as the technical (techne), ethical (ethos), aesthetic (aisthêtikos), etc., and account for the richness and complexity of human experience. These dimensions cannot be envisioned separately from their combined effects and function as an inseparable whole that define the meaning of life. However, for the needs of our demonstration, we will focus on a study of the aesthetic dimension of the computer game player’s experience to show how it deploys itself, whether one is playing ...

The art of the game – how game aesthetics and visual perception affect the player involvement in videogames

Over the last few decades videogames have increasingly grown to influence our lives in different fields. It is an important media, a tool for play and interaction, as well as a cultural phenomenon. The aesthetics of videogames is something this paper tries to investigate in terms of gameplay to the individual player, and how it affects the emotional investments sub consciously delegated to the player. In this paper we headlight the different elements that conduct the aesthetics of videogames. The main purpose of this is to define the term in videogames, and thus get a better understanding towards the importunateness of it and how it can be exposed to investigate the necessary emotions generated by the player.

The aesthetics of gameplay

Proceedings of the 14th International Academic MindTrek Conference on Envisioning Future Media Environments - MindTrek '10, 2010

What does it mean to appreciate gameplay? When we judge a game's gameplay, what are the elements or characteristics of gameplay that we should focus our attention on? We report on a study that analyzed the use of the term gameplay in hundreds of thousands of user-submitted game reviews on a popular online website. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques we identified and extracted the adjectives that modified "gameplay", and then clustered those adjectives based on the words (nouns, verbs and adjectives) which appeared in the surrounding contexts. Our analysis of the resulting clusters shows a surprising richness in the variety of words used to describe gameplay, but more importantly we identify a popular aesthetic of gameplay. The primary elements of gameplay aesthetics are pacing, complexity, cognitive accessibility, scope, demand, and impact. This aesthetic provides two things: empirical support for the importance and centrality of the concepts we've outlined towards understanding gameplay, and evidence of the differences in language for describing gameplay between players and designers/scholars.

An Aesthetics of Games

We are in an age of flourishing and innovation for games. Games are getting more creative, more biting, more innovative and just plain stranger. The aesthetic headliners these days are usually the independent, self-consciously arty wing of computer games. Take, for example, the intentionally queasy Papers, Please, a computer game in which the you play a border security guard in a fictional Eastern European country, tasked with endlessly scrutinizing paperwork, looking for forgeries, incentivized by the game with promotions and rewards for shutting out desperate immigrants.

Exploring aesthetical gameplay design patterns: camaraderie in four games

Proceedings of the 14th …, 2010

This paper explores how a vocabulary supporting design-related discussions of gameplay preferences can be developed. Using the preference of experiencing camaraderie as an example, we have analyzed four games: the board games Space Alert and Battlestar Galactica, the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft, and the cooperative FPS series Left for Dead. Through a combination of the MDA model on how game mechanics give rise to game aesthetics via game dynamics, and the concept of aesthetic ideals in gameplay, we present gameplay design patterns related to achieving camaraderie. We argue that some of these patterns can be seen as aesthetic gameplay design patterns in that they are closely related to aesthetic ideals. Further, as a consequence, gameplay design pattern collections which include patterns related to all levels of the MDA model can be used as design tools when aiming for certain gameplay aesthetics.

ImGame Project: A Comprehensive Theory of Immersive Aesthetics and Innovation in Serious Gaming

International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL), 2024

The study presents the authors' research for the purpose of designing ImGame, a virtual environment inviting users to playfully learn about the concept of immersion and its historical antecedents. The authors describe ImGame's current pre-production stage and examine the basic characteristics of the feeling of immersion. They intend to deepen the current understanding of the immersive experience in art, taking into account its broad cultural connotations. The article suggests that the aesthetics of immersion can be classified into two psychological modes that have not been explicitly defined in the discourse of immersivity: a calm reflection and one of awe. From the technical standpoint, the project offers a simple handling of triggering animations and events of the game as well as storing of their state in order to create gamification elements, interactions for quizzes and other activities for ImGame or any other game using the a-frame framework to create WebXR experiences.

Game Aesthetics

GameScenes: Art in the Age of Videogames

How videogames are conditioning the aesthetics and registers of other media.

In Gameplay : the invariant structures and varieties of the video game gameplay experience

2018

This dissertation is a multidisciplinary study on video game gameplay as an autonomous form of vernacular experience. Plays and games are traditional research subjects in folkloristics, but commercial video games have not been studied yet. For this reason, methods and concepts of the folkloristic research tradition have remained unknown in contemporary games studies. This thesis combines folkloristics, game studies and phenomenological enactive cognitive science in its investigations into playergame interaction and the video game gameplay experience at large. In this dissertation, three representative survey samples (N=2,594, N=845, N=1,053) on "Rewarding gameplay experience" are analyzed using statistical analysis methods. The samples were collected in 2014-2017 from Finnish and Danish adult populations. This dissertation also analyzes data from 32 interviews, through which the survey respondents' gameplay preferences, gaming memories, and motivations to play were further investigated. By combining statistical and qualitative data analyses, this work puts forward a mixed-methods research strategy and discusses how the findings relate to prior game research from several disciplines and schools of thought. Based on theoretical discussions, this dissertation argues that the video game gameplay experience as a cultural phenomenon consists of eight invariants in relation to which each individual gameplay experience can be interpreted: The player must demonstrate a lusory attitude (i), and a motivation to play (ii). The gameplay experience consists of explorative and coordinative practices (iii), which engender a change in the player's self-experience (iv). This change renders the gameplay experience inherently emotional (v) and performative (vi) in relation to the gameworld (vii). The gameplay experience has the dramatic structure of a prototypical narrative (viii) although a game as an object cannot be regarded a narrative in itself. As a key result of factor analytical studies and qualitative interview analyses, a novel approach to understanding player-game interaction is put forward. An original gameplay preference research tool and a player typology are introduced. This work argues, that, although video games as commercial products would not be intuitive research subjects for folkloristics, video game gameplay, player-game interaction, and the traditions in experiencing and narrating gameplay do not differ drastically from those of traditional social games. In contrast to this, all forms of gameplay are argued to be manifestations of the same vernacular phenomenon. Indeed, folkloristic research could pay more attention to how culture is experienced, modified, varied and expressed, regardless of whether the research subject is a commercial product or not.

Collision Thrills: Unpacking the Aesthetics of Action in Computer Games

This article is a study of the aesthetics of action in computer games seen from the perspective of game design. It is an investigation of what constitutes the aesthetics of action. The study assumes aesthetics of action can be formally mapped out and that they inherently involve identifiable and translatable effects, reflected as sensations in players. In what follows will a specific range of techniques from computer games, play and movies be used as examples and compared in order to demonstrate a common ground for the aesthetics of action across computer games, play and movies. The working hypothesis is that the aesthetics of action and the affinities between medias centre on collision. It will be suggested that collisions produce thrills ranging from the pleasure of destruction to the experience of spatial disorientation. Following will the aesthetics of action be coined 'collision thrills'. The examination of the aesthetics of action will draw on aesthetic theory (Dewey, 2005; Burgin, 2010) and will be analysed with the game design concept of 'game feel' (Swink, 2009) and assaultive action aesthetics (Stork, 2013) from media studies.