On Play (boundaries around nothing)
Let's take a few things for granted:
First, "aesthetic" refers not just to the visual element or beauty of a work but to the holistic experience of a given work of art.
Second, the aesthetic experience of a given medium is an intrinsic human verb and the medium is the boundaries we put on the verb to turn it into art. The verb varies by medium — for music it might be "listen," for literature it might be "parse," for games I would argue the verb is "play."
Feel free to disagree, these are merely ruminations. Play follows:
I feel its fairly reasonable to define a game as a set of boundaries put upon the intrinsic verb of "play." This is broad enough to understand tag, chess, and League of Legends as the same category of thing (which, in most ways, they are). There are a few benefits to this understanding, one of the biggest being an emphasis on interactivity. Play is much broader and deeper than interaction, but it cannot exist without it. This understanding calls attention to the work of the designer and their relationship to the player. The aesthetic experience of basketball exists in passing, dribbling, and shooting as much as it exists in running up and down the court, bad-mouthing the ref, and sitting on the bench. Play necessarily pushes against all boundaries, or else the boundaries would have no purpose.
A downside to this understanding is it excludes visual novels (which I personally define as videogames) but to include visual novels in this framework would also necessarily include books. And one does not "play" a book. One can play a guitar, and in this way music can be understood as a game (the physical instruments and laws of physics forming the boundaries). But then following this: is it possible to play without playing a game? What is play without restrictions? Cards are restricted by the deck, tag is restricted by gravity, wild flailing is restricted by the body. So then we must loosen "game," as the restriction of the mortal form is hardly a game without particular circumstance. And then: why can't you "play" a book? Do the words not play in one's imagination? Is it "playing" a book to read it by flipping to random pages and passages, or is it "playing" a book to toss it in the air after ever sentence?
I've lost the plot.
Message me if you have any thoughts <3