Agency As Art-Nguyen

This note last modified March 22, 2023

#notesFromPaper Year : Tags : Authors: Nguyen

When we play games, we explore agency. Limiting it, expanding it.

Talks about Sign - game

In the real world, our utility function is pretty static, but in games we play with changing it constantly.

soccer with a gun

The world forces us to face certain obstacles and mold ourselves into those obstacles. Games are a way to mold the world, to face the obstacles we want to.

In the real world, we have to deal with people who value different things than us, but in games, we at least know that everyone values the same things.

Games are threatening, they create an illusion that values are clear, well defined. But I don’t actually think that’s just games, it’s all media.

Chapter 2

  • games have us engage with disposable ends, specifically we make pre-lusory goals disposable.
  • pre-lusory goals + constitutive rules = lusory goals.
  • Suits is not a “game purist”, in that he’s ok with there being external rewards to playing a game. According to Suits, in order to play a game, you just have to take up certain rules.
  • Intrinsic: for no external rewards. Extrinsic: For external rewards. Achievement: For victory. Striving: For the struggle.
    • You can make a 2x2 of these categories.
  • Are disposable ends actually ends? Yes, because that’s what differentiates us from an actor.
  • We definitely have the ability to pick up new ends, why is it so hard to believe we can do so in the short term while playing a game?
  • Stupid games is striving play

Chapter 3

  • Maybe we can take disposable ends, but can we really get absorbed in them?
  • paradox of hedonism
  • gameplay is an example of a self-effacing end
  • If you can’t immersive yourself enough in a game, you’re boring. “What’s the point?” If you can’t get rid of your end fast enough, you’re overcompetitive (gets mad after a loss)
  • Submerging yourself temporarily is a way we can ignore other worries
  • maieuitic end, an end achieved through the process of coming to have other ends (figuring out what you want to do with your life)
  • paradox of failure

Chapter 4

  • Games are a bit weird, in that we’re taking on rules that someone else made for us. Maybe we should enjoy sandboxes more?
  • autonomy - agency as art
  • Here Nguyen discusses the central point of the book, that games allow us to communicate agencies, and a game is just a specific communication of an agency.
    • Agential fluidity is the ability to pick up and put down different agential modes. Games help us practice this.
  • coherentist autonomy

Chapter 5

  • Talks about aesthetics in games and other theories towards aesthetics in games.
  • People often talk about sports as an art
    • This is usually in reference to the experience of spectators, but what about the experience of the players themselves?
  • Talks about negative experience and games with awkward controls
  • There are different stances by which one can approach a game:
    • Play stance: Playing the game
    • Spectator stance: watching the game
    • Design stance: Designing the game, or thinking about design elements without actually playing or watching the game.

Chapter 6

  • games follow a prescriptive frame
  • Nguyen believes in the cluster theory, that games are art because they share a lot of resemblances to things that are already art.
  • some interesting notes about death of the author

Chapter 7

  • In most art, the thing the artist makes is the thing you focus on. Someone paints a painting, then you look at that painting. But in games, the artist makes a set of rules etc., but the enjoyable thing is the player’s experience within those rules.
  • participatory art
  • breaks down the definition of agential art
  • agential distance
  • Architects also have to deal with agential distance, since not everyone will use a building like an architect intended.

Chapter 8

  • games manipulate social interactions between players as well
  • Art can be politically and socially active as well.
  • Nguyen claims that consent isn’t all that makes a game, but tbh I feel like his counterarguments are responding to a strawman of consent (consent is informed)
  • Talks about the magic circle, how it’s a social contract to treat in-game events as separate from the real world.
  • Different game designs support the transformation from “real world” to “game world”
  • Art creates “specific socialities”. Plenty of things modify the way we interact with one another (cities do as well, for example), but most are for mechanistic, capitalistic reasons.

Chapter 9

  • Nguyen is afraid of the simplification of the world caused by games. Games trick us into thinking chasing after points and simply definable metrics is the pinnacle of success. He’s more afraid of “Wall Street profiteers than serial killers”
  • Game players ends are disposable, which is why it’s not too bad to interfere with them. irl though, people aren’t pursuing disposable ends, which is why it’s horrible to treat other people as mere means.
  • Game goals are simple, commensurable (comparable to each other with standard scales), and rankable (it’s clear how some in game actions are better than others in regards to ultimately winning the game)
    • Ok some games aren’t like this. Figure skating is scored by judges
  • So many companies have gamified things
  • value capture
  • metrics are usable, portable, and aggregate-able, even though rich qualitative metrics are probably better
  • But the metrics may not align with reality!! Gamification is fine when goals are clear
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