A Theory of Beauty for Games
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- Games are a unique medium, with their own aesthetic properties. Given this, what are the properties of games that we might consider beautiful, and what relationship does this have with our understanding of beauty outside of games.
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Sources
The Art of Video Games , Grant Tavinor
Hearts and Minds, Frank Lantz GDC talk • Hearts and Minds
Man, play and Games, Roger Callois
The legend has returned!
I appreciate the spoiler warning even for classics
in Zelda Wind Waker every successful hit on an enemy has an escalating sound effect to it that blends perfectly in the background music. When I played it I felt fully entangled into that world, that story because of that mechanic. To this day I find it beautiful.
The rare English Country Tune cameo! This really is a beautiful game.
Very happy to see a new video!
Ooooo nice to see you back : )
Fantastic Video, this subject is overlooked by most game developers and almost all gamers.
Beauty for games, beauty for other medium or beauty for non-human creations, such as nature, are in a way, all the same: counter-entropic, anti-chaotic, patterns of harmony
Beauty is in the proportions, the ratios, just like the golden number
Beauty is recognizable in that it evokes specific emotions, feelings, aesthetics
In the case of games, these patterns are patterns of what's specific to games: interaction
"Patterns of interaction" is where beauty hides in games, and the map of that is the game space
Patterns of interaction is of course also known as "rules"
For video games, the difference is: simulation
Therefore, it's the pattern of interaction and how the simulation processes it that generate beauty in games
What about Art? Art is Revelation. Revelation of Truth about Reality, through the emotions created by beauty and Aesthetics
Art is the other side of the coin of "Logic", which is revelation of truth about reality through rational thinking
Love this channel so much.
Great! Serious aesthetic theory about games.
I missed this.
One big question though...
With the example of chess, and the quotes mentioned in the video, the artistic beauty of chess is being defined as a composition that emerges from the performances of the players within the rules.
But for the example of Shadow of the Colossus, we look at the emotional beauty of a non-interactive cut-scene. Not saying that it isn't beautiful - but it seems extremely far removed from the emergent quality of the player performance.
I see no reason why video games shouldn't be able to have the same player-driven, emergent composition kind of beauty that chess does. And does a non-interactive cut-scene even qualify as "game"? It's just like watching a video...
Film as a medium can produce outstanding beauty, and how to do that is well explored. But why shouldn't games be able to have their very own, inherent game-beauty - without having to resort to actually stop the game-play in order to show you a cut-scene so that they can borrow from film.
Agreed. It pains me whenever people analyze games purely based on their plots and cutscenes while ignoring the actual gameplay i.e. what you're actually doing.
Yes, games are beautiful & works of art. From the colorful landscapes in "Ghost Of Tsushima" & "Rime" to the black & white world of "Limbo" & "Escape Plan" to the colorful vector lines that twirl & spin around the screen in early 80's arcade games like "ZEKTOR" & "Eliminator". And then there is "Shadow Of The Colossus" which sits above all others with it's mystery & unanswered questions all while the soundtrack blows through our ears like a tornado.
But the question should be if the unique parts like interactivity are work of art and not because they look like movies or have music in it
"work of art" could be a synonym to "work of culture" and when the culture represented by the work has intimate meaning to you you could find it beautiful i guess. I believe that there is deep rooted cultural and civilatory meaning in strategy and planning, especially in fights where strength alone wont cut it. (famine in winter, draught in summer, the unknown strength of the enemies army) I can imagine chess to aesthetically build on top of all that.
Reminds me why I love making games
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One of the most frustrating theories of beauty I ever encountered was wholly devoted to disproving the idea that beauty is a subjective experience. A, self proclaim, "Conservative Aesthetics," that had something like 12 axioms it refused to question, and included the purely rhetorical social-ethical dimension of him "convincing" the author's own students as part of his proof. (Not recognizing the power dynamic at play with the whole 'trying to graduate' thing). And even spent a whole section of the book for ad hominem insult against the Democratic party of the U.S.
One of the axioms even was "beauty is a quality of the object." So basically just begging the question of his conclusion in the axioms!
I think games can be helpful for avoiding this kind of position on aesthetics, because they are often, as your video covered, inherently social and evolving based on preference
Beauty is based on objective criteria though
If it's entirely subjective, then you can't say that something is beautiful
Beauty is a form of harmony, order, as opposed to chaos. It's basically patterns that come together, all of which are criteria that you can use to identify beauty
Of course, not all patterns make Art, but definitely a patternless, formless, incoherent work is NOT Art, and that is for 100% certain
Btw, would love to have the link to that theory, just to see what the arguments are..
When energy is poured into a system, and the system dissipates that energy in its slide toward entropy, it can become poised in an orderly, indeed beautiful, configuration - a sphere, spiral, starburst, whirlpool, ripple, crystal, or fractal. The fact that we find these configurations beautiful, incidentally, suggests that beauty may not just be in the eye of the beholder. The brain's aesthetic response may be a receptiveness to the counter-entropic patterns that can spring forth from nature.
@@lastburning I completely agree
Beauty is order, and opposed to chaos
Beauty is information compression in a way, it's our brain being able to make sense of the universe
Chaos is absolute randomness, lack of all possibility of a pattern, complete uniformity
@@TimmacTR And then you play Cruelty Squad, which is intentionally not beautiful and without pattern, and people find that message and artistic decision beautiful. Beauty is an emotional affect of a subject. Just because a subject has that affect toward an object, even if it is for consistent reasons, that doesn't place beauty in the object. It's still in the mind of the subject. The subjective component being consistent doesn't cause object to change.
If I said, "Oranges are beautiful because they have an orange fruit," that would not cause the blood orange to not have red fruit. No matter how long i maintain the belief, nor how many people agree. A belief doesn't create physics. So how could a belief about beauty create beauty in an external object?
(Also, really? Hearing about a dude buried in political biased motivation who begged his conclusion in his axioms makes you want to spend time on the argument? Don't waste your time with bad faith sophists, my dude.)
Fuck yeah
game at 7:05?
Hatred
It's not a good game btw, even if you ignore the theme, the game mechanics are just bad. So I would not recommend it on any level