Jasmine Jones

31 October 2021

MUSIC 256A

Reading Response 6

When completing this week's reading, one of the first principles we come across is Principle 6.4, "The Aesthetics of Games". The reading goes on to list various aesthetics and genres of game seen throughout time. While looking through this section, and completing the reading as a whole, I was thinking about Kunwoo's (woohoo!) lecture about game design on Wednesday. We talked a lot about what makes games artful, and what could be considered unartful as well. We discussed how many artful games contained narratives, and the most impactful ones brought up emotions or brought people together. One thing that stuck with me was our discussion of games that we probably wouldn't consider artful. It was a very interesting thought process for me because growing up, I played a lot of video games, but only so many of them I would consider artful as a young adult! I would mainly play what my older brother played, which included various sports video games like NFL Street, NBA Live, and even the occasional pro-baseball game. None of these were particularly revolutionary in a design or narrative sense, they simply made playful fun. As I got older, I leaned more into narrative-based games that still contained action, with moving stories and characters you get attached to. Now, I'm at the point where I equally value and play both narrative games and just for fun games. It makes me wonder, can we still consider a game artful if solely for the playfulness it allows us to experience? I agree that the best games give us an experience with its aesthetics, design, and narrative, but I can't help but think back on the simple games from my childhood with an artful lens because of the way they made me feel as a child; happy, playful, and free. Is this enough even when a game might not fit into our traditional frameworks? How subjective can we be?