Principle 6.4: The Aesthetics of Games

When I was younger it seemed like a lot of the games my friends and I played were focused a lot on expression and design. In particular, it felt like a lot of games that marketed themselves as for young girls were about designing spaces, environments, outfits, and expressing yourself via your own designs. Many had very loose goals or very few specific actions you had to take and no semblance of “winning”. We would often play these games together, but it also felt like you could define yourself by your preferences and in a game world you could imagine a thousand different possibilities of who you could be and what life could look like.

When I hung out with my siblings or their friends, it seemed like games were often very different. Games were all about winning. Many were explicit imitations of sport or else were some other kind of mini-game or battle setup where you were in a team trying to beat another team at something or another. These games, whether virtual or active, seemed much more grounded in who you are in this moment, how good you are at one thing or another.

Reading this chapter made me reflect on the types of games we are exposed to, and how they can shape how we experience and interact with the world. In reading through the “Aesthetics of Games” section, it seemed to me that certain games prioritize certain elements over others and that many of those choices reflect certain conventions of who we believe will be playing the game. One of the video games I do remember quite enjoying when I was younger was a tennis based game where you played tennis matches to excel in your fake tennis career, but you could also get sponsorships and shop for cute clothes, which was also quite fun. In retrospect that combination of focus on challenge as well as fantasy and expression seemed unique at the time, especially in a sports-type game.

More recently, I haven't spent much time playing video games. Though during covid, my friends from college and I connected across states via playing overwatch together. I am not very good at the game and the idea of being yelled at by my friends does not initially sound like a fun activity or “play”. That being said, I sometimes think those dynamics mimic the stress and problem-solving we used to experience together going through engineering classes, which initially brought us together. Regardless, it is nice to have that opportunity to connect with them again.