Too often I think we are chained by the systematization of concepts and sensibilities to truly grasp the way in which the vibrations and rendering of place and action can exist through digital spaces. Within a ten-minute text-adventure game on itch.io (constituted almost entirely of raw-text sentences on a blank wallpaper) I've intuited more textures and tastes of imagery and landscapes than any video-essay or structured analysis I've ever seen. Maybe it's a sort of cathartic and utopian awakening to touch a work that manages to portray this sort of ambiguity regarding the lens through we which we "feel" aesthetics in games (which is almost uncharted territory in terms of definition since we can't even manage to determine what 'game design' is) and not succumb to this cynic preposition of everything needing function and purpose through some sort of utilitarian perspective regarding "intention", that is, the sort of evaluation that seems to look at art from the outside instead of the inside, and I think that's the key point overall I'm trying to make. In order for something to "succeed" or to be "convincing" to one's understanding of art there's a certain undertone that implies a sort of staticity in our "digestion" of those experiences, a voyeuristic excitement at 'consuming' works that are, to our eyes, something that exists in our plane first and in their plane last.
"feelsgood" and "gamefeel" are wide-ranging adjectives I've seen be used in game criticism for a while in both bad and good connotation but we sometimes forget how those concepts of "crunchiness" or "pleasure" traverse for one person and the other. The popping little explosions of Kingdom Hearts' keyblade plummeting the enemy away like a ragdoll and Doom's shotgun ravaging its way through the fleshy insides of a demon is a very superficial comparison I'm making on the fly to demonstrate the differences in "feel" interactive fiction can create, but in that sense why do we tend to use this word as if it somehow systematized and encompassed all sorts of feel into a concept that can be 'good' or 'bad' depending on context? Sometimes it feels good to hit things. Sometimes it feels awful but it is also compelling. Sometimes a world can exasperate its breath through traversal and physical connection like Breath of the Wild does with its ephemeral assimilation of challenges and progression, and sometimes it can inspire action and improvisation on virtual architecture like Sonic Adventure, begging us to ramp and spindash through hubs and places that mechanically only exist to grant a sense of friction to movement, but inspire the imagination and playfulness of running through their skies, water and colors --- Sonic Adventure's "jank" gives these spaces life in the unpredictability of direction and speed. If there's one thing I learned with Video Game Feminization Hypnosis is that most things I love about games I love will probably remain unspeakable, verbalized mysteries until the day I forget what words mean and only feel the sunshine of Outrun 2's skybox peeling the anxiety of my mind through the sound of Magical Sound Shower. Until the day I can only remember the drifting piano of Breath of the Wild's biotic world orchestrating its digital stillness, like a God breathing on my shoulder while I move and slide aimlessly like a lost wanderer. Until I can only recall the melody of Demon's Souls' Nexus and the sound my footsteps raise when walking through the water mirror on its center. Until I can only reminisce about Proteus's singing flowers and its island that dances through optics and observation. Maybe that's why we write reviews and want our loves validated or to be seen as something 'higher', 'mightier', something complicated and mystical as the maths that reveal humanity the mysteries of the universe since centuries ago. We want answers we'll never be able to grasp as long as we try to analyze, and to analyze we need to lie in the exterior. We need to watch, study and patronize; we need to put these architectures and spaces into boxes and views of 'critique' and 'deliberacy'. We need to leave its heart and embrace the surfaces of technicality.
Maybe we should try to feel more, see more, hear more, sense more. To be inside those worlds and not inspect them, but love them. Or hate them. Or feel nothing. It'll always depend. But I don't want to pretend that I know anything anymore, I don't want to play jigsaw and piece it all together.
I've always questioned my taste for existing in spaces. In my dreams I'm often attached to the unearthly and chaotic logic that conducts the sights and people that I see in my own mind. I want more than anything to exist in places that can make me feel something about who I am or the people that surround me, I want to belong and to discover. I know that I want to not know, I want mystique; the dialectics of discovery, wonder and impermanence. Maybe that's why my favorite Super Marios are 64 and Galaxy, because I'll never forget how mysterious and dreamy the castle felt on my first way through in 64, expanding unto itself as if it had a life of its own; and I'll never forget how silent and empty the starred void could be in Galaxy, even if I couldn't traverse it --- picturing it through a looking-glass was enough to capture its scale in relation to Mario, its gravity pulling me with ease and swinging me around spheres as I grasped the cosmos' force beyond what I could jump on despite the universe looking so calm. Maybe that's why Danganronpa's claustrophobic and unworldly, exaggerated style of pink blood and flipping cardboard cut-outs resonated with my urge to pull the paper off the stage, exploring and gathering evidence towards nonsensical, absurd truths. It's not that I want to exist in worlds that make me forget I am here, but worlds that remind me how much there truly is in the unseen, between the lines of the material. Those hypnotizing physicalities we conjure of body, mind and soul. If we broke away from all the systems, equations and measuring, who knows what frontiers we could uncover.
"feelsgood" and "gamefeel" are wide-ranging adjectives I've seen be used in game criticism for a while in both bad and good connotation but we sometimes forget how those concepts of "crunchiness" or "pleasure" traverse for one person and the other. The popping little explosions of Kingdom Hearts' keyblade plummeting the enemy away like a ragdoll and Doom's shotgun ravaging its way through the fleshy insides of a demon is a very superficial comparison I'm making on the fly to demonstrate the differences in "feel" interactive fiction can create, but in that sense why do we tend to use this word as if it somehow systematized and encompassed all sorts of feel into a concept that can be 'good' or 'bad' depending on context? Sometimes it feels good to hit things. Sometimes it feels awful but it is also compelling. Sometimes a world can exasperate its breath through traversal and physical connection like Breath of the Wild does with its ephemeral assimilation of challenges and progression, and sometimes it can inspire action and improvisation on virtual architecture like Sonic Adventure, begging us to ramp and spindash through hubs and places that mechanically only exist to grant a sense of friction to movement, but inspire the imagination and playfulness of running through their skies, water and colors --- Sonic Adventure's "jank" gives these spaces life in the unpredictability of direction and speed. If there's one thing I learned with Video Game Feminization Hypnosis is that most things I love about games I love will probably remain unspeakable, verbalized mysteries until the day I forget what words mean and only feel the sunshine of Outrun 2's skybox peeling the anxiety of my mind through the sound of Magical Sound Shower. Until the day I can only remember the drifting piano of Breath of the Wild's biotic world orchestrating its digital stillness, like a God breathing on my shoulder while I move and slide aimlessly like a lost wanderer. Until I can only recall the melody of Demon's Souls' Nexus and the sound my footsteps raise when walking through the water mirror on its center. Until I can only reminisce about Proteus's singing flowers and its island that dances through optics and observation. Maybe that's why we write reviews and want our loves validated or to be seen as something 'higher', 'mightier', something complicated and mystical as the maths that reveal humanity the mysteries of the universe since centuries ago. We want answers we'll never be able to grasp as long as we try to analyze, and to analyze we need to lie in the exterior. We need to watch, study and patronize; we need to put these architectures and spaces into boxes and views of 'critique' and 'deliberacy'. We need to leave its heart and embrace the surfaces of technicality.
Maybe we should try to feel more, see more, hear more, sense more. To be inside those worlds and not inspect them, but love them. Or hate them. Or feel nothing. It'll always depend. But I don't want to pretend that I know anything anymore, I don't want to play jigsaw and piece it all together.
I've always questioned my taste for existing in spaces. In my dreams I'm often attached to the unearthly and chaotic logic that conducts the sights and people that I see in my own mind. I want more than anything to exist in places that can make me feel something about who I am or the people that surround me, I want to belong and to discover. I know that I want to not know, I want mystique; the dialectics of discovery, wonder and impermanence. Maybe that's why my favorite Super Marios are 64 and Galaxy, because I'll never forget how mysterious and dreamy the castle felt on my first way through in 64, expanding unto itself as if it had a life of its own; and I'll never forget how silent and empty the starred void could be in Galaxy, even if I couldn't traverse it --- picturing it through a looking-glass was enough to capture its scale in relation to Mario, its gravity pulling me with ease and swinging me around spheres as I grasped the cosmos' force beyond what I could jump on despite the universe looking so calm. Maybe that's why Danganronpa's claustrophobic and unworldly, exaggerated style of pink blood and flipping cardboard cut-outs resonated with my urge to pull the paper off the stage, exploring and gathering evidence towards nonsensical, absurd truths. It's not that I want to exist in worlds that make me forget I am here, but worlds that remind me how much there truly is in the unseen, between the lines of the material. Those hypnotizing physicalities we conjure of body, mind and soul. If we broke away from all the systems, equations and measuring, who knows what frontiers we could uncover.