Games: Agency as Art

A work of philosophical aesthetics arguing that games are a distinctive art form whose medium is agency itself. A designer sets goals, abilities and obstacles, and so specifies the kind of agent the player becomes. Nguyen builds on Bernard Suits' account of game-playing as the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. He distinguishes achievement play, where we play in order to win, from striving play, where we take on the goal of winning for the sake of the struggle, so that winning is a 'disposable end'. This shows that we can adopt temporary agencies and move between them, a capacity he calls agential fluidity; games form a library of agencies. He then argues that games offer an aesthetics of action: the beauty of a clever solution or a graceful movement is something the player does, not only something seen. The last part turns to dangers. Games offer value clarity, simple and measurable goals, and importing that clarity into life through gamification and metrics can distort what we care about.

It takes games seriously as art and gives a sharp account of how clear, simple scores can seduce us, which applies well beyond games to social media and workplace metrics.