{"id":16,"date":"2014-08-20T16:29:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-20T16:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thrustingpens.com\/sticks\/?p=11"},"modified":"2016-08-02T10:10:44","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T10:10:44","slug":"everything-is-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/everything-is-a-game\/","title":{"rendered":"EVERYTHING IS A GAME (also: hello)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Get<\/a><\/p>\n

Woah! Wait, don\u2019t mind him! You are perfectly welcome. For some reason I turn into a dick when I\u2019m illustrated.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, this is my game blog. I hope to update it with a variety of content; animations, reviews, critical discourse \u2013 any medium, so long as it looks at gaming from a fresh and colourful perspective.<\/p>\n

This multi-medium approach is inspired by games themselves. I think people incorrectly think of video games as one cohesive \u2018medium\u2019, neatly slotting alongside films, novels and music in your categorical mindspace. I don\u2019t think games are just a medium, I think they are a digitisation of all mediums \u2013 a unification of previously separate art forms through computer code.<\/p>\n

I also don\u2019t think that a defining quality of video games is that they are \u2018interactive\u2019. While it\u2019s true that computer game code can react to user input in a way that a novel or a film can\u2019t, I think that interactivity, as an idea, is inherent in all art forms. A novel, after all, is simply an assortment of inky marks on a page – yet your brain interprets these strange symbols and conjures from them a whole world of people and places. What is this imaginary realm if not a collaboration, an interaction, between author and reader? Similarly, if you have ever been thrust to the \u2018edge of your seat\u2019 by a film, you are engaged in that art form; you are hedging bets, gambling with the creators. \u201cHe\u2019s not going to make it\u201d, or, \u201cI think she\u2019s the murderer\u201d. You may not be pressing buttons, but you are playing a game.<\/p>\n

(And you could argue that a Call of Duty single-player campaign \u2013 no\u00a0different from\u00a0Time Crisis<\/a>, gameplay wise \u2013 is one of the least interactive experiences you can have in any medium).<\/p>\n

I mean, I was recently sitting on a tube watching my friend John<\/a>\u00a0play 80 Days<\/a>, which is a sort of strategy novel where you don\u2019t just decide your actions within the narrative, but how each paragraph starts and unfolds. Is it literature? Is it a game? Is it a video game? It\u2019s all of these, of course. What stupid questions.<\/p>\n

In short: computer games are a digital synergy of all the methods we have been utilising to capture and share our subjective experiences since the first fucking cave paintings 30,000 years ago. So far we have used this bounty of riches to mostly simulate men shooting each other in browny-grey wastelands. We have done this to such an extent, that when games come along which try and do something different<\/a>, the community responds by claiming that they are not games at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s an idea: EVERYTHING IS A GAME. Now let\u2019s shut up and play some novels. I mean, read a film. Oh, whatever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woah! Wait, don\u2019t mind him! You are perfectly welcome. For some reason I turn into a dick when I\u2019m illustrated. So, yeah, this is my game blog. I hope to update it with a variety of content; animations, reviews, critical discourse \u2013 any medium, so long as it looks at gaming from a fresh and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lovelyhellplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}