Futuresonic Gamesounds

The unique thing about games is you interact with them?

Bull huckey! I can cross out the words in a book, write notes in its margins, underline it, chuck it across the room, reluctantly pick it up, decide to skip to the end. It might mean something very different on a re-read; after my great grandfrog died, in the rain by a train or when I have become 20 or 40, or after my cousin read it and thought my favorite character was the most annoying and then I spit in his socks out of revenge.

Yes, but you play with games, that sir, is the key!

Bull huckey. I play with the ideas I get from books, I play with playlists on a iPod while doing homework, I play with my roommate when he's trying to relax and I put ob ear-destroying Guitar Vader, I watch people play with repeating and editing movies in different ways. Play is a broad concept.

Okay, but you are passive in other forms of entertainment. Maybe you are, you unwashed, unthinking, beer-guzzling philistine! My mind is a fire and the fireworks are my reaction. You can do it too, you've got one that's just as capable as mine -- you just might not be conscious of how much you're using it. You're reacting to how plausible the plot is, you're covering your eyes at the gore, throwing spoons in the theater revival, repeating the lines to your friends or singing impromptu in the shower. These are not passive reactions.

Ah, but the work doesn't change. Fundamentally, on a physical level, no. But the perception of it can and perception is a great chunk of reality.

I think you can say whether we are reacting, interacting or playing with whatever we are witnessing, consuming, ignoring or absorbing, it becomes slightly like a relationship. I think many people say this in a smart-lady-with-a-an-accent-giving-a-speech way. ("Our relationship has changed and that's what I wanted to represent in this exhibit.")

So I don't think it's the reactions, play or interaction, its the way we form a relationship with a game in our language and thinking. I've often thought this was curious. "That game cheats!" claims a player who falls into a pit.

"This game is a bastard!" say countless Souls series players.

"Oh come on, just a little bit more," someone bargains near the finish line.

"I tried to work with it, but I wasn't getting anywhere," says somebody who doesn't get all the hype.

"I am in love with your eyes -- cross that -- this level/character."

It might be my imagination, but I feel like I hear more personification of the work itself within a game then I do with other forms of narrative, entertainment or amusement design. Whenever I hear the same types of relationship-sounding sentences in other works, they are usually in reference to the creators or the people who like them.

I think this is a hint. I feel like people often are making a mistake when they say that games are different every time you play them because other, more static works can be too, whether they are a different edition, remix or language of the same work, or because the person or approach to experiencing them is different. However, I get the strange sensation the longer I spend with a game, the more I feel its analogous to interacting with an animate being.

I know my favorite books well and I can remember when I just met them. I can compare them in relationship terms, of course. But when I reflect on my favorite games, I feel a much stronger connection to the analogy. Devilish Brain Training is a game I've spent a lot of time with. There was an awkward phase where I didn't know it very well, or wasn't sure I wanted to get to know it better. Then as we became friends, I found all sorts of new things about it. Slowly I got used to its quirks. There were unexpected realizations that I can look back on through my daily repetitious play. I got addicted to one part of it and for a while that's all I could see. Then I slowly came back around to see the whole picture again. Sometimes after an extended absence, I would learn to appreciate its quirky delights. Sometimes I got annoyed by the things it would do; things I knew very well it would do, but tolerated them anyway.

If I try to make this same comparison to a book, it breaks in several places. Something I would potentially read every day like a book of great quotes, a religious text or poem book, something like that doesn't give me the same unexpected realizations because it does not remember like a game does, it does not vary significantly like a game does, and most importantly it does not offer a different emotional reaction based on chance. The closest part to a relationship is getting caught up on one extraordinary aspect and then pulling out to see a big picture. The awkwardness could be compared to getting used to prose, but because it doesn't throw back fail states, rewards, positive or negative reinforcement based on my input, feedback refusal or encouragement, it is far less like a blossoming relationship.

I can get used to an artist's quirks or a director's quirks, but in this case I'm often reacting to the creator, not the work itself and the quirks tend to be much more varied among the users. Everyone always says an aspect of Spielberg's works is sentimentality. People say Miyamoto's works are often light and happy. But I am not reacting to Miyamoto's quirks when I say "damn you, Mario," when I fail to line up the turtle guys to get 1UPs. I am reacting to something a little more like a relationship. I set up an expectation by initiating contact and manipulating something. It reacted. I continued along with my plans. It didn't work out. Can you really say you're doing the same thing when you get confused by the chronology of a Quentin Tarantino plot? I think you could say its a relationship to the extent that you can take on the role of someone grading or evaluating something else, like a teacher reading a student's paper or a friend offering advice. But I don't think you can say our relationships with those other mediums change as quickly, vary as much, or veer into desperate corners as drunkenly as game relationships do.

Music, these days can often have a lot more of this kind of dynamic. You can take on a lot more varied roles as its appreciator, remixer, editor in your list of tracks, cutting out the intro you hate, and it implies mastery of a sort. You have to build a certain amount of knowledge with the medium and how it works if your going to remix it, post a Youtube music video, or even just convert the format on your computer or do things like crop it or adjust the decibel playback or equalizer. Adjusting various settings on your TV so you get whatever effect you might like doesn't quite cut it. Writing parodies of book sections or doing off the wall things with your webcam is close, but not the same, because often there is a gap between the book and movie and your new idea, whereas with music, the two are very close together in a way that I think resembles games.

Many people say the pacing is off in games, but I think they are wrong. Games, instead have things like tempo, rhythm, beat, breakdown, choruses, refrains and everybody can interact with music on a level where others can easily evaluate how skilled they are. This doesn't seem to happen very much with books or movies. People don't often congratulate you on your skilled reproduction of When Harry, Met Sally or The Grapes of Wrath. They do? What on earth do you for a living? Anyway, I guess reciting poetry or being able to act out a few lines is close, but notice how both bring sound and musical concepts into it?

But there are still limits to how we can form a relationship with music. I kind of doubt anyone has ever said of a music track, "I swear, if it does that one more time, I give up today!" That's something we say of animate beings when they do something that annoys us, because we know they can stop, but more importantly we know have some sort of agency that hopefully make them stop. Have you ever threatened to The Black Eyed Peas to stop saying "Immabe" and put some real lyrics into their song the next time it plays at your supermarket? You do? Well then, you have unique relationships don't you.

So no, I don't think the unique thing about games is that your interact with them. I think the unique thing about games is that our interactions with them form more complex relationships than some other forms of amusement and edification.