Games as Toys: Physicality, Function, Design, and Art
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
- Amabel Holland explores the meaning and art of physical objects, and the rhetorical frameworks we use to discuss them. In what is likely the only video essay to feature both Josef Albers and Captain Kangaroo, she discusses some objects she inherited from her grandmother, the game Connect Four, the output of Enoch Light’s Command Records, some obscure word games, puzzles by Jean-Claude Constantin and Yuu Asaka, the escape room board game Doomensions Pop-Up Mystery Manor, and the video game Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
00:01 I. Memories and Other Useless Objects
04:30 II. The Discreet Charm of Connect Four
12:45 III. Art Is Not An Object, But An Experience
18:38 IV. The Measure of Our Worth
23:24 V. Touching and Seeing
27:34 VI. Spooky Puzzle Mansions
36:14 Epilogue: The Names We Forgot
38:58 Credits
39:15 Bumper
I think that your videos, about these deeper game subjects (and within a historical context), are the most compelling types of content in the board game RUclips landscape. I'm always thinking about and attempting to understand what it is that I like about board games, so I appreciate your commentary on this.
This was an instant subscribe to the channel! I'm so glad I got reccommended this video this is right up my alley!
Really interesting and thoughtful as usual. The shuffle the dice in the box dance was cute.
Wow, just wow. Thanks for doing this Amabel. It was really well put together and I learnt so much.
High quality content, just scrolling through recommendations
Really good essay. ❤ I love these. To me, all games/puzzles/toys are art objects.
I also enjoy the physicality of games and own a few I may never play because I get enough out of studying their physical existance.
I just started this video but I wanted to comment because the premise and intro sound great so far and RUclips threw this in my recommendations!! Yay!!
This video is genuinely fantastic Amabel! 🎉
Great new channel to binge!
Prima material! Thank you for this wonderful tribute to tactile media, the art of design, and the design of art! As a puzzle designer myself (even though primarily in a not-so interactive style of books/PDF files) this was a treat to watch and I will love to share this with other people.
From a young age, I've been interested in video game design, and I remember the slight insult and confusion I felt when learning about how much more vaunted the title of game "developer" was than "designer", as one implied that you could "wear more hats" and, more truthfully, make more money than what many seem to treat as just the "idea guy". But for me, the beauty of such games is almost entirely in their design, in the concepts that underlie the systems that produce memorable and meaningful experiences. The technology used to program them and the illustrative artistry that goes into presenting them are entire disciplines worthy of merit, but I have seen comparatively little respect be paid to the curation of those elements so they work in harmony to produce stories that people can share with each other. I have interest in all of those instruments in the orchestra of a wonderful game, but I don't just want to tell stories, I want to provide a canvas for others to tell stories. I remember learning about the shift from when the people who worked on games were not routinely credited (and how they often smuggled their own credit in unorthodox places), and how the value of the art they produced changed when video games started to really take off as commodities. I'm sort of rambling at this point but I wanted to thank you for sharing your thoughts and for caring enough about this topic, which is very much a special interest of my own, to talk about it at such length and invite discussion on it. So thank you!
I never expected my music to be playing in the background of a Slap Chop commercial. And to have it to be relevant to the topic! Impressive stuff.
Also, I’d read an Amabel pop-up book.
That's kinda sad at the end about the uncredited BG inventors. 😢 Thanks for the video. 😊
This was fantastic, thanks so much for another great video! I enjoys those bits of humor as well. Like your game designs, I appreciate the consideration of the emotional response, definitely adds another dimension of enjoyment.
it was really cool subject for a video, and love the progression of the chapters. I wish it was a little less of a review for some parts, but still a really strong message.
Thoughtful, fun video so naturally I am most drawn to commenting on the brief segment about the most tedious question of all human existence. McCloud's definition of art is surprising and inclusive but it is also practically difficult to cleanly define what behaviors correspond to survival or reproduction. David Graeber has a wonderful essay about evolution, play, and the meaning of life (What's the Point If We Can't Have Fun?) that is inspired by how resistant many biologists can be to the idea of animals playing for the joy of it. E.g., dolphins get high on puffer fish to practice socializing for mate selection, foxes chase each other to train for hunting, etc. Neo-Darwinists often have a analogous view of humans that any activity unrelated to evolutionary fitness is deviant or dysfunctional. I guess they would say that according to McCloud, art is everything that is frivolous.
All this rhymes a bit with the philosopher Bernard Suit's work to define what a game is. For him, it is about players striving to bring about a state of affairs while subscribing to rules that they obey for their own sake. Like, solving a Yuu Asaka tile game is only a game for you if you would reject someone offering to solve it for you. I can setup a checkmate on a chessboard but it's only a game if my opponent and I pursue checkmate while following the rules of chess. Even if I am given a 100% surefire way to cheat and win, if I am playing a game, I will refuse it. Otherwise Suits thinks it's better to describe me as completing a task.
The video made me appreciate how toys' materials and physical design can be wonderful inducements to enjoying the rules of a game. Tic-tac-toe is bad but holding chunky stones under the gaze of whimsical animal statuettes makes the idea of obeying its rules more appealing.
Fascinating exploration ... thank you!
fascinating stuff. I guess it was "don draper engineer". RIP your GMA. a Welshman writes ..
What is art? Your editing choices at timestamp 22:53.
I want to like this video--I am interested in various types of games and puzzles, but somehow, to use your own term, the video is just not very "compelling". I get what you mean by the physicality of a game. There's a game called Shuttles, which is an interesting physical form, but the game itself isn't all that fun to me. At an estate sale, I found a solitaire puzzle called Magnetic Square Puzzle, where these different sized blocks of wood are supposed to moved around from the starting position to another position, without removing them from the board--you have to simply slide them around. There are variations of this game, and the solution (TWO solutions, actually) can be found online. It probably wouldn't be too hard to simulate it on the computer, but the puzzle goes back decades before computers were around.
I'm always a bit frustrated by computer adventure/mystery games because the puzzles usually seem unrelated to the storyline of the game. Not always, there's some good ones out there. But often enough to make me one of those complainers. I want to be part of a story and uncover the mystery, OR I want to work out puzzles, but I usually don't want to do both at the same time.
And if you really want to talk about the physicality of a game, what about miniature golf? I just love the wackiness of some mini golf designs, which are of course much more fun in real life, with actual golf balls and putters, than on a computer screen.