I think your list of attributes of the relational playworld is interesting. It got me thinking about which particular games would fit these criteria for me. While not all of your criteria are met, I had a great time with Street Fighter 4 back in the day. Of course, Street Fighter 4 is not a "local" game. It is adhering to standards of the genre and conforming to "legacy taste", trying to meet fan expectations. But because of the way that I interacted with the game, I have a special relation to the game.
I used to play it a lot with my brother-in-law. We used to see each other every other week on the weekend, and we would play matches against each other. Slowly we would discover how the game worked and the game's systems just by playing against each other, learning more each time, while remaining at similar skill levels so that the matches stayed interesting and unpredictable. We bonded over the game, enjoyed the process of getting better and got excited for every weekend we saw each other.
A player without a partner looking to get good at Street Fighter 4, maybe even to tournament level, might have had a totally different experience though. They would have to play a lot to get good, maybe every day, learning systems, practicing combos, playing online (which may or may not result in meaningful connections to other players) - which in my opinion resembles grinding. By playing every day, you will get good at a fighting game. Which is something I understand you criticize a lot in gacha games for example (the difference here being, you improve your skills at the game and not some arbitrary number). The player confines himself to one game and a singular experience, which is also something you criticize.
Depending on how a player interacts with a game, they might build different relations to the game. For veterans of the Street Fighter series, they would relate Street Fighter 4 to other games of that series or other fighting games they have played, making historical connections. For my brother-in-law and me, we only dabbled in fighting games and this was the first fighting game we really delved into. So I feel how a player interacts with a game, their relation to the playworld can differ a lot, making the attributes of the relational playworld subjective to the player (at least to a certain degree). This is not meant as criticism of your idea or at least what I understand about your idea, just something I found interesting to think about.
As always, great writing! I really enjoy reading about your ideas and opinions about games. Thank you for taking your time to write them down.
Thanks for commenting! I would agree with your point that "their relation to the playworld can differ a lot" - e.g. something like adding too many numbers (gaining currency or those rank points) might feel more product-like to me - whereas the more inherent 'getting better/testing your skill against people IRL' is more interesting and relational playworld-feeling. Fighting games I think tend to feel more relational to me as a genre because you do at least have to think about the community of people playing them - but on the other hand yeah, I do notice that these types of games are kind of big enough to feel like hobbies in their own ways with how much time people put into them. Still, being part of a fighting game community feels more interesting than a gacha 'community' purely because gachas always feel compromised with getting people to spend time or money and keeping them playing, whereas fighting games seem to foster more intrinsic motivation in people to get better. I guess this also gets into esports a bit.. but how I feel about those is a topic for another time, haha.
In some ways it feels like esports/competitive games almost have to be considered as a separate type of object than single-player games.
This level of analysis is a step further than the 'voice of the author' and grows to the place of a work of media in community, how one is friends with the media and how it helps relate to others (including authors). Or conversely about how one is addicted to the media and how it isolates. Or inbetween, how one medicates with media to deal with life?
Thanks for the comment! Yeah looking at this post - and the other comment - it feels like this kind of framework is useful for kind of diagnosing how someone is incorporating games into their life, and for what reasons.
I suddenly made a connection the other day, between "playworlds" and a concept called "art worlds" that I read about once. The idea (as I understood it) is that art is defined not by adherence to some set of immutable principles, but by the existence of a circle of appreciators who have certain values, standards, and ideas about art.
To be truthful, learning about art worlds, I mostly felt discouraged; the fact that creating art couldn't be approached from some objective position, with immutable goals, made me feel like I would never be able to separate what is worth making from what isn't. With that in mind, it's interesting to see you trying to create your own playworld, rather than just letting the arbitrariness of existing playworlds dishearten you; deciding what values are worth pursuing and pursuing them.
That's an interesting comparison to bring up! Yeah, I very much want to bring light to an idea sort of like that. It feels so taken for granted what a good/valuable 'game' is - it's shocking the extent to which I see people basically parrot the arguments of the product playworld word-for-word (3D over 2D, etc). That I really want to bring to light this other way of living with games that I think is a lot more enriching, sustainable..
I think your list of attributes of the relational playworld is interesting. It got me thinking about which particular games would fit these criteria for me. While not all of your criteria are met, I had a great time with Street Fighter 4 back in the day. Of course, Street Fighter 4 is not a "local" game. It is adhering to standards of the genre and conforming to "legacy taste", trying to meet fan expectations. But because of the way that I interacted with the game, I have a special relation to the game.
I used to play it a lot with my brother-in-law. We used to see each other every other week on the weekend, and we would play matches against each other. Slowly we would discover how the game worked and the game's systems just by playing against each other, learning more each time, while remaining at similar skill levels so that the matches stayed interesting and unpredictable. We bonded over the game, enjoyed the process of getting better and got excited for every weekend we saw each other.
A player without a partner looking to get good at Street Fighter 4, maybe even to tournament level, might have had a totally different experience though. They would have to play a lot to get good, maybe every day, learning systems, practicing combos, playing online (which may or may not result in meaningful connections to other players) - which in my opinion resembles grinding. By playing every day, you will get good at a fighting game. Which is something I understand you criticize a lot in gacha games for example (the difference here being, you improve your skills at the game and not some arbitrary number). The player confines himself to one game and a singular experience, which is also something you criticize.
Depending on how a player interacts with a game, they might build different relations to the game. For veterans of the Street Fighter series, they would relate Street Fighter 4 to other games of that series or other fighting games they have played, making historical connections. For my brother-in-law and me, we only dabbled in fighting games and this was the first fighting game we really delved into. So I feel how a player interacts with a game, their relation to the playworld can differ a lot, making the attributes of the relational playworld subjective to the player (at least to a certain degree). This is not meant as criticism of your idea or at least what I understand about your idea, just something I found interesting to think about.
As always, great writing! I really enjoy reading about your ideas and opinions about games. Thank you for taking your time to write them down.
Thanks for commenting! I would agree with your point that "their relation to the playworld can differ a lot" - e.g. something like adding too many numbers (gaining currency or those rank points) might feel more product-like to me - whereas the more inherent 'getting better/testing your skill against people IRL' is more interesting and relational playworld-feeling. Fighting games I think tend to feel more relational to me as a genre because you do at least have to think about the community of people playing them - but on the other hand yeah, I do notice that these types of games are kind of big enough to feel like hobbies in their own ways with how much time people put into them. Still, being part of a fighting game community feels more interesting than a gacha 'community' purely because gachas always feel compromised with getting people to spend time or money and keeping them playing, whereas fighting games seem to foster more intrinsic motivation in people to get better. I guess this also gets into esports a bit.. but how I feel about those is a topic for another time, haha.
In some ways it feels like esports/competitive games almost have to be considered as a separate type of object than single-player games.
This level of analysis is a step further than the 'voice of the author' and grows to the place of a work of media in community, how one is friends with the media and how it helps relate to others (including authors). Or conversely about how one is addicted to the media and how it isolates. Or inbetween, how one medicates with media to deal with life?
Thanks for the comment! Yeah looking at this post - and the other comment - it feels like this kind of framework is useful for kind of diagnosing how someone is incorporating games into their life, and for what reasons.
I suddenly made a connection the other day, between "playworlds" and a concept called "art worlds" that I read about once. The idea (as I understood it) is that art is defined not by adherence to some set of immutable principles, but by the existence of a circle of appreciators who have certain values, standards, and ideas about art.
To be truthful, learning about art worlds, I mostly felt discouraged; the fact that creating art couldn't be approached from some objective position, with immutable goals, made me feel like I would never be able to separate what is worth making from what isn't. With that in mind, it's interesting to see you trying to create your own playworld, rather than just letting the arbitrariness of existing playworlds dishearten you; deciding what values are worth pursuing and pursuing them.
That's an interesting comparison to bring up! Yeah, I very much want to bring light to an idea sort of like that. It feels so taken for granted what a good/valuable 'game' is - it's shocking the extent to which I see people basically parrot the arguments of the product playworld word-for-word (3D over 2D, etc). That I really want to bring to light this other way of living with games that I think is a lot more enriching, sustainable..