The Beauty of Games
Beauty is a mysterious, elusive vapor. It's spirit; it may manifest itself physically, but it is spiritual at its core. We treasure it because when we encounter it, it lifts our thoughts and eyes beyond this world and speaks directly to our souls.
““My Father, supremely good, beauty of all things beautiful.””
In the book The Beauty of Games, Frank Lantz gives himself the arduous challenge of articulating the beauty found in games. He explains, "Games have the capacity to beautiful, to be meaningful. But locating that beauty and meaning is not easy. Games are systems and this makes their aesthetic properties elusive, hard to define."
When Mr. Lantz speaks of beauty and aesthetics, he is not describing the game's visual qualities but rather a quality present in all games regardless of artistic merit or medium. It is a quality he tries to illuminate and describe its form throughout the book. Beauty is also a connective tissue to discuss meaning. In this way, Frank uses meaning in place of the true and the good.
"Truly beautiful things are good and profoundly true; truly good things are true and profoundly beautiful; truly true things are beautiful and profoundly good. This is why beautiful things can so easily lead down the road to the true and the good."
To write about beauty and meaning in any medium is challenging, but the task is considerably more complicated with the medium of games. "Games are compressed bundles of potential experiences. It's hard to locate the beauty and meaning of a game in any particular attributes or formal qualities of the game as a formal object." Frank explains, "A game can be a strange mix of artifact, performance, space, practice, habit, and behavior. Often games are more like cities, languages, customs, or rituals than they are like the well-defined object of a novel or painting."
One aspect of their beauty is systemic—when a system functions in the way it was designed, it's beautiful. It points at a creator who lovingly thought through the interplay between the different elements. Or, to say it another way, beauty is found in the interactions within relationships, such as the body of Christ, or the delicate interconnected ecosystems throughout creation.
But that is only one part of their beauty because a game's creator plays only a role in the meaning-making experience; they are not the whole cast. Much of the experience lies beyond their design and control.
"Perhaps game designers are like architects who construct rooms. And the rooms can be more or less beautiful in terms of their size and proportions and materials. And there is a species of creatures called players drawn by this beauty who will sometimes occupy a room. And these creatures will use the room for their rituals and ceremonies, ceremonies which themselves can be extraordinarily beautiful. Sometimes these ceremonies are ridiculous and profane, and sometimes they are serious and sacred. And their beauty is deeply connected to, but not identical to, the beauty of the room itself."
Game designers create the possibility space, but players must occupy and engage with it to release its potential. As God invited humans to participate in and build upon his creation, game designers invite players to be co-creators of the experience. Sometimes, a player so embodies the game that it feels like you're watching magic.
As a child, I remember watching Michael Jordan leap into the air and hang there while he decided what play to create. He took the limits of the rules of basketball and the limits of the human body to their boundaries. There is no way James Naismith could have foreseen the beauty a player like Jordan would create in these spontaneous and unexpected moments when in their flow.
The third aspect of beauty I want to highlight stems from the player-to-player relationship. Frank explains, "Many games are elaborate excuses to spend time with other people—to synchronize our movements, to look each other in the eyes, to speak and be heard, to push and be pushed back against, to pay attention to the same thing and then talk about it. Sometimes I play a game simply because my friends are playing it and I don't want to be left out."
"Elaborate excuses to spend time together" is a funny but sad truth. We don't always know how to disengage from our duties to connect with people; when we do, we aren't always sure how to relate. Games provide a focal point and a reason to connect, which is more critical for our society now than ever.
Games are beautiful, full stop. And these are only a few reasons; Mr Lantz provides many more examples. Yet, I chose to share these three because as I reread my notes, I was struck by how much of what I find beautiful concerning games stems from relationships.
Beauty takes on meaning in the context of relationships, so when we encounter beauty, we seek to share it with those we love. Likewise, meaningful things take on beauty in the context of a relationship—even ugly things like a cross.
