Andy Chalk over at The Escapist has a great column on Art Games and the interesting direction they’re moving in. What is continually being pushed is not so much games that have beautiful art or meaningful plots, but rather exploring the very definition of play and gaming. Games don’t really tell stories like a film or book does since the player discovers this element through interaction, so it’s logical that ground zero would be pushing that to the limits.
The column goes through the usual tail-chasing that games undergo when trying to convince people that abstract interaction has merit: there’s no challenge, there’s no goals, there’s no meaningful choices, etc. It all starts to echo of “But that’s just not how it’s done!”, which naturally just goads people into making more of it. Of particular interest was a game I’d never heard of before, 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness. The game is simple: a black screen with a white progress bar appears when you start. It then goes around the internet checking to see if other people have the game turned on. If you can go 4 minutes and 33 seconds without anyone else playing the game, you win.
The funny thing about interaction is that you’re basically exploring two different things: the action and the effect. Whereas a game like The Graveyard is an experiment in action with no effect, 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness is an exploration of effect with no action. Is it possible for a person to generate a meaningful result by not doing anything? Vice-versa? I don’t really know. There are only a handful of games out that are really pushing these concepts and it remains to be seen where it’s all going. A game design like this might feel flat on its own, but combined with other elements it could potentially be quite profound. As far as I know, no one has managed to beat these games just yet.