I resonated with the notion of notgame, but the world’s not ready for it. Even at CMU I find there are people who hold staunchly to the separation of art and game, based mostly in their inability to take a game “seriously.” And of course, if your AAA product tries to be meaningful, its commercial ties negate it effects. This is a problem I find in interactive art in general. I talk about my work as “interactive systems/objects” rather than games and toys. When framing an artwork under “game/toy” as a tool of exhibition, I often get viewers (which I define as those who critique and gaze) who refuse to be players (which I define as those who critique and interact) because, “you don’t touch the art.” I have to put up a sign telling people to play, which introduces language (which is a whole other animal) and authority over the work, or I have to beg, really beg, in a statement (which, let’s be honest, no one reads) to get the viewer to make that leap. To accept “permission.” At the moment though, inhabiting that in between space of “notgame” is tricky, because I feel like only those who like/make similar works currently understand what that means. An uneducated viewer will default to whatever they are most familiar with and critique the work along those norms. This can work for games/arts that use these expectations to their advantage, works in the relational/antagonistic aesthetics/social/political genres. However, works that don’t use those conventions are still up a creek in terms of acceptance. Changing this is a matter of world view. In Tale of Tales spiel, they speak of how Modernism destroyed everything regarding the acceptance of the divine conundrum (The simultaneous acknowledgment that creation is an act of divinity/ transcendence the practice of creation as a human.) They speak of how a world view changed perception, and how they wish to change it again. But I don’t think a single person can change a world view. That’s what makes it a world view. Yes, there will eventually come a day when these distinctions and defacto rules around rule systems are no longer present. When no one will care to categorize what you made, because the fact that you made it at all at the time you did will prescribe meaning to it. It’s silly to think that a work’s value is solely put in place by those who write articles on it. However, right now the notgame distinction is necessary to rebel against other interactive system definitions so that the idea can later be assimilated into a spectrum and cease to be relevant.
