Beauty in Gameplay

There are games that are undoubtedly beautiful. The Uncharted series comes to mind. Crysis is a showstopper. EVE Online has itsown brand of prettiness through simplicity. Video games, as art, are beautiful. But these games are beautiful because someone craftedthem to be beautiful. The modelers, the animators, the level designers, the texture artists; these games are gorgeous while we sitand look at them BECAUSE the assets of the game are beautiful.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 (MvC3) is also a beautiful game. Yes, the character designs are intriguing, the animations fluid and fun, but it’s not the graphics that make this game gorgeous. In fact, the graphics are just alright. What makes MvC3 beautiful is the gameplay. 

When games strive to be pretty, they strive to do it through impressive visuals. That building crumbling around you in Uncharted? You didn’t cause that building to fall, the level designers did. But in MvC3, as well as in many other fighting games (BlazBlue, Tekken, even Street Fighter) the beauty exists as a sort of poetry in motion, an ever changing scene of chaos and symmetry completely controlled and created by the player. It has to be watched. While playing, you’re reading your opponents moves, anticipating attacks, defending, jumping, button mashing, hoping to win. When watching, however, you aren’t thinking, you’re just experiencing. Watching two experienced player play a fighting game is like watching art being created. Seamless, flowing from one move to the next, this game is beautiful. 

Now, it’s true that the distinction between the falling building and the combo attack is less distinct than I’m making it out to be. After all, designers placed the combo attack in the game just as they placed the falling building. Both are triggered by you, just on a different scale. Therefore, is not the falling building as creatively beautiful as the combo? Neither are TRULY player created, the combo attack just has the illusion of creation while both are triggered events. 

But that’s what game design is - the art of illusion. Illusion of control and immersion. The better that illusion, the more the player feels as though they are creating something and not just experiencing it. 

And that is something we as designers should strive for, allowing players to create their own beauty. Player driven beauty in games helps push our medium to the artistic standard and beyond. After all, you can’t go into a gallery and start using the artist’s colors to rearrange their painting. 

Game designers give you the brush and say “Do it yourself.”