I love this! Thematic expressionism falls completely in line with the way I try to approach games in general, but I had no idea it had such a long history as a design philosophy, great read!

On what basis can judges even decide between these? Transformers had incredibly talented artists working on it, but should the work itself be nominated at Cannes next to Panahi? Game awards struggle to decide what counts as artistic merit so it makes an extra 'Impact' category

I think part of the problem is we value "fun to play" as potentially award-worthy. Yet in film, Transformers is "fun to watch" yet that doesn't immediately make it deserving of an award. Donkey Kong Bananza can be nominated next to Clair Obscur when they're trying to be radically distinct things.

Disco Elysium's "slip away unnoticed" scene comes to mind!

One must imagine Sisyphus happy

Expression doesn't begin with plot or representational content. He has a Cartesian dualist view. He separates world of objects (systems) and world of meanings (stories). This is flawed. Games can tell stories because gameplay already is a form of narrative structure.

The fundamental problem with Bogost is that he's committed to an objectivist ontology which can't account for how we immediately experience things as meaningful. His philosophy would imply paintings don't tell stories as well as novels, so we should focus on brushstroke mechanics.

These are inseparable. To exist is to have an embodied relation to the world. To exist is to experience. "Existence" doesn't sit waiting to be filled by "experience". Phen. can't be summarized in a tweet, but OOO starts from the belief in Kantian things in themselves, which for Phenom is an illusion

If you're interested, I recommend Merleau-Ponty's Phenom. of Perception. By extension his philosophy of aesthetics would also counter Bogost

OOO is built on the belief in Kantian 'things in themselves'. Phenomenology rejects the thing in itself as a contradiction, like a square circle. Basically, for phenom. experience is not a relation added between pre-existing things. The relation is what makes objects and subjects possible

From what I see, OOO misinterprets the basic premises of phenomenology and turns it into a complete philosophical abomination. The very concept of "thing" is learned by experiencing things. We live in a world of experience, not a world of objects.

True, but we can distinguish determinants (what caused or shaped the work) and expression (what the work reveals about human experience). A critic can look at the former, but the meaning of an artwork (our interpretation) is never contained in those factors.

This. I've also heard people in the latter group admit it's fun with friends, but then again, there are few things in life which aren't fun with friends..

Fascinating read! I also like how it contrasts with Astrid Anne Rose's piece. Clear story vs. underlying philosophical ambiguity

Good read! Reminds me of something Matt Singh (Obsidian) said when talking about the flaw system in OW2. With more games looking at reshaping "the story and the world itself based off of player action" we could say the future of RPGs involves blurring the line with immersive sims.

TGA is more like the Super Bowl than the Oscars: a lot of people just watch for the ads, because the ads are experienced as entertainment rather than commercials

I imagine a world where Twitch shifts from passive spectating of an entertainer back to the feeling of playing on the couch handing each other the controller, 1 death a turn. Something like Parsec, but even better.

I'd say our ability to tell stories hasn't improved, but our ability to build things has. And since games tell stories by building things..At best Pac-Man could symbolically express consumerism, but even that is an interpretive stretch, wouldn't you say?