First of all, if the title of this post made you assume anything other than "there's at least one term we're going to be taking literally today," put that out of your mind. There's like a dozen different things that have been called "literalist" over the years, and probably more I haven't heard of, so don't assume I'm pledging allegiance to the one that you personally happen to be familiar with. Please just be normal about this.
Moving on:
There's always a big kerfuffle whenever anyone writes a "manifesto" in gaming spaces, because half of people say that manifestos are demands for what everyone else is allowed to do and enjoy, and therefore nobody should write manifestos; while the other half of people say that manifestos are a way of expressing one's own relationship to the subject matter, allowing us to better understand each other and gain new perspectives, and therefore more people should be writing manifestos.
I am closer to the latter belief than the former. Go ahead and write your manifesto. Even if nobody reads it, at least you will have grappled with your own thoughts, which is something not enough of us are doing. You can't grow if the only learning you do is additive (learning new things) and never corrective (discovering you were wrong about something), and a great way to foster corrective learning is through the kind of self-examination that comes with trying to organize and articulate your ideas—which is something that will probably happen if you try to write a manifesto about something you care about.
With my itch to write slowly growing ever since the most recent Gaming Manifesto Kerfuffle, and having adjusted my own viewpoints on a few related topics since last writing about some of them, I now offer a manifesto which converges a few strands of thought I've been tugging on for a while now. Not to tell you what you're allowed to enjoy or how you should engage with games, but to explain the space I occupy, and assert my right to occupy it.
And because I'm bad at coming up with cool names, we're calling it The Literalist Gaming Manifesto.
But First We Have To Talk About Art
When an artist wants to create a piece of art, they have to choose their medium, the "format" that will shape their art piece. Paintings, sculptures, tapestries, mosaics... they all have different ways of speaking to you. They're all art, but each can do things that the others can't—paintings can achieve certain abstractions that could never be built into a sculpture without it collapsing, for example. The artist's choice of format will affect what's possible, as well as how the art's beholder experiences the piece.
Similarly, a storyteller must choose a format as well. Novels, movies, serials, stage plays, and so forth all have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, a book can do things with a character's internality that a movie can't achieve the same way, but film can use subtle background details in ways that text can't replicate. They will all tell stories, but which one the storyteller chooses will influence exactly what can be done with their story, and how the audience will experience it.
And sometimes, the format chosen by the artist or storyteller is "game."
Perhaps the art piece is about the nature of agency, and so the interactivity of a video game is vital to making the artist's point. Maybe the storyteller wants to get out of their own head and let a story go places they wouldn't normally have thought of, so they use a roleplaying game to introduce collaboration and chance. There's a lot that games, as a format, have to offer artists and storytellers. When you hear people talk about game mechanics as providing "friction" or "texture," this is usually what they're talking about: take a story or piece of art, and let the format of "game" give it texture/friction that you will feel as you move through it.
But what if I told you that "game-as-format" is a repurposing of games, rather than their root nature? In the same way that "wood" can be an artistic medium, but trees have a whole existence outside of how we might repurpose them for art?
Games As Games
I have written before (twice) on the general subject of games being their own thing, distinct from art or other sources of worth. In short, games are fundamentally human, and have intrinsic value, rather than deriving their worth from being a type of art. Games are not a type of art, but a peer to art, capable of existing and having value independently of art, in the same way that art can exist and have value independently of games.
I think what trips people up is that nowadays we mostly think of "games" in terms of media you can purchase and possess: video games, tabletop games, and so forth. We use the word "game" as shorthand for "a possessable object that has a game incorporated into it." But in a literal sense, "games" have a whole existence that's independent of, and much older than, how we're used to thinking of (possessable) "games." A game is just a set of rules to structure play toward overcoming obstacles to achieve an objective within limited parameters. That's it. No computers or meeples required.
The very first time a human threw a rock at a distant object just to see if they could hit it, they were playing a game. And even as tools and resources improved and human creativity expanded to fill the space—pig bladders, pebbles on grids, printed cards, and eventually even digitization—the concept of creating these objects for the express purpose of playing a (literal) game never disappeared.
But that means we have an interesting intersection that's begun to emerge.
Impact of Perspective
The game-shaped objects that we usually refer to in shorthand as "games" can be created from opposite directions: you can make a literal game, and choose to design components or software to enable it; or you can make a piece of art/story/etc, and choose to put it in the form of a game to get the impact you want. Both intentions will produce objects which have vaguely similar silhouettes as game-shaped objects, but the nature of the thing will be wildly different.
Similarly, whether the player engages this object expecting a game-as-format or game-as-game will dramatically alter their experience, their impression, their analysis, and everything else about it. And it seems to me, dear reader, that most of you have no idea that this distinction even exists, let alone what your own preference is, how it informs your perspectives and opinions, or how you've been treating your neighbors in the gaming spaces you share.
For reasons that are out-of-scope for this writing, two things are simultaneously true: more people than ever are playing these game-objects, and a growing proportion of these game-objects are "game-as-format" rather than "game-as-game." I believe that a side-effect of these circumstances is that a growing number of people in gaming spaces have no comprehension of games as anything but a format for art or narrative. And like a chain of dominos, this side-effect has its own side-effects, in which people who like games as games are increasingly surrounded by people (even experts!) who cannot comprehend their experiences, desires, joys, complaints, or expertise because they only consider games from the singular perspective of being used as an artistic or narrative format.
Dear reader, it is exhausting.
Hi, I Like (Literal) Games
As I said at the beginning, this is not about telling anyone what to enjoy or how to enjoy it. If you're in love with art-in-game-form, there's nothing wrong with that. You belong in gaming spaces.
Or rather, "You belong in gaming spaces too."
You are a fellow roommate, not a homeowner with a guest. I have had (and witnessed among others) far, far too many conversations where someone who likes games-as-games is told by an art-with-texture enjoyer that they're a "hater" or are "missing the point." And if I have to see one more positivity-poster try to induce a shallow peace by saying, "At the end of the day, we're all [thing that only applies to game-as-format fans]," I'm going to scream.
So here's the actual manifesto part:
- Games don't need artistry or narrative or anything else in order to exist, or to have intrinsic worth.
- Games-as-games are not the same as games-as-format, and expertise in the latter does not translate to expertise in the former.
- Those who enjoy games-as-games have a right to occupy gaming spaces, and trying to shift them toward games-as-format is gatekeeping.
- Enjoying, critiquing, theorizing about, and cultivating expertise in games-as-games is, unequivocally and without reservation, good.
So that's what I guess I'm now calling the "Literalist" perspective on gaming: that there exists a concept of games that is its own thing, fully independent of their potential for use as a format for other things, despite the prevalence in gaming spaces of people who are only familiar with the latter. I suspect that if you keep this in mind during future interactions about games, you'll start to see the distinction everywhere you look. Hopefully that will be as helpful for you as it has been for me.
Thanks for reading.
