Rarely has reading someone's thoughts on video games made me this angry. The pride with which Interaction Isn't Explicit spouts the most basic-ass 2015 YouTube wisdom at you, while never going much deeper into any particular aspect than partly incorrect Wikipedia-tier definitions of Gamedesign terminology is almost astounding. And the worst part: unlike mediocre video essays you can't just have it run in the background while doing something actually productive, but are instead forced to play a terrible shooter with an aesthetic that's nothing but eye-straining after growing old ten minutes in. Just watch "Context Sensitivity" by Matthewmatosis instead of wasting your time on this.

I liked when the game made fun of side quests in Final Fantasy 16.

interesting! definitely been thinking a lot lately about my own tastes and why i like things and why i don't a lot more, and interactivity and how much i care about it above other aspects has been a big chunk of that thought process. also the author is completely right about the medium peaking in 2005 with shadow of the colossus lmao, especially in the context of fully committing to interactivity in every element of a game.
but i do find myself questioning why i even like videogames as a medium and why i couldn't just be spending my time reading more books or watching more movies or TV shows if i just want to passively watch things unfold in front of me.

so, at the very least this gave me some nice extra food for thought on top of all the things I've been asking about myself and this medium. i do hope there's more of these in the future!

Saw the trailer for this on PlayStation's YouTube channel and gave it a fair shake since it was free!

I dig using games themselves as a kind of meaningful essay format to display and exemplify your points about design and really show the player a better idea of what is being discussed. I especially like this as a more intimate way to try to connect with someone via direct interfacing with mechanics and ideas.

I dug how this played with examples from different games and the creator wasn't afraid to just like call out very explicit specific examples from games though I kinda felt the whole point fell apart in the end by just kinda being like "this is all just to say that Shadow of the Colossus is the best" and it's like yeah but I felt like it kinda deflated a lot of the work and buildup that it was working with beforehand and all to take constant little jabs at fairly interesting games. I also feel like claiming that "that's where the industry peaked" is an insanely reductive statement but opinions!

I heavily disagreed with the entire FF16 point and felt like it could be a bit reductive with how it was engaging with and critiquing some of the games it was but that could also be some of my own implicit biases speaking.

I will say enemies within this are so hard to see given the visual style. I dig the aesthetics but at points it genuinely hurt my eyes to play through it was so difficult to look at at points and the options left a bit to be desired.

An interesting study/experiment even if I feel like it falls a little flat. Interested to see more things like this cause it's really an interesting way to do something like this!

Weird, self-righteous, self-indulgent bullshit. This game has the audacity to call itself an “essay” but doesn’t do anything except attempt to teach you some basic video game philosophies, which even then it does poorly.

On top of its holier-than-thou approach, the game making itself is done poorly. My game broke about 15 minutes into it; I couldn’t equip my gun anymore and I couldn’t pass a certain puzzle (which is a generous word to use) without it. Restarting the game or the checkpoint didn’t even fix it. I had to reset the entire thing and almost didn’t even want to waste the 15 minutes to do so.

Gameplay was boring and the design of it was trying too hard. I don’t like rating games this poorly but man this was a drag.

https://youtu.be/oQy33B0BDC4?si=6LP4FKxZmgNaaOUj

^ me when I read another rlly bad rlly condescending tim rogers core essay

I just think it’s rlly interesting that some of the only games the writer of this playstation 5 exclusive gives his personal opinion on are other playstation exclusives,,, just think that’s rlly interesting and definitely not bootlicky !!!

An interesting interactive essay that I think is a "genre" I'd love to see more works in due to the medium's conductiveness to delivering its point across, but that in this particular case feels somewhat basic and shallow.

The big point of contention lies, in my opinion, in how the developer defines explicit and implicit interaction systems in absolute terms rather than as levels of interaction that change from game to game and interact with the other elements of gaming. Let's take a look at two of the examples the developer presents: Persona 5 and The Last of Us (2, in the case of my review).

The dev argues that P5 is a game replete with explicit systems that all together work in perfect synergy with the other elements of the game to deliver a strong experience. I agree with the synergy part, but not so much with calling these systems inherently explicit; at what point does the pressing of a button go from implicit to explicit? If I, in combat, press a button that makes my character stab an enemy, is that implicit due to the directness of the action, or explicit due to the way my Joker moves towards the enemy and attacks on his own? Conversely, does my choosing of having Joker spend his time eating a burger implicit or explicit? I don't press anything to have him eat a burger, but I have total control on whether or not he does that. Let's add another layer, a narrative one: If I choose to play with Joker as a personal self-insert, do this actions lean more towards the implicit? On the other hand, if I choose to portray Joker in a purely role-playing sense, giving him a different name, do these actions lean more towards the explicit, since there is a higher level of disconnect between me and the player character? Discussion around game interactivity would benefit inmensely from a literary Barthesian optic, interrogating not only the game itself and the "intention" behind game mechanics but their case-by-case interaction with different kinds of players.

Now let's take a look at The Last of Us II, a game that features a bajillion implicit interactive moments developed with an equally high amount of labor law violations. I distinctly remember a moment in the game where I, as the player, can pick up a snow globe and shake it around, observing the beautiful realistically simulated digital moving snowflakes. This is a moment of extreme interactivity; the movement of the character towards the item, the picking up of it, and the movement of the snow globe are all performed by my own controls. But is it really implicit? This little pocket of interaction is completely divorced from any other game mechanic, existing in its own world of interactivity. Adding a narrative layer, the character I'm controlling is Elie, a fully realized individual in this game world with no room for role-playing. This leads to a new set of questions: Is this interactive possibility something Elie would do? Is my connection to the character severed if I do perform this interactive task, as opposed to if I don't? The developer mentions Red Dead Redemption 2 as a game where the game world allows for good inclusion of explicit systems, but fails to mention how the implicit interaction can sever the connection between player and character: Arthur is, by all means, a conflicted but kind man who, as a character, would never brutally mow down a town of civilians. But the implicit systems of the game allow ME, the player, to do it, at that instant shattering any connection between me and mister Morgan.

With all this in mind, can we truly declare immediate interaction as something inherently good? First, we would need to clearly define what truly is implicit interaction, and as we have already seen, this task is impossible due to the way different game systems and different players will interpret interaction differently. The developer ultimately concludes that Shadow of the Colossus is the apex of implicit interactive systems. But do SotC's systems truly allow the player a higher degree of interactivity with the game world, when the game is a hidden puzzle game? You can climb, but only the fluffy parts of the colossi. You can stab, but only the shining weak points of the colossi, any other action is moot. This is all perfectly fine in the context of the game, but it makes it a bad example of high interactivity. Better examples would be, for instance, Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, or more sandbox oriented games like Minecraft. Still can we truly declare Minecraft inherently better than, say, a top-down strategy game for it's extremely high degree of implicit systems in comparison to the necessary explicitness of a strategy game?

Ultimately it's all a case by case basis, and we can't simply declare some systems as inherently better than others, when there are so many more factors that come into equation when it comes to games. Ours is a syncretic medium of extremely high audience-work connection, and as such it would be a disservice to it to talk about any of these factors in absolute terms.

Also the parody robo-Clive von FF16's dialogue tells me the dev completely misunderstood the character, which isn't a good look considering how on-the-face the game is about its themes.

I like this as a game design 101 and I like that Sony is somehow supporting small educational games like this, but I don't agree with the conclusions.

I don't think SotC is that good for the same reasons the narrator complains about explicit systems: there's only a single solution available to the player in order to progress. The final boss (and SotC) don't allow much player expression: the only way to win is to stand in a certain spot, shoot specific spots in a specific order, jump at a specific time, and use the grapple in a specific place. I don't really care whether I hit the jump button or interact button to climb when there's only a single spot where it will actually succeed.

I think Dishonored, Hitman, or any other immersive sim are better examples of fully interactive systems. Those games are all about giving you a sizeable toolkit and then the player discovering and exploiting the reactions caused by your actions on the game and allow a large degree of player freedom in how you progress through the game.

I found the concept of this interesting, a playable essay on game design, and I'd love to see more things like it. Going through the examples, and seeing moments from other games recreated to illustrate the definitions was really effective. The artstyle was neat, though it certainly had some serious drawbacks (the handwritten font in particular being almost unintelligible at times, enemies completely blending into their surroundings, etc). I'm glad I took the time to experience it, I wouldn't mind it leading to more things like it. Unfortunately, like a lot of essays though, it does end up hinging on what the essayist's opinions actually are, and at the end of this, nothing really new or insightful here.

essentially another jonathon blow-esque claim that only pure interactivity and systems is TRUE 'video game'. and just, yawn? thought we left this tired take behind a decade ago. begging game designers to take some art + humanities classes.

i think the funniest thing for me personally was just that the title in my mind evoked what could've been a radical essay redefining what we even view as meaningful 'interaction' in games, but instead it's literally just the game crit status quo as always believed. oh well.

Super stylized game with a lot to say about what works and what doesn't in modern gaming, within only around 30 mins. I really love this sub genre of "interactive essay" type games that holds your attention by just being really passionate about what it wants to say, and this game actually giving playable examples of what it means is a great touch. Also cool to see that its being seen positively, albeit with a few "holier than thou" individuals striking the game down for reasons not related to the overall subject, but what can you do?

It should be stated that Interaction Isn’t Explicit isn’t a video game first and foremost, but rather an attempt at being an interactive educational art piece about game design.

It is very impressive visually, but since almost everything is in black and white it can difficult to understand what you’re even looking at sometimes. The sound design is great, and is accompanied by a beautiful synthwave style soundtrack.

The game goes into detail about various game design mechanics and philosophies, even citing games that supposedly do these the best. But at the same time it usually fails to uphold these same philosophies, having clunky controls, messy combat and often confusing level design.

The developer’s biases towards which games are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’ become more pronounced as you progress. In a project like this, having such obvious biases are unnecessary and does more harm than if you were to take a neutral stance.

The developer claims that Shadow of the Colossus is the greatest game ever made that nothing released since even compares to it. That is not true at all and is merely a subjective opinion.

If you are interested in learning about basic game design philosophies being applied in a more practical (yet clunky and somewhat pretentious) context rather than reading about it in a book, definitely consider playing this.

On one hand, I am a huge fan of using video games as interactive demonstrations for all kinds of arguments and essays on any topic, even especially game design. On the other hand, the formal academic language here does a bit of a disservice to the point its trying to convey and the piece of media itself is kind of... generic? and sometimes even visually illegible tbh. I feel like a piece advocating for more thoughtfulness should also be a more thoughtful piece itself to lead by example.

I feel like I need to make sure I say this.... explicitly tho: I think the essay makes a fair point and demonstrates it well enough. I think this is successful as a demonstration and I think we should only do way more of these. I just think the execution is missing something - this feels more like something that would make sense in the bonus features of a commercial release.