Come on Himu, think this out!
What is wrong with he's doing exactly? Watching a clip of someone playing the whole game on youtube is totally different from reading a summary on the back of a dvd; one is a summary, the other is a display of the subject as a whole.
Then why do you play the games? I can not believe someone who has played games for years has not determined the difference between the experience of "play" and the voyeurism of observance of play.
When you are a child, and you see some kids playing in the park, and it seems there is some game going on, is your curiosity not to truly know that game? Why can you not just observe the game and get the same understanding? Because it is impossible. The experiences are separate. Watching a game of tag is not the same as playing the game of tag. You do not have the investment, even your frame of observance is vastly different by being outside this magic circle of play.
You can read the script of a screenplay and visualize it in your head, but that is not the same as seeing the actual film based upon the script. You hope, when you write a screenplay, that your vision is upheld, but you are always subject to an interpretation.
One of the qualifications of art is that it is translatable into another form. A shakespeare play into a shakespeare film, but at the same time, iterability (sorry Derrida haters) always alters. Outside of personal interpretation, it is normally the particular qualities of a media that does this.
If it were art, you would be able to dissect it without having played it, right?
No, you would need to play it to understand it as art. There is no reason to think you could observe a game and understand its art while ignoring the element of play. You are not engaging the medium on its own rules.
But no, games are pew pew first and foremost. One of the games she suggested was Flower. Flower is essentially a flower petal going from flower to flower, blossoming local flowers. That's the whole game in one sentence. How is playing the game going to change this? If it were art, certainly wouldn't one be able to dissect and critique without having played it, but also having watched someone played it?
Watching a flower grow, reading about a flower in a poem, an interpretive play of a flower growing, a film of a flower growing and a painting of flower growth are all different experiences. A game of it is different as well.
