Human nature is such that, when faced with too much of one thing, to swing the pendulum over to the opposite, when in fact the mythical middle path would truly offer the best of all things.  I bet if you were inundated only by "art that speaks to the mind", you'd then have a desire to feel something.

I've always said that atheism is just another religion.

But the atheists tend to get mad at me for it 

Ah, drugs and religion.  Two things that get a bad rap because of the stupid things small-minded people do with them.

No. Just, no.

That has nothing to do with games or notgames. More physicality is not more immersive. Immersion happens in the mind. That's why a quick press of a keyboard of controller button is far better than leaping around like an idiot in front of motion detection game. At least for me. I don't want to experience what it's really like to run half way across Tamriel and take a sword to the helmet. I don't want sand down my pants after sliding down a dune like in Journey. Or be chased by horrors in the dark like in Amnesia. No thanks.

If I wanted to get my heart rate up, sweat and all that bullshit, I'd go to the gym or go hiking.

Yes.  This bugs me too, but I don't really say anything because it's so hot right now to believe that motion control devices are the wave of the future.  I've come to the conclusion that really, the simple button press is probably already the ultimate interface.  It's simple, direct, requires no effort, and is so automatic that it doesn't break immersion.  You can keep doing it without physically tiring, and there's little to no ambiguity about what you're doing.  You can't tell me motion control gestures are more intuitive - they're affected and there's lots more room for personal interpretation, with the singular exception of tilting the controller, since that's something we all naturally do anyway, whether it helps or not.  We already have the most elegant interface solution with the button press - no need for all this broohaha (though I don't want anyone to stop exploring the possibilities.  I definitely reserve the right to be wrong about this).

Too reductionist?  What really is the medium then?  I guess I see the canvas as the defining factor for painting more than the paint, so maybe it's the output devices that are really in control of the form of video games -  and of course the flat monitor is pretty much a souped up canvas.  I dunno, I feel like there is something significant about the nature of the underlying system itself, but I can't really put my finger on it.  Maybe it's just a passing delusion brought on by too much absinthe and Indian food 

I disagree.  Many games are a lot of work!

Chris Bateman makes a good point about this in Imaginary Games. Rephrased with the terminology used here, he says that games only turn into work when you stop enjoying them. Before that, they are casual. He talks about this in the context of grind in RPGs, claiming that players actually enjoy grinding. It's only after they stopped enjoy it that they start complaining how stupid it is.

That's an interesting take, but I think there's a subtle distinction to make.  Grinding involves the same actions that you have been enjoying, but anything becomes tedious through repetition - I think it would be disingenuous to expect the player to keep enjoying the same action over and over.  It becomes grinding when repetition is used in place of actual content.  It's the quick answer to a number of questions - "How do we make sure we can advertise X hours of gameplay?  How can we make this epic item super rare?  How can we extend the experience without increasing our budget?"  Maybe some of those questions don't have good answers, but that doesn't make grinding any more palatable.  Grinding is exhibit A when it comes to game designs using psychological hacks to keep you addicted rather than offering an experience.

I am not sold on this idea that violence is the easiest thing to do in a natively spacial system.  I'm not even sure I'm sold on the idea that video games systems are inherently spacial, though it is a useful way to look at them, especially as they tend to be configured today.  I would argue that temporality is just as native to the current structures as spaciality.  Despite a few examples he gives in the video, temporality is a far less explored and developed structure (not counting "As Slow As Possible" of course  ).  Why is this?  I think maybe we are confusing the native structure of us with the native structure of the computer's systems.  Humans are primarily visual, so we have used this technology to simulate visual systems and environments.  The computer, however, is natively 1-dimensional - just a string of binary that we are able to bend into a 3-dimensional system just because it works so damn much faster than our brains.  I suppose you could argue that the advent of multi-threading starts to add a second dimension, but I'm not sure that's significant (yet).  I'm not sure where I'm headed with that idea, except perhaps to say that I fully expect that once creative people are empowered enough that they will not feel restricted these current systems and interesting new systems will result.

I disagree.  Many games are a lot of work!

I guess I see games as being a subset of play.  Ultimately play is freeform, and it is expressed naturally.  If you accept the idea that play has evolved to serve some purpose, you could say that play leads to a discovery of rulesets, whether they be the rules of the environment or community you live in, or, as you grow more sophisticated, of logical systems (this is where games as such start to be created).  While I think this does happen, I don't really believe that 100% of play can be assigned such an ultimately utilitarian function.

I feel like one of the things we here are trying to do is to reintroduce the innocent freeform play to gaming, and maybe that's one reason it's been so challenging; since the tools are so rigidly rule-bound, they are working against us to a certain extent.

I don't understand why such an emphasis is placed on rules.  The idea that the ruleset is the basis of a game or of play is an adult intellectualization of something that is really freeform at its root.  Obviously video games require a ruleset or else the computer can't run the experience, but play in general does not have that restriction.  The example of animals is a good one - you can't make me believe they are adhering to any ruleset other than their own nature.  Also, the way children play is often very freeform. They just run around with their Transformers or their Littlest Pet Shop animals or what-have-you and act out whatever scenarios strike their imagination. 

I will agree that I don't like the execution of this piece.  It is trivial - I feel like we're in a time when popular opinion loves to glorify things that are clever, at the expense of things that are meaningful.  However, I think this sort of fusion has potential if done well (i.e. appropriate subject matter, rather than trying to shoehorn classic ideas into new clothes, maybe touchscreen, rather than the absurdity of walking up and tipping the picture frame around).  I've expressed before my feelings that the computer box is a basically unfriendly interface.  Taking the the interactive technology we have and finding ways to better fit it into the spaces of life would be a positive step - that's the aspect of it that attracts me.

http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/interactive-painting-shakes-up-the-still-life-genre

Artist Scott Garner has created an interactive still life painting using Unity and a wall mounted, framed display.  Instead of starting with a video game and making it more about art, he has started at the other end with traditional art and adapted it to video game technology.  This caught my eye because I've been wanting to do something similar for awhile, though with more interesting subject matter than simply a physics simulation.  I suppose this sort of work is really an inevitable development - I personally think it has potential.

I played this too over the weekend and forgot to comment.  My feelings are pretty much in line with God at play.  I was quite enjoying the experience, right up until I failed to achieve a medal, and then the entire experience took a turn for the worse as my focus changed.  Even during gameplay the mechanics started to bother me.  For example, when I was driving to work, I drove off the road on purpose to see what happened.  I hoped something interesting would happen, but instead it was just a fail state.  It was like the game was promising something, but it turned out be just game as usual.  On the other hand, I quite liked the effect achieved when you had to play a game on one screen and simultaneously keep a conversation going on the other with just your one mouse.  In a traditional gameplay manner, this would be considered really bad design, but I thought it did a good job of artificially creating a sense of tension and giving you a feeling of the distraction and divided attention that seemed to be plaguing the protagonist.

Everything becomes a religion.  That's just how people work.  Shockingly few people seem to have the cognitive wherewithal to lift their snouts from the slop bucket long enough to see the forest instead of the trees. (a jumbled metaphor, I hope you all get the point)

If I was king of the world, I would make cognitive bias( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases ) be a required school subject for every human being.  I have always felt like that bit of self-understanding would make everyone that much more civil, non-destructive, and reasonable, to great benefit for all.

In regards to the trees:  I frequently dream of a day when beauty will be as important to society as anything else.  How uplifting it would be.  I frequently drive around L.A. imagining what it would be like if all the architecture was fantastical and majestic.  Last summer I moved into an apartment with a beautiful view of a protected nature area.  The difference it makes to my attitude and demeanor on a daily basis cannot be overstated.