Got a chance to play around with this over the weekend, and there were positives and negatives.  It definitely isn't a remix app (I also thought it might have been that) or any other existing genre pasted onto an album.  It is an exploration through sound involving a spacial interface (somewhat similar to the project I am working on now  ).

In the end, it was intriguing enough that I spent 15 or 20 minutes having fun playing around with it.  In the end, though, my big disappointment was that I never was able to find a result that sounded like a complete music composition.  The different tracks were separated in space, and therefor you could never hear them all together.  Since the experience is delivered to the user as a music album, I was disappointed that I never got to experience the actual composed music.  Still, a neat little toy.

I noticed the same sorts of back and forth comments on some similar articles on Gamasutra.  I think it just boils down to the simple fact that for many of the unwashed masses, appreciation of higher art forms is simply alien to their mode of existence, in the same way that many people don't appreciate traditional fine art, or even read books for that matter.  The problem is these people are the types that are unable to leave well enough alone; they have an undeserved sense of ownership of the medium and feel they should have the power to declare what is what.  The "corpse fuckers" are mindless and want you to be mindless too.  They narcissistically assume we are making games for them and failing.  Unlike traditional arts, we don't have an artistic history in this medium that people will respect (though the traditional arts have their own problems, granted).

I'm optimistic, though.  This style of expression is a work in progress.  It will get stronger, and it will find its audience, and people will get bent out of shape about it less and less.

http://www.the-end-of-us.com/

This is a really short little game (or not game), but it struck me because it does what it does very well.  It creates an emotion in the user (it did for me anyway) purely through interaction.

It's pretty much inevitable that any medium/movement/social structure will become watered down and its overall appearance will sink towards the lowest common denominator as it gains mainstream acceptance, popularity, and widespread use.  That's just how people work.  I was not really that much of a player in the earlier days of the web, so I won't presume to make any comments about that, but I would argue that the potential is greater now than ever.  I also think that a community or network that is skillfully crafted towards certain themes by thoughtful people would naturally filter out most of the undesirables based simply on the fact that it wouldn't pander to their tastes.

I remember this, exactly like the narrator described at the beginning - a fantastic claim that was followed up by nothing.  Glad to see they are still working, though.  I will remain skeptical until I see it working in a real project.  Voxels have always been way to heavy to run in real time, so how they are giving you an "unlimited" number seems almost like magic.  I hope they can back it up, because modeling in voxels would eliminate some of the irritations you get with polygons.

You did create some very effective atmosphere in your work, especially with the audio, very cool.  I also like surrealism.

The idea of perfectly sustained flow makes me think of this comic:

http://prophotogroup.com/Video-gaming.html

The only games I can think of that don't ramp are the so-called art games, like Majesty of Colors, Every Day the Same Dream, etc.  As far as mainstream games, maybe The Sims.  Taking the idea a step further, do we need difficulty at all?  As in, maybe as designers we could shift our paradigm from challenging players to enabling them, like productivity software does (a bland example, but don't take the analogy too far).  Could we require less of players, instead being there and being ready at the user's pace?  One thing that I see as a disadvantage of the videogame medium as it currently exists is that it demands the user's constant attention and intense focus.  Could we make a less demanding and yet perhaps more enjoyable experience?

An idea that I've always had along those lines is to get the game off the computer box and incorporated in our living environment better.  If you have a painting that hangs in your living room that people admire when they come over, why not have a digital screen in the same space that displays an interactive painting?  Something like FATALE, but where it inhabits a friendlier space.  People can casually interact with it as they walk by, and just as easily drop it and move on, then come back to it during the normal ebb and flow of a social event.  Others can enjoy what's unfolding from a distance as others "play" the work.  Its presence, like a painting, adds something to the environment.  Anyway, I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but I like to theoretically explore potentially extreme ways of altering the medium's basic idioms.

Interesting.  This touches on a question I've been musing on lately regarding games as escapism (are they really?  Most people seem to think so.  Should they be?)  Maybe I'll expand upon this thought later when I have more time.

As far as a direct answer to your question, I've noticed particularly as I've grown older that I do indeed enjoy games less.  I've also grown cynical about why others play them as well.  My current viewpoint is that most games really are hacking into our psychology to make us keep playing and keep buying - they've become a well-designed set of reward schedules.  There is a very compelling literature on this in psychology, about how reward schedules (particularly variable schedules, where you know there's a reward, but not exactly when it will come) are irresistible to lab rats and people alike.  Basically, the reward is dangled in front of you (shiny set of armor + nasty sword), and you jump through hoops to get it.  But does anyone else notice the empty feeling that comes with finally achieving the reward?  It's my guess that people grow out of these games when they start to recognize that, while others simply clamp on to the next reward and set of hoops without questioning it.

For me, the things that tend to give me true enjoyment are the beautiful (aesthetically) things that you can bring into existence from time to time.  For example, in a Final Fantasy game, I might earn a powerful spell that has a beautifully rendered effect when I cast it.  It's part of the style of FF games to make these very elaborate, almost like a little show that you can create every so often.  I like those

There is also no question that you can feel a sense of accomplishment from overcoming a challenge, though this is also an effect that sits in a psychological sweet spot.  The idea of "flow", where difficulty fluctuates perfectly with the player to reward accomplishment, while always remaining just challenging enough (maybe I didn't explain that well, but I'm sure people here are familiar with the concept).  I don't like feeling like a game is manipulating me, though I now wonder whether my intellect, in recognizing that, is possibly robbing me of some honest fun.

Anyway, I learned long ago not to project my cynicism on others, or assume I know how they work.  I'm interested to hear what others think.

My father-in-law (a professor of music in the Cal State system) was telling me about this last week.  It looks very interesting.  We agreed that as a tool to edit the music, it's not particularly accurate or powerful, putting it in the toy/game/exploration realm, rather than allowing for real alternate authorship.  As far as notgames, I think you could make the argument that she is pushing toward a similar ideal from the other side - using her own native medium as a starting point.

I don't really listen to Bjork much, but I do give her credit for always pushing boundaries and being progressive with her craft.

I found a surprisingly thoughtful review on L.A. Noire on a sports blog, of all places.  http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6625747/la-noire  It's quite long, but I enjoyed following the author's train of thought as he came to certain realizations.

I feel like the mainstream industry is tackling the process of adding story, meaning, and fulfillment to games almost as a battle of attrition, a head on charge.  It's a kind of hubris, like they can throw their technology and money and huge development teams at it and muscle something beautiful into existence.  Which is obviously absurd.

Re: Portal 2 - I think Jeroen was pretty spot on with his take, but I'll sum it up in one word: charm.  Portal 1 had it, Portal 2 not so much.  I don't care for puzzle games myself, but I played Portal 1 all the way through, and I would have to point to that charm as being the reason why.

Well, I think children still need that hook so they can identify with whatever they've chosen as, "I'm this guy," but maybe that was a bad example.

My point is that human beings seem to have a nearly unlimited capacity for, and a natural predilection to anthropomorphize animals, objects, even forces of nature.  As such, if you can find the right hook, almost anything is fertile ground as an avatar that the user can project their ego onto.

As to the original point, though, I'm sure what you found is right, that you do need to be something.  The only way around that I can think of is to use something very abstract, like the aforementioned forces of nature.  Such an avatar could be very minimal, or even not visually represented if the player was still able to explore and come to certain expectations about their limitations, sphere of influence, maybe have some consistent visible side effects to their actions, something that adds up to something that the player can identify with something they know.

All art is, at root, about what it's like to be a human being.  Otherwise, it wouldn't touch us the way it does.  That being said, there are plenty of ways to give a viewer/user a vehicle with which to project human-ness on non-human characters, or even objects.  In fact, people will do this naturally on their own.  Why else would a child play with a stuffed animal?

The question brought up by the game originally described is an interesting one.  It sounds like you were a step away from asking the player to play as the environment, but just not taking the final leap in that direction.  It makes me wonder how God would feel if he were to cause a flower to open (example not meant to be taken in a religious sense, just take the analogy for what it is).  Would he walk/float/appear in front of it and reach out and touch it?  Or would he go into the flower, become it, and imbue it with his form?  Has anyone made a game where you are asked to be the environment, and to identify your self as it, either as a whole, or as a series of habitations of objects?

I guess, speaking of flowers, Flower is a good example of a game that touches on these questions.

Well, I would love to reply to every post in this thread, but let me just address the initial question more generally.

As a hard-core introvert, I find the idea that interaction necessarily requires other people to be unsatisfying and somewhat limiting.  Let's assume you are playing a game with/against an AI that is indistinguishable (from your point of view) from a real person (will happen one of these days).  In such a situation, the games will play out similarly, if not identically, to the way they would play out with a human partner.  So what is the distinction that makes human interaction necessary?  Does the other party have to be conscious?  Have a soul?  If we accept that the AI would be satisfactory, then where is the dividing line between interaction and just action?

I would take a broader view of interaction being pretty much any that, when acted upon, will produce a reaction or feedback that wouldn't exist if you were just sitting there by yourself.  This view looks at the AI/human/whatever as a black box.  Doesn't matter what it is, but it's the action-reaction that defines the interaction.  Let's take the example of an inanimate toy, like a yo-yo.  When you play, are you not interacting with it?  Your action - to throw the yo-yo - evokes a reaction from the yo-yo - spinning back up - that doesn't exist with other objects you might throw.  This fact will in turn cause you to exhibit different behaviors when acting on it than you would if you were acting on an unrelated object.  To me this feels like interaction.

I suppose another possible argument would be that a well designed (dare I say artistically designed?) system can give you a way to interact with yourself.  Especially considering how little of our minds are under conscious control, I think this is not only important, but vital in any type of interactive design.  I don't want to confuse this post by presenting too many arguments at once, but maybe I'll come back to this idea if warranted.

Hello notgamers.  My name is Chris, and I am a 3D artist for a small studio in Los Angeles, though I longingly look forward to the day when I can do my own projects in the ways that I dream of doing them.  This is me -----> http://www.chrisweeks3d.com   None of the work on there is particularly poetic, but its purpose is to be relevant to the current commercial markets.

I am deeply interested in how games and interactive media can be more artistic and more meaningful.  I am inspired by the work of Tale of Tales and That Game Company, which is how I found my way here.  The philosophical and theoretical discussion I see on this forum is right up my alley.  I am just brimming with ideas, and I can't wait to inflict them all on you!  Thanks for having me here, and thanks for having this forum in the first place.