Solving the True, Good, and Beautiful Puzzle

The Video Game as Objet Ambigu

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the opportunities of video games to provide experiential engagement with the true, good, and beautiful ideal. I propose an understanding of the video game as an objet ambigu and, thus, as an artefact that thrives in providing potential brought forth by those who engage with it. Video games offer adaptive, virtual spaces based on clearly defined aesthetics, rules, and mechanics but can only set them into meaningful motions through their players. Thus, their overall effect is tightly linked to the subjective approach of its players, which, as I argue, allows them to engage with their subjective, inner sentiments of abstract idealistic meaning dimensions as they are present in the true, good, and beautiful. This musing is exercised in a playthrough analysis of the walking simulator Draugen and critically reflected upon in a concluding discussion.