Video games may often overwhelm and titillate our senses, but Zen comes instead from withdrawal and placidity.Įddy Boxerman, the creator of Osmos (a game which main concept seemed to be “ ambience”, derived from very specific aesthetics and a relaxed pace), reflected on this label in his blog in a two-parts post (December, 2008): “ Zen Gaming, part 1” and “ Zen Gaming, part 2”. Relaxation and reflection arise from constrained environments in which the senses are deemphasized and focused rather than escalated and expanded. As we think about Zen games, we may have to reject the ideology of engagement. But even this simplified and placidity-oriented view of Zen presented problems that Bogost highlighted clearly:īecause relaxation and meditation rely on inaction rather than action, they threaten to undermine the very nature of video games. A Zen game.īogost, who seemed to be using a quite broad definition of Zen, went beyond the obvious meditation games to look for Zen-like practises in casual games, gardening and wandering, and identified Zen with minimalism: “a real meditation game would reject graphical sensuality in favor of simplicity and austerity”. But what if we wanted another kind of experience from a game, from time to time at least: a relaxing lean back experience. Leaning forward is useful when the desired effect of a game is high-attention and twitchiness.
This was the perspective of Ian Bogost, who, in 2007, wrote a piece for Gamasutra entitled “ Persuasive Games: Video Game Zen” (all emphasis mine):
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