What is it about?
Are games that are a bit "off" or slightly "broken" always bad? Online discussion suggests players can really appreciate "janky" games. We think understanding the appeal of jank can help us understand player experience more broadly. We think jank might tell us about how aesthetic experiences function in games, and about factors that support reflection and awareness.
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Why is it important?
HCI games focuses mainly on optimised examples of play - seeking to understand cases where games support fluid play, immersion, sense of control. But there is evidence that players feel affection for less optimised, more complex experiences, even for jarring aspects of games. It is important for games research to understand this.
Perspectives
Outside of gaming, artists have long used awkwardness and friction to undermine our familiar ways of engaging with artworks. Artists such as such as Brecht, Lispector and Cage, and comedians like Tim and Eric have found ways of breaking the usual functioning of artforms to provoke different kinds of engagement: reflection, existential awareness, and even irritation. While such artworks can be divisive, those who appreciate them often value them highly. We suggest that the awkward and jarring experiences in `janky' games may function similarly. This paper draws connections between jank in games and breakdowns in other media, also connecting jank to more scientific and psychological understandings and to previous research in HCI.
Daniel Bennett
It university Copenhagen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Jank Accounts: We Should Study `Broken' Games, October 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3573382.3616045.
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