Board Room Game Design & Artistic Compromise

The whole value of true art “is spiritual and [its] manner of being is contemplation… [Art is] disinterested, pursued for its own sake, truly noble because [it is] not made to be used as a means, but enjoyed as an end”[i]. We therefore value creators who ““oftentimes work hard to make things that no customers are asking for them”[ii], instead of those who work or modify their work “because that’s what people wanted”[iii].

The inbuilt failing of service games is the necessity of taking into account what players desire, the fact that “everyone would [in a given case] just rush into the middle of the map and start brawling” against developer intention in what originally "started as a super MOBA-ish title”[iv]. Against “moralist or apologetic or civic preoccupations considered ‘utilitarian’… [art requires] the elimination of every human end pursued [from the inner consistency of the work]”[v]. This especially includes the desire to please as a profound compromise of autotelic art.

References
[i] A & S 35 (https://www.amazon.ca/Art-Scholasticism-Jacques-Maritain/dp/1944418105

[ii] https://twitter.com/yosp/status/1199304189165195264?lang=en

[iii] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/gaming/bleeding-edge-team-based-multiplayer-21628737

[iv] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/gaming/bleeding-edge-team-based-multiplayer-21628737

[v] A & S 134