Maybe we just have a fundamental difference here but I don't think games need any sort of message to be enjoyable. You can pick up Pac-Man today and have a perfectly great time just based on its mechanics.I understand why you might feel that way though. As you said, paintings face the same problem and when I was younger I would've had that problem with them. I thought a painting needed a "point" to have any value but over time I've come to feel differently. Some pieces of art are just nice to look at and they don't have to be anything more than that to be valuable.As humans we sometimes feel like we're above it all but the truth is we're just biological machines for whom some things are better than others. Most people like the taste of sugar but that isn't some inherent quality of sugar itself, it's most likely an evolutionary adaption to ensure we pile on as much fat whenever we can get our hands on it. For whatever reason, looking at a painting can be enjoyable on a similarly basic level. You can choose to see that as facile - I know I did for a long time - or you can just accept that your brain is wired this way and savour it while you can. If you've ever enjoyed an ice cream cone I think you're already on my side in this debate.When a game has tightly constructed mechanics, I find that pleasurable. There are some reasons why that might be, for example in the Rain World video I put forward the idea that most games attempt to create a reality which is more fair than the one we inhabit. Apparently, studies show that children develop a sense of fairness from as young as 12 months old, before some of them can even walk. Again, that seems to be an innate quality we're drawn to. It's probably the case that this is true for everything we value to some degree or another, after all we can only see things through the lens of a human being. If artificial general intelligence comes online tomorrow, it's probably not going to get any enjoyment out of any of the games we built because they'd all be seen as too simple or a waste of time.Likewise, it might be the case that, as our brains get more complex we need ever more complex games to keep us entertained. Few adults are seriously interested in a game of tic tac toe the way a child might be. My job as a games critic probably didn't even come into existence until the advent of board games, at which point someone sought to improve on the formula by critiquing the existing one. We can always strive for better but we're still human and we're going to like human things. Maybe deep down I ultimately enjoy Pac-Man because it helps build dexterity and problem solving skills but that's as good a reason as any.

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