Thinking about "nothingness" in media as defined by a particular frustrating audience mindset. When a game deemphasizes goals and has no combat or even just offers lots of low pressure exploration, forum chuds will passive-aggressively start threads asking "so what do you actually do in this game?"... TV and movies that are deliberately paced and don't focus on serving up a steady binge-friendly stream of cliffhangers and easily digestible plot points are said to be stories where "nothing happens". Only rarely is anything considered to have "happened" in a scene that consists solely of characters talking. When I take a moment to enjoy a place's vibe and rummage through my inventory or talk to an ancillary character, I'm "not doing anything". et cetera. Even lots of instrumental music, where "no one is saying anything". Any kind of minimalism. Things that count for "nothing"; the perception of an absence of creative intent; at its most extreme, a hostility to the very concept of negative space.
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Demiromantic asexual lesbian in love with Samus Aran. White. 28. Dragon who hoards stuff. I designed a small game once; hope to design more someday.
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in reply to @vectorpoem's post:
this is what low key bugs me about noun-verb game design arguments. planning a decision or simply enjoying the space or just thinking about the game are all valid things to be "doing"
yeah i think it's an outgrowth of Metrics Brain. any interaction or feeling that can't be broken down into numbers, inputs and outputs etc doesn't exist.
I think it was even said in PMG (or someone else's) video about idle/incremental games. There, most of the actual game runs outside of the computer screen, in that whole planning and optimising part that players do outside of the game.
you couldn't make seinfeld today. not because of woke, but because it's a show about nothing.