Games, Attention, and the Eighth Art

I recently finished a Turkish book titled “Eighth Art: Game”. I actually listened to it via Storytel. As I keep promising myself, every book I consume deserves a short blog post. This is my attempt to keep that promise while fighting my procrastinator brain.

The book is well-structured and thoughtfully written. It briefly walks through the history of art, touches on other art forms, and carefully connects them to games. It discusses what a game is, its core elements, and how games should be designed. For someone who wants to work in the gaming industry, it is probably a very solid foundation. It also includes practical tips and insights about game development.

For me, much of the content felt like intellectual hoarding. Interesting and well-organized, but not something I will directly use. I do not think I will ever work in the game industry. Still, it was refreshing to revisit what games mean for humanity and how they can be considered the eighth art: a medium that combines storytelling, aesthetics, music, interaction, and human intention into a single experience.

I genuinely believe that history will remember some digital games as real artworks of this era.

That said, I have some outlier opinions about both the gaming industry and modern content ecosystems. And maybe that is exactly why this book stayed with me. But first, let's try to understand the word "game".

Why Do We Play Games at All?

Before criticizing the gaming industry, I think it is fair to ask a more basic question: why do we play games?

Is it just to pass time without boredom?
To keep the brain “sharp”?
To learn something meaningful?

I honestly do not know what the useful outcome of hyper-casual games is.

Personally, I think games make the most sense when they are limited simulations of real-world situations. A football game can be seen as a symbolic replacement for conflict: two teams, clear rules, strategy, cooperation, and competition instead of violence. Simple family or role-playing games help children learn social roles, empathy, and responsibility. Even very basic games, like endless running, simulate a deeply instinctive scenario: escaping when you need to survive.

In that sense, games are not very different from movies. Movies are also compressed pieces of life. We watch a character’s struggles, decisions, failures, and growth within a limited time frame. We are not actively playing, but we are still learning by observing the world through someone else’s eyes.

In Turkish language , theatre works are called “oyun”, which literally means game.

From this perspective, games matter when they model something human, whether actively like games or passively like movies, not when they exist only to fill time.

What Actually Makes a Game a Game?

Exact definition of a game is not certain, but they usually agree on the same core elements of a game. A game typically includes:

• Rules
  Clear constraints that define what is allowed and what is not.
• Goals
  A defined objective that gives direction and meaning to player actions.
• Mechanics
  The actions players can take and how the system responds.
• Dynamics
  The behaviors that emerge when rules and mechanics interact over time.
• Feedback
  Signals that show progress, success, failure, or consequences.
• Challenge
  A balance between difficulty and skill that rewards learning and mastery.

When these elements are well designed, a game feels fair, engaging, and meaningful. Difficulty is something to be overcome through understanding and skill, not something artificially placed in the way.

Where Many Mobile Games Go Wrong

Here is the core problem: much of the mobile gaming industry is no longer centered around these elements.

Instead, it focuses on:

• Behavioral psychology – studying how to keep players hooked
• Monetization funnels – leading players step by step toward payment
• Artificial difficulty curves – blocking progress instead of rewarding skill
• Time-gated frustration – limiting playtime to sell shortcuts
• Delayed gratification engineered for payment – selling relief from frustration

Difficulty is no longer designed to challenge intelligence or mastery. It is designed to slow the player down. Progress is blocked not by lack of skill, but by lack of patience or willingness to pay.

In that sense, many mobile games today do not lack polish. They lack game design. They function as systems for retention and monetization rather than spaces for play.

Parenting Makes This Discomfort Louder

Since becoming a father, this discomfort has become much more concrete. From time to time, I look for a simple, fun game to play with my son, and what I see worries me. Even games made “for children” are aggressively addictive. I cannot even find a simple Snake game like the one on the Nokia 3310 anymore. Everything is optimized for attention capture: colors, sounds, reward timing, level pacing.

We recently tried a Ball Sort Puzzle game on his grandmother’s tablet. It started as a nice shared experience, solving puzzles together, but quickly turned into ads everywhere. My son kept touching call-to-action buttons every few seconds.

These games are not designed to be solved; they are designed to be interrupted by a credit card.

Incentives Shape Design

My perspective on games became much clearer after I started playing tabletop games to socialize in Sweden. If you live in Sweden, you kind of have to play tabletop games 😄
What I felt most was simple respect for the designers.

Tabletop Games: Buy Once, Play Forever

You buy a tabletop game once, and you own it forever. There are no ads, no artificial waiting, no hidden mechanics designed to slow you down. The experience is complete by design. Success and failure are fully contained within the rules of the game.

This made me realize something very simple: incentives shape design.

If you incentivize designers to create better games in order to sell them, they design better games. They compete on balance, clarity, fun, and originality.

But if you incentivize designers to create eye-catching, notice-seeking, and addictive systems that push players into buying coins or shortcuts, then that is exactly what they design. They are still doing their job.

Desktop and Indie Games: Expression Over Extraction

There is still hope in desktop games, especially in the indie scene.

Many indie games focus heavily on storytelling, atmosphere, and meaningful mechanics. These games often feel closer to art than to products. They are not trying to maximize interaction, retention, or daily active users. They are trying to express something.

They usually have a clear beginning and a clear end. You buy them once, you experience them, and you move on. Their incentive is not to keep you forever, but to leave something behind.

This contrast becomes even clearer when you look at long-running mainstream franchises. Games like NBA 2K or FIFA used to be mostly about playing the game itself. Today, they increasingly push players toward specific modes and systems designed to sell items. Playing well matters less than playing long, or paying.

And this is where chess becomes an interesting counterexample.

Chess was not designed by a single person. It evolved over centuries. Every rule change effectively created a new version of the game. That long evolutionary process is probably why it still feels balanced, deep, and timeless. Every change mattered. Every rule existed for a reason.

Chess did not survive because it maximized engagement. It survived because it was good. It adapted to time.

So, as a designer let me defend all design industry again.

Design did not get worse. Incentives changed.

Why This Matters to Me

That is why I struggle to take much of the mobile gaming industry seriously. Not because games are trivial, but because games deserve better design ethics.

Good games respect the player’s intelligence, time, and agency. They challenge you, teach you, or surprise you. They do not simply keep you busy.

When the mobile game ecosystem emerged in the early 2010s, smartphones felt like a genuinely exciting medium for game design. Games were simple, honest, and often unique. You lost because you failed. You won because you improved.

Games like Flappy Bird, Angry Birds, HaxBall, or 2048 were built around a single clear idea. Clear rules. Clear feedback. Clear challenge. They were easy to learn and hard to master. Most importantly, they did not constantly interrupt you to sell something.

I believe they were great example of a game design. Truly a masterpiece, a new game, designed to brand new medium, played by millions. Ping pong of mobile phones. They trusted the player. If you failed, it was on you. If you succeeded, it was because you understood the system better.

Once you understand what makes a game a game, it becomes very hard to ignore when those elements are slowly replaced by manipulation.

Closing

Anyway, I never became a mobile gamer. I still need to think more deeply about why. Games like chess or Go, which genuinely exercise the mind, actually sound like great ways to spend free time.

Something similar happens with music. I often feel uncomfortable spending time on something that does not feel productive, even though letting the mind wander is probably healthy. Instead, I somehow became an audiobook and podcast addict. What a boring guy 😄

I also never liked being a consistent player. I never mastered any game. I mostly just tried to enjoy them, without taking them too seriously.

...

What you just read is an enthusiastic brain’s reflection on games. Written by someone who does not like games, would never work for a game company, yet still read a book about games and genuinely enjoyed it.

“Eighth Art: Game” is a good book. Everyone in Turkey who wants to be part of the gaming industry should read or listen to it.

This post is not an attack on games. I believe deeply in the real meaning of play. I learned why every mammal needs to play while watching kittens grow with their mother. And I keep playing games with my son, because he needs it.

This is nostalgia, yes, but it is also criticism.
For an industry that once cared more about meaning than metrics.