This simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality as it is the basis of nonsense. Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the truth that to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook.
-G. K. Chesterton, A Defence of Nonsense
Videogames seem to have always existed inside a paradox. Being software, their gameplay will be logical for as long as computers are logical. But this logic is only foundational. There is an absolute set of rules that governs everything in a game's universe. The blocks will always fall and the rows will always disappear. If an exception occurs it is because a specific variable was different in a specific way. And unlike the real universe, games are created by humans and the rules that govern them can be completely comprehended by humans (in fact this is often something many games expect the player to do).
The other side of gaming's supposed logicality is the fact that the rules can be and often are completely independent of reality. Blocks don't really fall out of the sky and stack themselves, and they certainly don't disappear when they form a row. There's just no way this can occur in the natural world. The blocks aren't representative of anything real (no matter how speculative you may want to be about that), they are just blocks that fall and disappear. The game is pure nonsense.
At this point in time nonsense has seem to have become a block in the foundation for videogame culture. When considered alongside other entertainment industries, it's fascinating how many top selling games rely on nonsense. When I was playing Resident Evil 5 I couldn't help but notice how many ridiculous videogame tropes it used, which especially stood out when placed alongside it's intended realistic graphics and AI and so on. Shooting a snake with a rocket launcher, picking up an unscathed egg from where its body used to be, and then eating it to instantly heal a wound caused by an axe to the face is so far removed from reality that it can't be explained away, and when placed alongside lifelike graphics and animations it can't reasonably just be abstract symbolism. When I took a step back and realized this, I was surprised at myself for not having been immediately struck by this fact as I assume someone completely new to videogames would be. When a film or a song is full of abstract nonsense it's considered innovative, in a videogame, even a “realistic” one, it's considered normal.
When thought of as an expressive medium there is one thing videogames do very well, they unite artistic nonsense with logical mechanics. That's one thing Today I Die demonstrates, and one reason why I think that game's value outlives its mere novelty. Within its universe, abstract ideas exist as a tangible reality and behave according to specific patterns. The fact that a player is free to experiment with the virtual environment allows him or her to think of the ideas as tangible objects in ways rarely seen elsewhere. It's fascinating how videogames are able to put these two contradicting forces side by side to form a complete whole in a way no other medium can.
This is why I never get as excited for a triple-A realistic game as I do for a creative abstract game. While I love being impressed by detailed lifelike environments, I'm more interested in something that just wants to explore what can be done by combining imagination with a tangible universe.
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
-Princess Irulan, Dune