The 4 A's
Action, Art, Arc, Atmosphere. The four components of a Gesture.
How the 4 A's Work
When playing, the 4 A's are inseparable. You experience them as one thing. When analyzing, you pull them apart to understand how each contributes to the whole.
Action
What the videogame has the player do.
This includes direct interaction: pressing buttons, moving a character, making choices. But it also includes absence of interaction: waiting, watching, being still. A cutscene is an Action (the action of watching). A pause is an Action (the action of not acting).
Action is not just "verbs" or "mechanics." It is whatever the videogame asks of the player, whether that asking is explicit or implicit, active or passive.
Art
Art direction, lighting, staging, camera grammar, composition, and sound design.
Art is not just "how it looks." It is the full vocabulary of visual and audio craft: art direction and style, lighting and color, staging and blocking, camera grammar (angles, movement, cuts), composition (what's in frame, what's emphasized), sound design and music.
Every Art choice has an Aesthetic Heritage. A Dutch angle comes from somewhere. A synth soundtrack comes from somewhere. Understanding where these choices come from helps you understand why they work (or don't).
Arc
The amount of time. The shape of the experience over duration.
An Arc can be a micro-moment: the 0.2 seconds of a jump's apex. Or it can be a long moment: the 10-minute drive through the desert. Or it can be the entire videogame: the 40-hour journey from start to credits.
Arc is not the same as "pacing," though pacing is part of it. Arc is the temporal container of the Gesture. It answers: how long does this last, and what shape does it take?
A Gesture can nest inside another Gesture. The Arc of a single jump exists inside the Arc of a level, which exists inside the Arc of the whole videogame.
Atmosphere
The feeling and vibe experienced from the videogame.
Atmosphere is what emerges when Action, Art, and Arc combine. It is the emotional texture of the experience. The mood. The tone.
Atmosphere is not something designers add on top. It is what players feel as a result of everything else. But designers can and do craft toward specific Atmospheres by shaping the other three A's.
Words for Atmosphere: tense, melancholy, cozy, uncanny, triumphant, lonely, frantic, peaceful. These are not prescriptions. They are observations of what emerges.
Exercise
Pick a videogame you know well. Identify one Gesture (any scale). Write one sentence for each A:
- Action: What is the videogame having me do?
- Art: What do I see and hear? What traditions is it drawing from?
- Arc: How long does this last? What's its shape?
- Atmosphere: What does it feel like?
Teaching the 4 A's
Introduce the 4 A's only after students have grasped Gesture as a holistic concept. The danger is students treating the 4 A's as a checklist rather than lenses for understanding.
Order of Introduction
Action first. It's the most intuitive: "What are you doing?"
Art second. Students are often visual-first, so this connects quickly.
Atmosphere third. Once they can identify Action and Art, ask "What does it feel like?" This synthesizes the first two.
Arc last. Time is the hardest to see. Students need practice with the other three before they can attend to temporal shape.
Common Pitfalls
"Action = button press"
Students reduce Action to input. Push them: What about waiting? What about choosing not to act? What about the action of reading text? Watching a cutscene?
"Art = graphics quality"
Students may conflate Art with fidelity or polish. Redirect: a pixel art videogame has Art choices just as much as a AAA title. What traditions is it drawing from?
"Atmosphere is just Art"
Students may collapse Atmosphere into Art. Distinguish: Art is what you see/hear; Atmosphere is what you feel. Same Art can produce different Atmospheres with different Actions.
Assessment
Have students analyze the same videogame moment. Compare their 4 A's breakdowns. Differences reveal interpretation, not error. Discuss why different students foreground different A's.
Why Four?
The 4 A's are not exhaustive. They are a heuristic: four lenses that together cover most of what matters in a Gesture. Other frameworks slice differently.
MDA uses three (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics). Swink's Game Feel focuses on real-time control. The 4 A's emphasize that Action and Art are equally important, and that time (Arc) and feeling (Atmosphere) deserve explicit attention.
Why "Art" and Not "Aesthetics"?
We use "Art" for the visual/audio component and reserve "Aesthetic" for Aesthetic Heritage, which refers to videogames as an aesthetic medium where all 4 A's have lineages.
This avoids confusion: "Art" is one of the four components; "Aesthetic Heritage" is the concept that all four have traditions they inherit from.
The Problem of Separation
The 4 A's are analytically distinct but experientially unified. This creates a pedagogical tension: we teach students to separate what play unifies.
The solution is to always return to Gesture. The 4 A's are tools for understanding Gesture, not replacements for it. Analysis serves experience, not the other way around.
References
- Swink, Steve. Game Feel (2009)
- Anthropy, Anna & Clark, Naomi. A Game Design Vocabulary (2014)
- Hunicke, LeBlanc, Zubek. "MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design" (2004)