What is an aesthetic experience? I take as my guide in this exploration the writings of Immanuel Kant, specifically, his "Third Critique", The Critique of Judgment (trans. Werner Pluhar, Hackett, 1987). Now I was at one time a fairly serious student of philosophy and of Kant in particular, so I hope that some of you will forgive me if I play a little loosely with Mr. Kant, and that the rest of you will forgive me for being so obtuse as to mention him at all. Kant argued that, if we wish to understand a particular kind of judgment as aesthetic, we had better distinguish it from a "mere liking." In these days of 'everyone has their own opinion', it may be hard for you to recognize or accept that any claim goes beyond merely expressing a preference. But bear with me while I, in my old-fashioned manner, continue to believe that it makes sense to distinguish different kinds of judgments.
For example, when you claim that you like a particular flavor of ice-cream (or 'rice-dream' or 'ice-bean' or Tofutti if you're a vegan), people don't usually argue with you. (That is, not unless they see you making 'yuck' faces when you eat that flavor.) More importantly, if someone else has a different preference, you don't tend to take this difference as negating or conflicting with your preference. Whereas if you were to claim that ice-cream is actually made from cows' intenstines instead of their milk, people would generally be of a different mind about this, and their judgments would conflict with yours. In a judgment of preference, we are free to say 'to each their own' - the judge ratifies his or her own judgment. But in a judgment of fact, differing judgments are in conflict, and we turn to the object of the judgment for adjudication.
Which brings us to aesthetics. When you declare that something is beautiful, Kant argues, you make a different kind of claim than when you merely say you like it. That is, you want to claim that everyone else should find the object beautiful as well, even though there are no objective criteria by which you could prove (as in a judgment of fact) that the object is beautiful. So Kant argued that an aesthetic judgment was something like a judgment of preference, in that the ground of the judgment lies in the person, not in the object, and at the same time it is like a judgment of fact, since we expect others to agree with us. Today we find it very hard to claim that "everybody" might agree on something, so let's just say that, when you make this kind of judgment, you project (or imagine) a community of like-mided folks who would agree with you. In the particular case in question, you might imagine that all of your "gamer" buddies would certainly recognize the beauty you see in a particular game, even if non-gamers wouldn't have a clue.
A perfectly executed game produces a sort of dance between the human intellect and reflexes and the game world, a dance that can be quite beautiful to experience. Kant describes beauty as a 'purposeless purposefulness', and this captures quite well the aesthetic experience that can be found in certain superior games. The ostensive goals of the game, be they blowing up enemies or rescuing the princess, are in some sense meaningless, since they have no impact on the real world. But the manner of their execution can be fluid or frustrating, intuitive or incomprehensible, stimulating or stressful, and so on, depending on the skills of the game's designers and programmers.
Next time, don't just stand alone and declare "I like video games," stand with the whole community of gamers and decree "video games are beautiful!"