In looking up Basho’s Fueki-Ryuko (不易流行) online, I discovered an intriguing quote from ‘the teaching of Basho’, after which I named this post:
Don’t follow ancient masters; seek what they tried to seek.
Haiku As a World Phenomenon (by Susumu Takiguchi, retrieved from thehaikufoundation.org) (punctuation mine)
When Jack asks “What is it that [..] playing certain games, and making certain games, help me get closer to?”, the opportune answer is that playing and making games is exercising an art form, bringing us closer to ‘masters’ of the craft.
Jack also asks “what are we doing when we do game design?”
This is a hard question, but not so hard as what is a game? so I feel like I can make an earnest attempt to answer it:
When I design a game, I am preparing an experience in the only way I know how — by imagining every way I or anyone else might possibly engage with it, and then altering whichever aspects of the game are necessary to make that infinitely-dimensional “possible-engagement-space” more beautiful, like fractal topiary. The bounds of my imagination and my capability to trim such a hedge are strictly limited and mortal, but I do what I can.
To play a game is to participate in this possible-engagement-space (which for now I’ll call Hedge for lack of a better term), engaging in one way of infinitely many. Games have a much-lauded additional dimension of interactivity, but everything in the world is surrounded by its own Hedge:
“Is a hot dog a sandwich?”
~
In games, presenting the player with interesting choices is one tool we have for encouraging the player to explore the hedge maze, indicating that though they may be one traveller only physically capable of engaging in one way, they are still capable of perceiving other interpretations. (At least to where it bends in the undergrowth.)
Maybe this “what we do when we do game design”? Using all the mechanisms available to us, we create a beautiful Hedge and tease out the player’s capacity and inclination to perceive it, to invite them to seek what we tried to seek?
As for what we seek, that’s up to us! That’s the art form in motion! What do we consider beautiful and worth exploring? We can seek what the ancient masters tried to seek, or we can try to make “an mmo whose servers are only accessible when it’s raining in your area“…
We’re all on our own independent pursuits already, I think 🙂
I really like this metaphor. It made me think about how players and game designers have a (fundamentally?) different relationship to this hedge mage. Extending the metaphor perhaps too far: the player is in the maze and the game designer looks down upon it. Even when I playtest my own games, I can’t forget my overhead knowledge of the space.
I think game designers also generally have a more playful relationship to the game than a player, ironically. Players (in my experience) will try to find the fastest way to the end of the maze. As a game designer, then, it’s our job to not only explore the maze, but also to place the start and end points so the player will walk past all the best bits.
It’s a very confusing metaphor now that I’m returning to it! The Hedge is a highly conceptual place made entirely of ideas… and the thing a game designer can do is explore the Hedge and then make a concrete representation of their exploration.
I suppose I feel restricted while experiencing another designer’s concrete representation, because I’m always wanting to look down the paths they didn’t take. What could we have seen on this guided tour of Hedge-space if only you allowed me to turn right here instead of left?
You’re right that it’s common for players to try to find the fastest way to the end rather than doing this silly thing that I do… but what I can’t tell is why. Is it because these players aren’t interested in taking charge of their own expedition into the Hedge, or because they’ve played enough games that prevent them from exploring that they no longer feel empowered to do so?
(It is probably the former. Not everyone wants to be a game designer, and that’s that.)
I think that both reasons you say are correct, and there’s a third one too. I think the start and end points are a promise from the game designer to the player that this is the path with the “best” experience. Maybe a player wouldn’t say that explicitly but I bet that’s part of it: they sit down and trust that the game is going to give them the best experience if they follow its goals.