Game Designer GO Brrrrr

I read this and thought, “ah OK! So to make a living platformer I should learn the pattern language for platformers and then BOOM!” But this is magical thinking.

I’m reading The Timeless Way of Building and today it occurred to me: I’ve been reading this book with an eye for how I might be able to instrumentalize it, rather than treating it as a process for reflecting upon the things that I make. It’s a trap I often fall into! I spent a bunch of time learning “about” functional programming, waiting for my brain to suddenly be like “Poof! God mode enabled!”.

The farmer who builds a barn doesn’t think “I sure am glad I have this pattern language for building barns”. Rather, they build a barn and we observe that it is alive. TTWOB is an explanation of how this could be: the farmer is steeped in a cultural context, a pattern language, and can kind of intuitively, expertly, and beautifully blunder their way through the process of building a living barn.

Asking us to look at some pattern we like and then try to learn the pattern language that enables us to generate it seems like the wrong way round. It’s like asking a linguist to learn a language so that they can communicate with people in that language. The linguist might write a grammar, or study the etymology, or compile a dictionary, but that won’t amount to being able to communicate. Linguists don’t learn languages, they study them, and using a linguist’s tools to learn a language is how people end up feeling like learning language is “impossible”. I see it all the time, and have experienced it intimately on multiple occasions: the difference between people who studied a language and people who lived that language.

I think I need to stop thinking, “maybe I could learn a pattern language for platformer and then generate many beautiful platformers” and instead just live my life, and reflect on my experiences. Internalize, and incorporate, rather than instrumentalize. If I want to make platformers, I should make them and reflect on them. This feels like the trivial epiphany: the epiphany I will be having every other week for the rest of my life.

Droqen knows a pattern language for platformers. TTWOB has finally answered my longstanding question “how the heck does droqen make 100 perfect platformers that are all clearly platformers but also all unique and alive” or more specifically, “how did he nail the feel of the platforming in cruel world so hard?” Even before reading TTWOB, Droqen knew a pattern language for platformers. I think the most exciting thing about TTWOB is not pattern languages, but thinking in terms of pattern languages.

A farmer can’t just explain to an architect how to build a barn. The farmer can build a barn because has lived that way, and internalized the relevant pattern language.