I want to get past this question of responsibility – is the game’s design going to reveal life to any player? Or is the player going to create life from any game? Or should we hope for something in the middle?

me, in Understanding Aliveness

I am worried my worries about responsibility are a semantic distraction… I want to try writing a more assertive letter.

So. Let’s be clear. And then examine the conclusions.

LIVING games

Does the living process describe how a game is made, or how it is played? (It’s both, right?)

droqen, in LIVING Games

Let’s propose that LIVING games are made when LIVING creative processes meet with LIVING players. LIVING players are players that seek to play well. LIVING creative processes seek to play well, too, though they are playing a different game. But also the same game.

Let’s also propose that to make a game that plays well, the designer must have an eye for playing well. Then the designer must make something with which they can play well. And lastly, extend a bridge just enough so that others may meet them there and play well, if they are so inclined.

In other words: It is everyone’s responsibility.

Their Character

This feeling is associated with things produced by living process, or “structure-preserving transformations“. When we consider a whole object, we are simultaneously considering everything that we know and can intuit about the process of its creation and ongoing existence

droqen, in LIVING Games

What are characteristics of LIVING games? We want to use this theory to understand games we like, through the lens of ‘structure-preserving transformations’. Let’s look.

You say that you like to see the history of a space having been LIVED in. Evidence of a sustained, dynamic system. This is a good start:

• LIVING games reveal the richness of their history. When you engage with one, in some way you feel that it has survived through change.

But I want to believe that there is more to it than that. LIVING Games have LIVED, but how?

• LIVING games are honest, and though they may be subversive in the course of maintaining their core values, they are not subversive of them. They preserve these patterns of values throughout the course of play.
• LIVING games value more than playing well. To preserve something throughout their space of play, there must be something more than playing well. Playing well is how you access it, it is the form. Pursuing a high score is not enough. It must be done as a way to play well, as a way to preserve something else. If there is no play, there is no transformation. And if there is no transformation, there is no preservation.
  (note: playing well can be a value, but it is a meta-value)

There must be more, but it is getting late. I will pause here.