‘ALIVE’ and ‘LIVING’ are strange words. I feel in some sense, we are using them as a stand-in for whatever it is we want to talk about when we don’t know the words. We are trying to wield them, see how they moves, how they fit with other words and ideas, to better understand them.
It is confusing, haha!
game-spaces and game-plays
I am not convinced we know what LIVING game-spaces are. Or even what a LIVING creative process is. I think most of my PLAY to LIVE letter was trying to get at what LIVING game-play is. Looking at the dynamics of a system at play, and trying to describe what it is that makes a game being played have that deep feeling.
LIVING game-play: The game-play transforms the game-space. Here the game-space includes the community, the players, the play ‘arena’, and the virtual ‘space’ (the simulation. the rules of the game. the state of the game. and any ‘virtual’ spaces represented there-in.).
I feel you then went on to explore the details of LIVING game-spaces, though you claimed to try to define LIVING game-play. Actually. hmm. Perhaps I am still just examining that single-player ALIVENESS, and shoving everything else into the game-space. I am convinced that: the dynamics of a system, on their own, extracted from the surrounding game-space (or lacking one of much complexity, in the single-player game case), can inspire a deep feeling of ALIVENESS, by being played well. Becoming ALIVE.
Playing well is becoming ALIVE
-droqen in LIVING games
What is preserved
I want to get back to my point of there being something else beyond playing well. That playing well allows you to access. Values of the play system which have, in the language of TTWOB, ‘resolved forces’ that matter to the participants. I think this is something that can be baked into a game. It is a latent, deep feeling of ALIVENESS that even single-player players can feel.
I really like the idea that there is something constant that the dynamics of a system at play dance around. The game, as any art, catches some feeling in its trap (a la Don Potts), the trap built by the designer, which then others can run themselves through and see how they feel. Most definitely different. But also, probably the same. Maybe only that universal, deep feeling is the same.
In the case of a local multiplayer game, the player can feel the LIFE of people who are next to them, becoming ALIVE too.
-droqen in LIVING games
In the case of a game which simulates a changing world, the player can feel the LIFE of this world changing, this feeling of that world becoming ALIVE.
I feel like the fact that these are dynamic systems is not the point, not enough to elicit this deep feeling. I think multiplayer adds an extra richness to the experience, that gives it some edge over single-player games. But, I don’t want us to stop looking there, and say we know what ALIVENESS is because we seem multiple agents transforming a game-space.
Why Games
And a final thought:
There is still some yet undefined specificity in games’ relationship to people becoming ALIVE. That is, even without game-space or game-play, there are other ways that people become ALIVE.
-droqen in LIVING games
Thinking about this, I think the difference is that a game is an explicit invitation to play well. A space with boundaries, to limit the scope of the challenge. A laboratory. I guess this is similar to C. Thi Nguyen’s philosophy.. reading the blurbs for ‘Games: Agency As Art‘ makes me want to read it now…
hmm, thinking more about the last thing, after watching a movie, after listening to some music, I don’t think the laboratory angle is the main thing. I think you can consider any art a laboratory for reflecting on your self, your world. I am still interested in reading that book, I think agency probably does have something to do with it. taking control of something. but I don’t quite have the words yet I think.