I’m glad you are posing we take this step back. I had been wanting to, sensing the vacuum inside our usage of ‘ALIVE’, and worrying we were lost in search of the form of something we didn’t understand, or at best was different between us. I was going to pose the same to you, but then, I thought it was fine:
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.
– Jack, focusing on game-plays
We could use poetic language to discuss the form of a THING, glinting off of what we meant as a way to better discover its shape from the outside. And besides, we must admit we like form, and thinking about form, however much we also feel trapped by it.
But it will be good to look from the inside too.
rather than LIVING games, what is aliveness itself, freed from form?
– droqen, meaning, for a moment
…rather than HAIKU games, what is haikuness?
Looking back now, I think I got so interested in the HAIKU games idea as a way to limit the avenues for distraction into the world of form. I wanted to make games that reflected life, but I always found myself getting sucked into the minutia – the beauty – of form. Puzzles. Juice. UX. Programming. Systems! Haiku has form, but it is very constrained, and very wonderful, despite, and because of. And it demands you face the world, nature, and consider what it is you care about, outside of that form. I saw HAIKU as little puzzle boxes of content, wrapped in a neat little form bow. And it seemed a good road to lead me out of my internal dilemma, of being practically infatuated with form, but spiritually in need of content.
Content has strange connotations today, with its use in social media – it has become simply anything to satisfy the need to scroll. Another word I could use instead is art. But art also has strange connotations today, in the games world, with the infamous debate of whether games can be art, and aren’t all games art? It’s not a helpful claim when there is indeed something specific I am seeking in my experience, that is not inherent to all games, or at least not found in equal parts in all games.
And so I like using words like HAIKU or ALIVE instead. They have a hint of something more specific, even if we haven’t been able to define what that is. It’s also why I am interested in Sylvie’s prompt for making games: ‘make a world’. It suggests a form that leads to the thing I want. But:
what is it that we want our games to do to each other? what does it mean?
– droqen, meaning, for a moment
My wife is a painter, a member of the art world. Through her, I’ve been able to experience a lot of the art world to a depth I wouldn’t have been able to navigate to myself. I’ve come to see art as a specific game, a very complex game, that people play differently and attribute different value systems, but i think there is a common thing behind them all that they are trying to talk about:
an artwork gives your brain a kick, and you ride it best you can and see where it takes you.
Daydreaming. Kind of like Bernard Suits’ analysis of make-believe games, but you collaborate with the artwork instead of another player. As you play, you examine yourself, and your feelings about … anything. It is a skill you can develop like any other. Art takes itself seriously, even when it looks it doesn’t. It invites you to take it seriously, take yourself seriously.
Some art really connects with you, and gives you a long and curious ride. Other art falls flat, leaving your mind with nowhere to wander. Different people experience art differently, but much of the best art speaks to a COMMON FEELING, that we can share, and appreciate swimming in together, or reminiscing about together. Or it can transport that COMMON FEELING into new contexts, broadening our horizons…
And I think this is the sort of content I am seeking. I really like some of this kind of art, of various shapes. I want more of it in games. But my own mind, and my experience with games, has been so caught up in form for so long. Even when I wanted to face content, I didn’t even know how I felt about the world enough to stake any sort of self-confidence into creating something that played with that feeling. I struggle to even face it in others’ games for the same reason! (but not in other arts? hm) But I think am getting better, perhaps I started by allowing myself to enjoy form again, and recognize there is content in form, that is beautiful and valid to play with. But I still dream of reaching beyond.
I want to get back to my point of there being something else beyond playing well. That playing well allows you to access. . . . It is a latent, deep feeling of ALIVENESS
– Jack, focusing on game-plays
Playing well is a requirement to experiencing a game. It is taking a game seriously, and having fun with it. It is a way to position yourself so you take the fullest force of the kick when it comes. I like the idea that by playing a game, we can dance within a system in a way that reveals a larger structure, something bigger to dream about, beyond the internal mechanisms of the game. The language of ALIVENESS hints at the form of this feeling, the way it can be realized in buildings, or anything. It is put there by the creator, by their sincere appreciation of the feeling, and their sincere play with the feeling (playing well), while they are making the thing. It is not directly communicated by the creator, it communicates itself.
~
But still I haven’t said ‘what does it mean’. What do I, me, want from games? Beyond the mathematical puzzles I’ve allowed myself to enjoy again. Beyond the form of this meaning.
I’ve been enjoying Eric Rohmer’s movies about love. I don’t tell myself that I know anything about love. But I do, we all do. And not that love is the meaning I want to explore, but how do I let myself play with that, and make a game about that, in a way that realizes the depths of play I can do in my mind? Content. And how do we play with these messy systems in the rigid systems of videogames? Or do we even – is it always a reflective post-game wander? Form.
So that’s my best shot at approaching this question. This morning. I got halfway there, perhaps, though maybe it just treads water with things we’ve said in the past… emersion and all.
What is your answer?
This is great, I went back and re-read the “to me, fine art is a… game” comment. Maybe we should enshrine that and the subsequent messages somewhere?
I have this feeling though… what about process? There is a joy in painting in producing any work of art and it varies with form. Ceramics, tiny lego robots, musical instruments… the pleasure of the process of making art varies with each of them. Making a guitar is a very different process from playing one, which is different again from listening to music. I feel like there is a symmetry here, like on both sides of the painting there can be this “kick”. In my experience, when I’m doing something and it “clicks” that sets my mind on fire. This is often the pleasure of puzzle games, right, the “ah-ha” moment, rather than or in addition to the “kick”… making braid was a process, full of its own pleasures and feelings, playing it is a process with pleasures and feelings, and then appreciating it afterwards, letting it kick your brain with its content, is another thing.
I guess we’ve called the “process” of play a rollercoaster up above. But is that it? Feels cartesian, like trying to separate the music from the instruments. Suppose we want to play with love as you suggest, and we make a game. That process must be what matters to us, right? Because there’s not way the author’s mind can receive the same “kick” as the consumer’s mind, considering all the context. Maybe that process of playing love on a game-o-phone and some goal out at optical infinity.
And then we have a game, and in making a game we’ve made a work of art that can give folks a kick but we’ve also made an instrument, a new form, that someone must learn to play.
In some cases they have to learn to play so they can get they key on level 4 to unlock the door on level 6 so they can see a painting… but in other cases it is in the play that they get their kicks! A game player is like a painter with no canvas. Unless they record the activities of the game, they won’t end up with a painting. They’ve played an instrument, felt the pleasure of process, been kicked, perhaps, but are left otherwise empty-handed. It’s art that requires the audience to become an artist in a different medium! Like if the only way to appreciate a painting was to play music to it.
I think I feel a letter forming!