meaning and metameaning

I played Slay the Princess very recently and have had very specific feelings as a result, ones about the plurality of a human existence, the sort of feelings that I have not much been in the habit of considering or sharing. I will continue to not share them.

Not sharing these feelings, however, is the core of this topic, meaning and metameaning; in meaning, for a moment, I said, “what is a game if not a means to an end? . . . i feel ready to transcend form.”

Dear Jack, on my first read of your Catching up post, I was inspired by what you wrote here — then on the second, I was uncertain about my own feeling — and on the third, I had arrived firmly in this place of wanting to escape form.

I can see a nice through-line from many of my earlier puzzle games through ComboJumper – a focus on movement mechanics in a grid, and a reverence for mechanical interplay in that space. It’s encouraging to see evidence of that kind of journey.

These are mechanical concerns, mechanical patterns. But are these emotions? Are these feelings? Are these the building blocks of feelings, or mere building blocks? You have a medium, but what are you pushing through it?

You don’t have to answer that! I’m interested, but I also am not sure how to start a conversation like that. I’m not sure I’d want to answer it.

haiku games as a metaform, for metameaning

I am supposing that haiku games as we have been discussing them are not a discussion of meaning, but a discussion of metameaning, a discussion that supposes to transcend any particular meaning, and therefore never touches meaning at all.

That is, what if our construction of Haiku Games is as misguided, as simply confused, as the hope to make games with some meaning, any meaning at all.

I am left wanting – wanting for something more than the crystalline perfection of the design. I’ve learned this system, but now what?

~ Jack, HAIKU games

I want to discover beauty about the world – my world – through play. Beauty of a natural flavor, rather than the mathematical beauty you can find within systems themselves.

~ Jack, HAIKU games

what is it that we want our games to do to each other?

~ droqen, meaning, for a moment

I dip in and out of theory, but I wonder — is theory where I go when I’m afraid to share a real feeling?

We could spend eternity describing the parameters for beauty and die without ever finding it.

But that’s what we’re here for, right?

We want to find things.

Meaning, or feeling, or something like it. Not the idea of aliveness, but aliveness itself.

Has letterclub helped me find meaning? I think so, but I am finding it more and more difficult to engage with theory (to excuse my, or our, slowed pace). Has letterclub helped you find meaning? Is there something else we should be doing together instead now that we are where we are?