I’ve been enjoying listening Dreyfus. He is energetic about his topics, he is humble and curious, and has an perspective on western thought that resonates with me (or maybe its just that his energy is contagious? either way, his ideas and opinions seem constantly relevant to my gamedev/creative/art thoughts). I listened to maybe half? of his lecture series on Heidegger’s Being and Time, which was still a lot, and though I sometimes lost the thread amid the philosophical weeds and arcana, I generally could follow along and glean interesting insights from the series.

I started listening to a new lecture series of his though. It is a philosophy course that does close reads of great works of literature – books chosen by Dreyfus for their ability to ‘articulate a world’, and more specifically the real contemporary worlds of the authors, in a way that helps those communities better understand themselves and live in their world. Books that sustained a culture for hundreds of years, that were quoted again and again in everyday life as a way to remember that ‘yes, this is the way it is’. He starts with Homer’s Odyssey, and ends five books later with Melville’s Moby Dick. I am on lecture 4 out of 6 on The Odyssey, and it is great. I think you will like it, if you have the patience for a lecture series littered with some student questions you often can’t hear.

Here is the playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm1Xy4zHBXgBp3NAAK2CPj5ASOoQfF59X

“Yes, this is the way it is”.

– droqen in Yes, this is the way it is.

Such a serendipitous series to have started now… as we were discussing this feeling. As Sylvie was discussing Worlds with a capital W again, and the ways we find meaning in things. As we were wondering about our self-serving holes of curiosity and how we should treat them. Dreyfus’s investigations of these texts strike me as a well-trod adventure towards understanding ‘Yes, this is the way it is’ for different cultures in time, and treating them as different perspectives on human nature, rather than some ladder that humanity has been climbing. Dreyfus is always eager to point out the ways that the perspective of enlightenment thinking intentionally overlooks things that are actually very important! He applies Heidegger’s theory of moods as a tool to understand the ways that people find meaning in their actions. I’m not always convinced by his arguments on how he is reading certain passages, but it is always interesting to consider what he is saying. It is way more fun than the dry philosophy of Being and Time, and still hits on the most interesting themes from it.

it must become normal and ordinary, but someone must do the work of making it normal, of understanding what normal even is, of discovering the information “what is a haiku game?” from the context of not what it means to a creator but what it means to an explorer, an appreciator, a recipient.

– droqen in fear

Do you think these are all necessary to answer before doing the work? It must be that doing the work will help to answer them… not that I am doing the work either But I think that it is okay for it not to be ‘normal’ for a bit, until it there is enough there to draw some lines between, and then erase.

I am still convinced that the formalism of my puzzle work is connecting me with my world in some way. I was asked by my Dreyfus recommender about my experience with puzzle games, if I felt like playing puzzle games enlightened me about my life at large. I said I have been struggling with that question for a while, but I think it must, otherwise I would not keep doing it, not feel so whole when I am in the right mood for it. He suggested I just have an energy to do these things, and if it wasn’t puzzle games, it would be something else, something else I felt a need to organize. It’s an interesting thought, treating it as a soothe for a fixation. But I’m not convinced that is all it is. It is not engaging with a cultural world as literally as Dreyfus’s great books, but I do know that puzzles are continuing to reveal clarity in forms to me that feel true in the largest way, in a way that does give me new perspective on my interactions with my world. They are just very, very abstract.

Like, could I make a practice of making haiku games? I don’t know that talking about haiku games would get me to that place, I expect (and fear!) that trying to make a haiku game every day would bring the concept crashing down about my ears in an uninteresting way, that is, in a way that did not do much except prove to myself that I can’t make haiku games.

Uninteresting in the context of haiku game discourse.

I have also recently been more driven by doing and less by talking. I also value our haiku games discourse, and generally talking through our half-formed ideas about ‘what are these games we dream of? why do they feel so distant? where are the stairs that lead to them?’

I wonder: why don’t you think you can make haiku games? What is interesting about haiku games discourse – which part of it do you value? Strange, I’m not sure I could answer these questions myself. But it sounds like… you imagine it as this thing that should always be out of reach! And as soon as you would start to treat it as an everyday thing, it would lose its satisfaction.

Perhaps it’s the same as yours: I have a fear that I won’t actually be able to make haiku games the way I imagine them because I’ll inevitably get interested in the shape of a system, instead of how I am feeling about it, and so all my good ideas will be about ways to better ‘see’ the system, and not about anything emersive. I am rarely motivated to make something to help me understand how I feel about it. I am way more often motivated by something I can kind of ‘understand’ or ‘explain’, but there are some tantalizing gaps there that I want to bounce into, get to grips with, and absorb into my brain map, something I can mentally navigate with swiftness, maybe even do tricks with — I want to make it ‘ready-to-hand’ in Heidegger-speak. To make it invisible, so I can… hmm. What is it that I want to do with it?

And then, about the discourse. I suppose I like the discourse, because it constructs a framework within which I can feel like I am beginning to understand it. So that it may become ‘ready-to-hand’, so that I can… hmm. What is it I that I want to do with it?

Perhaps I want to make games with the same knowing, zen wink about nature, as my favorite haiku. A moment to stop and appreciate, in the language of systems and reactions. But you don’t need games to recreate reactions – games enable inter-actions! Am I interested in ways to probe a natural, zen moment? Perhaps this is where it breaks down… I like probing puzzle systems, theoretical frameworks, programming problems. I like having a haiku show me something, wink, and then show me something surprising, and yet mundane.

My partner is interested in making haiku games with me. We have brainstormed a bit. We have fun ideas, but I think there is a pattern where we get stuck figuring out what the interaction is. Maybe we are just looking to the wrong feelings and moments for inspiration.

I like your poem, though I trip on some of the loose grammar. It strikes me as an affirmation that we can see and know, without first organizing. But do you think the process really leaves nothing behind? No imprints of knowing? No experience internalized?

RAIN WOGGLE

droqen – playing the rain woggle

This story feels very close to home for me. So close that I scarcely know what to say about it! “Yes, this is the way it is”. I do feel that I often lose sight of the feeling while making an instrument. And even playing it after working on it feels…different. I suppose because the discovery is gone, already spent. But then, I also suppose there are things there even beyond discovery, that I like to trace through with my fingers, and smile at. That must be my song.

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?
…
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.
…
Has letterclub helped you find meaning? Is there something else we should be doing together instead now that we are where we are?
…
if you’re finding beauty, finding meaning, where are you finding it? How have you connected with things lately? How are you doing?

These are great questions! I have been eager to answer them for the past month… I think I have answers, but have been struggling to put them to words. The first question is a hard one, so let’s go in reverse order, to build up some momentum before we face it…

Finding Beauty

I have been finding beauty, and meaning. In life in general, through being more at peace with my self, my determinations, my relationships, and my anxieties. Living in the present. Dreaming of the future. Appreciating the past. Remembering to be patient. I am doing well. Not always, but often.

This is – not specific. Metameaning only, perhaps. But the meaning is there. Let’s see… Last month I went on a trip to Europe with my partner. We spent a lot of time walking in nature, looking at megaliths. Photographing fungi and rocks and trees and sunsets. Last year we bought our first house, we are learning to take good care of it, and dreaming about how to make it fully ours, slowly making progress. My job is engaging but occasionally overwhelming; I am seeking to do a better job at taming it. In all these things I find meaning. In all these I am reflecting on my relationship with the world around me, learning to shape it where I can, to choose HOW I want to shape it, and otherwise adapt where necessary.

And in games. Let’s come back to games in a bit.

Letterclub

Letterclub has been a big help in my quest to find meaning. We started letterclub at a time when I was not finding meaning in much at all anymore. Our discussions encouraged me to better understand what it was I was looking for. Everyone’s energy was invigorating, your ideas inspiring. I agree our discussion of Haiku Games was a form of metameaning – seeking to understand the shape of how we might relate to our world – find meaning in it – rather than any specific meaning that we wanted to feel. The form of meaning.

After becoming so disillusioned with my past interests in mathematical and puzzle formalisms, I wanted to connect with something again. And if it wasn’t going to be form, then it must be content. As if meaning could only be felt in relation to content. I think, after all of our discussions, after accepting responsibility for the way I relate to things and find meaning in them – after deciding to make Haiku Games about ‘the sun’ and routinely getting discouraged by my ability to sculpt the form of my games, after letting my curiosity repeatedly succeed in drawing out energy to practice games in search of beauty in formalisms, I have realized that I have found the meaning and beauty I was searching for back where I left it. But I have a new relationship to it now. Less image-based, more focused on the moment (of practice).

What should we do together now? I think continuing to work together to understand the way we find meaning in games, the questions you posed to me, is really what we were doing with Haiku Games. There is still a part of me that wants to understand the content side of this games equation better, and Haiku Games will always stay within arms reach of my mind for that purpose. But even in my formal games, there is always the meaning that I draw from them which I can push back through the medium. Reverence. Patience. Practice. Frustration. Grit. Whimsy.

You said, again, that you are ready to transcend form. Great! What are you curious about? What could you learn more about by pushing through your forms?

Theory

Theory is another form to love. We can escape to it, or use it as a crutch to feel closer to an emotion than we are. But I think emotion is always going to be a more immediate feeling.

Emotions

I described the journey I’ve recognized in my game design practice: ‘a focus on movement mechanics in a grid, and a reverence for mechanical interplay in that space’.

Maybe these are not emotions. I think I am mostly driven by curiosity. But I have been recognizing, as I work on combojumper more, as it gets closer to a finished form, that I want to imbue it with more of the emotions I feel when playing, when contemplating, when relating to it. There is room in every corner of the form to do so, and I can sense a growing curiosity to capture these feelings in that artifact. But these are emotions in relation to a specific formalism. Something broader than just what combojumper is, an incomplete trap for the feeling such that is must be. But still, I think it is a relation to the formalism I see behind a lot of problem solving, the moment-to-moment of adventure, the pursuit. These are things I feel at my job, when working on games, when learning about anything, when wondering about anything. These are real life feelings! But as I live a life steeped in formalism, as a programmer, a mathematician, as someone historically afraid of my interpersonal emotions, that is what a lot of my emotions are in relation to. And that is where my curiosity is idly aimed. Maybe, as I continue to grow, when a healthy relationship with forms is sustained for some time, my curiosity will be redirected. But I’m not sure I want to force it.

I last wrote in April, six months ago! It seems longer. Life has asserted itself in my life, for the past year at least. I’m surprised I got any letters in earlier in the year! I have felt so distracted from thinking deeply about games. But I have been doing stuff.

PuzzleTree

After starting on ComboJumper late last year, and then porting it to Godot, I’ve been building out a toolkit for myself to make 2d grid-based games. And then, after talking a bit about it with puzzle folks and getting some excitement, I decided to clean it up and make it public so others could use it too. I named it PuzzleTree. It has a github: https://github.com/jackkutilek/puzzletree. It has been helpful to design it as a separate thing from my game scripts, and to think through it in enough detail that I can explain how it works to others.

I made a few example projects in it, and some other incomplete sketches too. I even tried making a different version of lizard game in it one day. It worked great, I got the idea up and running very quickly! but I decided that the design was lacking, the idea needed to be rethought. It was a nice daylong experiment though. I also spent some time re-implementing parts of my sokoban client in it, which also went well. I’ve always wanted to expand the client to work with other sokoban-likes, such as Splitting Headache or Safe Robber, and I was able to basically get Safe Robber working in PuzzleTree with the agent-less control scheme pretty quickly! I can see PuzzleTree being a better foundation for the next iteration of that project.

Or for most projects I am interested in, actually. The more I’ve considered it, the more I like the dynamics of discrete state changes as a game space to explore and learn. And grids provide a nice spatial place for discrete changes; I have deep affinity for geometric and spatial relations. So I’m all in on it. For ComboJumper. For block-pushing puzzle games. And for haiku games, like my variation on lizard game, or whatever else I’m going to make. Tiles in grids, changed by an ordered series of scripts. Quick to display, and simple ™ logic to reason about. And all of Godot there too if I want to make some fancier visuals on top of it.

I am excited about PuzzleTree. For as long as I’ve been programming, I’ve imagined one day having made my own tools to make with, bits of code I can re-use, and etc. And naturally some ideas that I wanted to express and explore… but I could never find a way from dream to reality. I was caught in a cycle of making a house of cards and then burning out. I only recently found the wherewithal to achieve some success with it, the product of a long change in attitude towards what I expected from my making process. Progress feels slow in the moment, but looking back I always see that a surprising amount of progress has been accumulated. Most importantly, I allow myself the time to slow down, and maintain my tools, and myself, and make sure they won’t buckle under the weight of my ambition. It feels good.

ComboJumper

It has been nice to be able to bounce between work on ComboJumper and other projects. Guided by curiosity rather than any strict deadlines or expectations. ComboJumper has continued to stay fresh that way, and I am as excited about it as ever. Ideas don’t always pan out, but letting them drop when they stop working has kept what’s there good and exciting. Progress can be slow, but there is always eventually some progress.

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.

While I still enjoy playing them, I’ve recently noticed a distaste I have for certain aspects of puzzle games. There is a kind of ‘paint-by-numbers’ feel that they have, which I actually really, really like and find endlessly fascinating, but also I am wary of it. This promise of a solution, of a right way to do things – it enabled me to continue ignoring my fears of … my own agency, my own sense of self, in a way. You don’t have to pick anything for yourself, you don’t have to be anybody. You don’t decide to climb the mountain because you want to, you don’t have to believe in its possibility, that it will be a fun thing to do. You don’t have to believe in anything. The puzzle promises ahead of time. You can just go through the motions, and it is exciting, it is fun. You ARE thinking for yourself while you play, but it is like bowling with bumper rails. And I think I grew to resent this, that it helped me to wallow in my fears.

Even as puzzles gave me a sense of place, a community to be a part of, a craft to challenge myself with – and all of that did actually help me out of my well – I never took the blinders off, and puzzles never really asked me to. And I wish they had, I wasn’t going to do it myself. But of course that’s the thing, you have to do it yourself. It’s not actually any fault of puzzles.

It all came to a head in [Recognizing Play], and after some time to process it all better, now I think ComboJumper is helping me to stay close to what I have always liked about puzzle games, the bouncing between the guard rails, without the negative associations. It is a vehicle for me to develop a new, healthier relationship with this kind of play.

Haiku Games

Of course all this toolkit, framework, systems, puzzle-y state-space skating work is far from my other dream of connecting with ‘the world’ – Haiku Games! Haiku Games were born out of that same trapped feeling, I think. And though I’ve come to accept that systems and form are part of the ‘real world’, and connecting with those abstract things is connecting with ‘the world’, I still yearn for a better connection to poetics, in games.

But in all the project bouncing I did recently, I only rarely bounced into haiku games. I think there is still something about them that scares me, ha. Making the poetic leap. And when I tried to make more haiku games in the past, I frequently got bogged down with technical details trying to make them work how I imagined. I just need more practice with games, a more complete fluency with tools, to be able to realize a game quickly and experiment at that poetic level. Again, I am excited to use PuzzleTree for it. But really I could be doing it already, and I just haven’t… except for the lizard experiment. But I want to experiment with new ideas. I want to make my idea about basking in the sun, shaking off the cold, then cooling down again, then back into the sun, and etc. My partner wants to collaborate on a game, I need to make that happen. We will make a haiku game.

Reading

Reading also slowed down the past year. I think I needed a break. After Grasshopper and Well-Played Game, I didn’t read much on games for a while. Or on other things either. (I did read Pure Colour, though, after it was gifted to me. It has some very nice parts in it. )

But as life was starting to settle into a new rhythm, the changes slowing down and pressures easing up, I stumbled on Finite and Infinite Games in a used bookstore. And then I was reading again. It’s such a curious book. It’s not really about games, but also it is, in the sense that it is about life, and games are a big part of our lives. It uses the language of games to talk about all sorts of topics. Finite games are games with strict rules and a winner. Finite games lead to the ‘theater’ of power and authority. Infinite games are games with changing rules and no winner. Infinite games can contain instances of finite games. Infinite games last a lifetime. Infinite games are games where we seek to play well with each other – that is winning. It is reminiscent of zen and Taoism, about focusing on the present moment, the infinite moment. (A friend was recently recounting a conversation he had: ‘wait are we just talking about ‘present moment’ again?)

And then it was my birthday, and my family was asking about gift ideas. It was time for The Nature of Order. I’m a few chapters in now. It is nice to be reading Christopher Alexander again, I really like the way to expounds on ideas. I last read the theory of centers, and the blank sheet of paper example. Inspiring, though I don’t have any notable thoughts on the book yet. Just a story: my cousin just finished architecture school, and was talking about how he kind of hates architecture now. And then I coincidentally started TNOO, which laments the field in its opening pages so eloquently. I shared the excerpt with my cousin, and he couldn’t believe how well it described his feelings. It was a nice, serendipitous introduction to Christopher Alexander.

Socializing & ECS

Most of my gamedev community experience has been online-only. My anxiety made it hard to seek out in-person connections (or even talking about my online connections). But things are changing now. I recently started attending events at Glitch City. It has been nice to meet people with similar interests, to have another venue to talk about games things with, and share my progress on my projects. In-person interaction is so different from online.

Anyway, through glitch I got re-introduced to the ECS pattern, and in a way that it finally clicked for me, in a way that really I thought it already had (but it hadn’t). It probably helped that I had been approaching similar ideas while developing PuzzleTree… but it’s given me some big, new ideas to make it better. I had been struggling with where to store data that each system uses, and even considered storing it in the grid instead of globally – but now it is clear. The data should be in the grid, on entities or something like them, with a way to filter grid cells by the data they have, more than just which tiles exist in which layer. I am currently working to develop a robust UI system for PuzzleTree, but that is going well, and I feel that once ComboJumper reaches it’s next milestone, it will be time to start experimenting with some of these ideas in PuzzleTree’s design.

Exciting, but a ways out still. Must be patient

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?
…rather than HAIKU games, what is haikuness?

– droqen, meaning, for a moment

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?

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.
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.

-droqen in LIVING games

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…

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?

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.

I really like this idea, of trying to better understand this feeling of aliveness, of trying to find it in games, which are, on their surface, animated and interactive and so obviously alive, but sometimes missing that special feeling.

What exactly is the feeling? What does it mean to feel this feeling?

droqen – LIVING Games

A Common Feeling

I am intrigued by this idea of a common feeling. I think I am skeptical of it the same way that Zeigfreid is (was?). But I still like the idea, even if it is only a kind of platonic ideal. But you seem to claim it is not – it is something we are all capable of feeling. If I think too hard about it, I get lost in the weeds of consciousness (particularly with the mirror test), but I think there is something valuable about it even if I refuse to get lost in those weeds. Actually, it seems that the mirror test, too, is asking you to consider ‘the whole’ beyond consciousness. The ‘common feeling’ makes it seem so simple, this mysterious feeling of aliveness. It makes it seem within reach. And that is helpful.

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.

This feeling allows us to determine whether we are looking at a cricket or a rock, a whale or a cloud, a rainforest or a cave, not only individually but in general.

Structure Preserving Transformations

It is defined by the way it progresses: the degree to which it preserves, adapts to, and strengthens existing structure.

I like this. Though I take it to mean in an ‘organic’ way, rather than an ‘authoritarian’ way. It is strengthened by its ecosystem, though it may be in conflict with it. It is not asserting itself where it doesn’t belong. It simply belongs.

Living things preserve themselves, but alive things preserve any particular structure. Can this make sense?

Imagine a game which feels alive: Can you?

The first time I read this, my mind leapt to Super Mario. The way that all the components and mechanics exist in a way to encourage and facilitate the core play. I think about Zach Gage’s talk about games that help you get better at the game through idle play or whatever he called it – Designing Games for Problem Solvers.

And then I thought, ‘why mario?’. It really could be any game, I suppose, any game that you play well. Perhaps playing well is playing at an elevated aliveness.

But you think about MMORPGs. A game that people imbue with life, that evidences that life in its persistent evolving state.

I chose mario. You chose mmorpg. We were also just talking about single player games and whether they could be a third place, a place where life happens.

What games are alive? Is that the wrong question? What play is alive? Is play, perhaps necessarily, a living process?

I think this is a good first question to answer. I think it will give us good focus. As it is now, aliveness is too abstract. We can warp it to fit any games, or any play. “Aliveness is when you can see humans playing the game!” “Aliveness is design that reinforces itself! Design that is hard to change because every part depends on every other part!” Is aliveness a thing that exists when a player plays a game? Or is it something inherent to a game’s design? Or a game’s visible history of being played?

My instinct is to want it to be something inherent to the design, rather than something created by any number of human players. Though maybe that is just asking for the designer to give the game some of their aliveness. I wonder if we can escape this, or if we even want to.

One of my favorite take-aways from ‘The Rules of Play’ was the reminder that we use the word ‘play’ to refer to the action of a button on a remote. to put something into ‘play’. Push over the first domino. Watching a domino chain fall is a single player game that is alive. The dominoes are alive while they are falling.

But, I suppose there is an extra weight that comes not from simply being in action, like a tape player, or a chain reaction, but instead actively reinforcing itself within a larger ecosystem of change.

Or consider: the ball is ‘in play’ vs. the ball is ‘out of bounds’. When it is ‘in play’, the game, the simulation, is evolving, transforming. To me, this aliveness is simultaneously enough and not enough to satisfy our understanding of this feeling. It is a transforming process, but what is it preserving? Is it up to the player to identify what is preserved? Or is it up to the game? I am hearing echos of ‘What (or who) is responsible?‘ here.

Something that respects the player’s living process, as opposed to a game which boils play down to a number (e.g. a high score)

Isn’t chasing a high score a very alive activity? Or is it not enough to simply be an instrument of life? Is aliveness something more?

A World

There are so many questions when we consider aliveness in games! I said one of my big current questions was: “what makes a space something we connect with, something inviting, and rewarding, and staying?” Aliveness certainly seems like a promising lens to search for an answer through. Though 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?

Perhaps it is just a matter of preference. There are times and places for games that take responsibility, and times and places for players to take responsibility. Then the question becomes: which are we primarily interested in, at this moment, in this quest to understand aliveness? Aliveness in play, or aliveness in games ______ ?

A briefer history to fill in the gaps: droqen and I started talking about haiku games when, in my feedback notes after play-testing Yrrkey’s Paradise, I mentioned that the game was close to realizing my idea of ‘haiku games’, an idea I was having trouble truly interrogating on my own. droqen wanted to know more, and I gave him a long rundown of where I was at with the idea. Talking it through was invigorating and illuminating.

I think we successfully turned the discussion public, with letterclub. Though I think I am ready to move on from it, too. The discussion has helped me find a home embracing play, and helped me reconnect with the plodding, grid-based, puzzley play I had loved before becoming disillusioned, and turned to dreams of ludic poetry as a hopeful salve. After seeking an understanding of poetry, and then an understanding of a creative process that might lead to art that sustains that same impact I had looked for in poetry, and a study of play – after all that great discussion we had, I went back to my puzzles, and made an experimental sokoban client, and continued the journey I hadn’t realized I was already on: to find a way to create the magical, dynamic, kinetic, grid-based play that I am apparently so infatuated with.

And so, to me, letterclub is a place where we are encouraged to go out on a limb that has struck our curiosity, and describe what we find there, and what questions we still have about it. And to be inspired by our differing perspectives and knowledge, and our communal zest for understanding this weird part of ‘games’ that we seem to have a similar perspective on, though we approach from different places. It’s an open invitation, by nature of its existence, to wonder and seek.

I think it does work best when we are focused on similar center. A big question, with a confident signpost of a direction to explore it. I almost think anything of this character will do. I would be glad to continue exploring Christopher Alexander’s ideas. But I’m not sure that is enough on its own. I leave it to you, droqen, to explain what about it has trapped your mind so securely, and which way you want to go to try to find freedom. Then, in response, we can each explain where our minds are trapped, and how what we’ve learned from our own traps might help you with your trap. And this will bring our traps closer together, and if a trap is big enough, we will see they are all the same trap after all.

For myself, I have been wanting to synthesize some thoughts I’ve built up over my now five(!) years of interrogating the nature of puzzles and games. But that is not really a letterclub quest. But I have also been thinking about worlds, and what makes a space something we connect with, something inviting, and rewarding, and staying. Something more than the gimmicks of game design. And this seems very much a letterclub quest. Even a continuation of haiku games in a way! But I don’t think I’ve found my signpost. Or I haven’t made it yet. Either way, I don’t have it. But maybe soon…

Happy new year.

Jack

I realize that I like a challenge — tying myself into knots trying to realize some impossible structure. The act of making art, for me, is designing a puzzle for myself that nobody has ever solved before… and then solving it.

droqen – art as answer-space

I feel the same way, for the most part. The reason I am making something, is because I have an idea of something that intrigues me, and making something about that idea helps me to understand it. I’m not sure that I ever fully solve these puzzles, I am not that good at making (yet?). I am not sure that it is really possible, either. (thankfully)

Without any constraints, what am I solving? I may create something, but I haven’t triumphed over anything. With external constraints, I’m not making art… I’m merely solving an ordinary problem, perhaps in a way that someone else has already solved it before… Hmm.

droqen – art as answer-space

Last time I mentioned ‘The Grasshopper’, and said it was relevant, but a bit of a distraction. And then you provided this segue, that is almost too good…

By way of discussing edge cases, The Grasshopper outlines a definition of games in the broadest sense, capturing the essence of what we like about games, any game. Or at least, it is an identification of something that Bernard Suits came upon which has tremendous overlap with the loose concept of ‘games’ and the ways and reasons that we engage with them, to the point where he claims that it provides “a definition of games, or to be more precise, a definition of ‘game-playing'”. The definition is:

To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs [prelusory goal], using only means permitted by rules [lusory means], where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means [constitutive rules], and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity [lusory attitude].

Or, more succinctly:

playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

With this definition, I can rephrase your quote to say ‘The act of making art, for me, is playing a certain kind of game of my own invention.’ Which is, I think, the understanding I was working towards in my letter ‘Recognizing Play‘.

I think this also clarifies your struggle with ‘external constraints’. I’d say that external constraints are not the problem, we play in external constraints all the time, and find novel ‘solutions’ to them in a way that could be called artful. But it becomes not art, not a game, once it is a necessary problem with necessary constraints. Maybe I should move on before I recount the whole book…

I also wrapped up my time with ‘Rules of Play’ recently. I think I really only liked (and really only read) two sections, the ones that talked about ‘play’ specifically instead of the broad practice of game design: the introduction to the book, and the introduction to the section on play called ‘Defining Play’. It talks about what the word ‘play’ means for us, in its various forms and uses. I particularly liked considering the uses ‘the loose space between gears or cogs: the play of a car’s steering wheel’ and ‘activating a process: putting something into play‘. They feel like uses I would overlook when thinking about play from games first, but they provide an interesting connection to the same ideas.

It defines play as ‘free movement within a more rigid structure’ (as Ezra mentioned in a comment on Recognizing Play – thanks again for the recommendation!). Not sure where I’m going with this, but I like thinking about play and games in these ways.

Would it be foolish of me to say now — after over a year of letterclubs! — that the purpose of exploring and discussing the definition of haiku games is to present ourselves with a beautifully impossible riddle to solve, whose answer-space we find fascinating, and whose (eventual) answer’s flaws we might pick apart for spare parts before building our next puzzle?

droqen – art as answer-space

This doesn’t sound foolish. Even as we were discussing how we would start the letterclub, I remember talking about ‘haiku games’ as a fence we were erecting in the forest of games and game design, as a designated space to wander in. A more rigid structure to move freely in, to play in.

It was a space I felt a deep connection to, but felt unable to really understand my connection to it. I wanted to make things in that space, to better understand it, but didn’t even know where to get started. Haiku games was a way to put this connection under a microscope, study it at a small scale.

I still feel connected to and interested in that space, but as we’ve talked about it more and more over the past year, I think I’ve come to realize that what I really liked about that space was present in all games spaces, I just wasn’t looking at them the right way. I’ve been working on games more than ever, recently, but still not so much in haiku games as I envision them. Gamefeel is still top of mind, the efficiency of our cybernetic circuit with the video game system. Best facilitating the precise modes of play that I am interested in exploring. But real-life ‘meaning play’ has taken a back seat for now, as far as my practice-play goes. They will always be a big part of my theory-play.

I’ve been working on my sokoban implementation, analyzing the ways that I solve sokoban-like puzzles, designing an interface which optimizes the play that goes on during that logical process. The routing I do through the discrete state-space of these dynamic gridded arenas. The logical climbing I do through the maze of options available to me at every turn. Making it more direct, more physical.

I’ve been working on a time-stepped platformer, realizing the rush of platforming inside that discrete state-space of sokoban-likes. Highlighting, enabling, maximizing that same routing play that goes on in these systems. Setting aside the logical gymnastics in favor of pure play. Taking inspiration from [fr0g] clan official server 24/7 zk map (for stranger), discone, ynglet, and super mario – I want to make a real playground for this mode of play, this particular type of free movement in a rigid structure. It’s also a fascinating, voluntary restriction on making a game – fascinating to me because it allows me to explore this space, this problem.

Puzzles provide a promise to the player that something interesting and satisfying will come from playing in this space. But sometimes that promise can be too much of a restriction on expression, too much of a motivational hand-holding. After spending so long feeling like I needed that promise to play, I am excited to explore the other side of this coin. To play where I want to, because I trust myself enough to enjoy my time there.

(But puzzles are still great – little magic tricks in game form)

I thought I might end this letter with a brief discussion of ‘The Tower‘ by tally and pancelor. Or maybe its a review. It will contain spoilers, beware. I think it’s a great example of a Haiku Game.

In it you climb a narrow tower filled with people to talk to and simple things to see. Each floor is numbered, and to reach the stairs to the next floor you must open a door. Doing so rolls a d100, and if you roll less than the current floor number, the stairs up turn into stairs down. And that’s it. What’s at the top?

It’s a really beautiful presentation of this tiny system, placed in a very human context. At the start it is easy to pass the door roll. The people you meet are enjoying their time in the tower. You see some cats. But the higher you go, to more frequently you get turned back down. Progress slows, and you start to get a better understanding of how the tower works, the nature of randomness. Going down is just as hard as going up: if you roll more than the current floor, the stairs down are closed off. Not a problem when you are climbing, but it means reaching the bottom again is just as hard as reaching the top. Is there a top? The people start to reveal more of their everyday concerns and worries. Some accept their fate in the tower. Others struggle. I start thinking about my own concerns, the nature of randomness in my life, the ebbs and flows of my progress towards goals that matter to me, my own oscillating complacency with this reality.

The game is direct about its interactive play, too. Each floor is small, allowing you to quickly get to the next door if you want to. The simply graphics leave a lot to the imagination. There is no time pressure or point system pushing you to make any decisions. It is your call to talk to people or not. Talking to people helps you connect this microcosm to their own implied lives, and your own life as the player.

And that’s it. The rest of the experience is up to you. The probability of the tower funnels you to the 50th floor, where the many people that have ended up there have turned it into a party. It seems like as good a place as any to stop playing, accepting your fate. Escaping is practically impossible without cheating. You can play to see how far you can go, stress-testing your own determination and will-power. You can cheat to see what is on the higher floors. Or you can simply enjoy the time you had, and your lingering appreciation of this window into nature.