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I've wished, a few times, for connective tissue between quotes and ideas better than simply linking thought A directly to thought B -- and realized that all that's needed is a place to put that connective tissue. I gave it a nice name, "synapses," because I wanted something brainy.

I'll see if this forum finds its use, but the idea is that I'll only use it when a connection between two things becomes large enough that it deserves a quick sideline describing the connection in all its strength, rather than lingering out of place on one end or the other of that synapse.

Perhaps in time this forum will be the most interesting of all of them.

This synapse (the very first!) is about this reiterated idea that the 20th-century schools of thought regarding productivity and what not are harmful in specific ways. First encountered in The Nature of Order, synapsed in Thinking in Systems.

I'm not particularly happy to be writing this but I've got to get it out...

My time with Dark and Darker was short-lived. It was compelling and fascinating - an exciting blend of risk and trepidation and beautiful luck. And -

One misstep and you could lose everything. Do it all just right and you might be able to strike it rich.

- I find it incredibly stressful too, in a quietly, deeply negative way. More than that, I think it makes a statement, in the way that only a game can, through its very play-feeling, on a particular way of engaging with the world around us. I want to write this because I think it is true for a very broad spectrum of games, and I (1.) dislike it, and (2.) want to know where it comes from, what need it satisfies, or in short, which forces inevitably give birth to games like this.

There is a line from Thinking in Systems that I can no longer find. Paraphrased, it said something like, "If you close down or destroy a factory but do not change any of the conditions that cause the factory to arise in the first place, another factory will open in its place."

I don't even want to close down or destroy Dark and Darker - but I do want to understand the human system that gave birth to it, that keeps giving birth to games like it. Is it pure compulsion, as I have experienced a little of, or is it something else? Is this system the root of videogames?

And... why... does it mirror a certain strongly held attitude which I frequently encounter... the attitude that the world is an unpredictable game, that at every step you fight and claw to gain a little more, and sometimes you succeed but mostly you fail...

Dark and Darker encourages hoarding. Spending your hard-won resources is punishing and unrewarding unless you do it just right. Sometimes the real world can feel this way.

The culture of Dark and Darker is one of hopeless murder. I did not encounter a single individual who did not kill me as soon as they had the opportunity to do so. Literally, I tried to connect every time I saw someone -- okay, sometimes I ran away -- and they all ended in a knife fight (which I usually lost). It was depressing, a miserable little corner of a completely anti-social subculture.

The larger question doesn't have anything to do with Dark and Darker at all, or games at all. What gives birth to this attitude? What satisfies it, and why does it need to be satisfied?

Hmm.

https://thekitchengirl.com/instant-pot-mashed-potatoes/

This turned out amazing.

Regarding
Ursula K. Le Guin's translation
of Lao Tzu's
"Tao Te Ching"

Recently Zeigfreid took me on a tour of his private Minecraft server and it was very nice and pleasant.
Mark took me on a tour of a little game he was working on with and for his son and it was also great.
In both cases . . . this was a person taking me on a tour of place they themselves had participated in the building of with and/or for a person or people close to them.

Initially the title of this play feeling was 'Tour guide,' but from these two examples it is obviously more than that. This is a tour of a place of familiarity. I enjoy being taken on these tours, and I enjoy giving these tours. In its simplest form I believe the idea of a tour of one's own actual home is quite common. A friend from school visits and you show them your room. You go over to someone's home and they show you around a little.

Relies on a feeling of pride/ownership/joy
Entering a space that is unfamiliar
Making the unfamiliar familiar
Choosing a linear series of points to visit (Traveling Salesman problem?) by intuition
Social

Game idea - perhaps a game where you take an artificial visitor (an NPC) on a tour, and you have to show them things that they like and will find useful so they don't get bored? Maybe they don't know about anything you don't show them and it's a Dwarf Fortress style simulation - you forget to show them where food is and they start to get very hungry, they come find you to show them where food is - hmm

Asking questions
Answering questions
Missing details

Do I like alleys for a play-feeling that is similar to what I get from stairs[1]?

Looking down an alley (or any of the other given shapes in the title, but frequently alleys -- both blocked and unblocked)
Where does it go?
Portals
Mysterious portals that show other places: What is that other place?
Entering alleys: The space is different, it feels different.
Committing to going down an alley.
The narrowness.
The wideness.

Seeing branches in the alley, further down.
Arriving at branches in the alley. What's down them?

Dead ends.
Apparent dead ends.
Turning back.

[1] ~ See also #1 - Stairs

Taking stars multiple steps at a time.
Taking them in weird ways: on all fours.
Clambering. Running. Descending.

Steps that are too big.
Taking them anyway.

Climbing stairs for the joy of it, not because they're going where you're going.

Climbing stairs without knowing where they're going to take you.

~ See also #2 - Alleys

The thought occurred to me -- what feelings are the deep feelings of a building? The feelings of a place. You think about how a place feels and then you enhance that feeling, respect it, grow out of it. So, then, the feelings (the 'correct' feelings?) which a 'living' game ought to grow out of, those are . . .

~ The Nature of Order // Book Two . . . Form Language

~ From Book 2, Emergence of Formal Geometry

Thanks to Sam and Julia:
Sam for bringing up the idea in the first place, Julia for dragging me into it.
I am no academic, so I won't attempt the rational style.

 

Earlier today I felt creatively frustrated— I wanted to MAKE something! I didn't get to do that, and the feeling passed.

I'm no longer dissatisfied but I'm dissatisfied about the lack of dissatisfaction or satisfaction... I'm not directly feeling any way about the lack of resolution, it was resolved quietly.

But I'm ambivalent about that lack of direct feeling.

This too is a deep feeling, one that arises from the absence of one.

The TTC subway trains used to fill the tunnel with a gust of wind as they arrived at the station. I couldn't say I loved the feeling, but I am fond of wind, and it was a pleasure to experience. The trains were replaced by more aerodynamic trains and one day without any fanfare the gust was gone, and I missed it.

I wrote a poem about this over a decade ago. It's around somewhere. It might be the best vessel that I have so far for carrying this feeling around with me, but I'm interested in the possibility of developing it further. Carving a better vessel.

I have a distinct memory of playing EverQuest and being confronted about 'ninja looting' my party's kills. I don't remember how intentionally malicious or callous I was, but the thing I do remember was my two fellow party members calling me out for it, and telling me it was not cool. I remember the guilt of that moment. A perfect deep feeling.

The language which I used for describing Inconsiderate Climbers was very . . . mechanical, as is the way of many videogame genres. I didn't say it was about the feeling of cohabitation, no, I described it in relation to cooperative and competitive games. "You're not allies or enemies," I wrote, in effect saying 'You're not playing a cooperative or competitive game'. You're "individuals with conflicting goals."

How I described it is a reflection of how I felt about it. I thought that was the best way to describe it. Thinking about this now I'd like to look at it through the lens of feeling. How did it feel?

I did dabble with a game which was literally about cohabitation before arriving at Inconsiderate Climbers' present-day design. That is, it tried to simulate cohabitation. By the time I had moved away from the literal simulation I thought I had, also, to give up the feeling of it. I was wrong.

. . . Its original name was "Different Towers." I liked that name. I wonder if it had deeper feeling.