I said above that design is a process of exploration.

I would like to add that design generally relies on design fiction.

These are not separate fields. In order to do design, you must be capable of developing hypotheses about what doesn't exist yet, but which might be worth bringing into existence. All design starts as design fiction.

pingback: Natural Platformers; or, simple art is sufficient

A little more on the topic, from page 104, the last paragraph in the chapter 'What is Human Food?':

QuoteIf we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature's productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.

This quote reminded me of the tech arms race that exists in games -- and of the feeling that one must maximize one's own innovation, prowess, and productive power. It is a helpful reminder that it's not necessary to obsess over these things.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about the extravagance of human desire. But it's definitely not crucial for me to spend all of my time catering to it. Simpler desires are out there, and I can cultivate them within myself as well as within my circles.

All design fiction lies on a gradient between 'it would practically design itself' to 'it is a literal impossibility to design', and there is a lot of great game design fiction out there just dying to be explored. Along this gradient, we have games that would take 10 hours to make, 100 hours to make, 1 million hours to make. Design is also a process of exploration, of trial and error -- it's difficult, even impossible, to make a judgement about whether all possible avenues have been exhausted. There is always room for an ever-dwindling hope that just around the next corner there is some great thing we haven't tried yet which will actually work this time.

It is very easy to come up with obviously impossible game design fiction, or in other words, fiction which cannot, under any circumstances, actually be resolved by design into reality.

• A game of tic-tac-toe played on a 3x3 grid, where someone wins by getting 4 in a row.
• A game with 10, 000 hours of bespoke content, created in a weekend by one person.
• A game which causes anyone who plays it to laugh non-stop for the rest of their short life, until they die of laughter-induced asphyxiation.
• A game that cures cancer.

It is very easy to come up with game design fiction. It won't necessarily be good game design fiction, but take any two genres or game mechanics or feelings, put them next to each other, and boom: game design fiction. Here are some examples:

• A platformer where every time you jump, you lose health.
• A game where you can eat anything that's smaller than you, but every time you eat something, you get smaller. ("Reverse Katamari")
• ... For that matter, a game where every time you beat a boss, you get less powerful and can traverse less of the world. ("Reverse Metroidvania")
• An MMORPG where everyone is always at the same power level, rather than some players being significantly more powerful than others.
• Games without combat or violence.
• A game that can make you cry.

I can write anything I want.

This is a problem in the field of game design.

It's hard, at a distance, to tell what is fiction and what is reality.

• A team of four friends are going to get funding for and make a low-key MMORPG. This is their second game together, but they'll make it work, and the game will release and be successful - perhaps only modestly so, but enough that they can make a third game together.
• An individual is going to make a game about mental limbo, but it won't tell you that, and it won't actually tell you damn near anything, but there will be a correct way to play and lots of things to uncover in directions you had not even thought to look. It will be wildly successful and beloved in some circles.
• One person can make a 10-hour videogame.
• One person can make a 100-hour videogame.
• One person can make a 1000-hour videogame.

2 whole tomato, chopped into chunks (2-bite size)
2 garlic, mince
2 green onion, chopped
separate green and white
the amount of bouillon stuff for 4 cup water
oil
sesame oil

fry garlic, white onion bite in oil for a bit, till it's sizzling?
add tomato
fry till it's like... red mush
water or foam comes out
then add bouillon + water
boil for a few mins
add white pepper if you want

you can all as much water as you want really, just long as bouillon scales to it

egg and green onion parts are for when you serve

What does it mean to have a human brain?

I act on impulse most of the time, and otherwise do what I can to design a life that rewards my impulses with beautiful outcomes. I think designing games is like that: designing little spaces that reward my avatar's impulses with beautiful outcomes. Only, when I make a game I can share the experience with you; you can inhabit the same space, embody the same avatar, perhaps act on the same impulses, and - if serendipity allows - behold the same beautiful outcomes.

Through making and playing with games and other art, I hope to come to some deeper understanding of not the science of my brain, but the experience and meaning of being some specific person.

~ linked from Handmade Pixels

Quote from: droqen on October 27, 2021, 04:39:39 PM

Quote from: p40Like conjuring tricks in reverse, such instruments [as telescopes, as well as good explanations, all perhaps only through "sophisticated chain[s ] of theoretical interpretation"] fool our senses into seeing what is really there.

Attention technology is a tool- there are things we ought to pay attention to. Telescopes and good explanations, which help us see what was already there, have their counterparts... screens may show us what was never there in the first place and never was.

Made it a second time. Turned out great! Added more written-out recipe.

Quote from: 49:15We may be stuck with this. But it's crucial to always keep our eye on the fact that it's not good[..]. People think these are all good; they're all bad. But we have to do them right now, because we haven't figured out how to do it better. And it's crucial to keep that in mind because we might be able to do better, so we should always been on the lookout of ways we can stop doing some of these or doing them less, because we would lead to more optimal (progs?). Better design, more efficiency.

Where my old blogs at? I just retired my wordpress site, and with it I've sorta lost access to a large number of old blog posts... I'll try to recover them but I'm not sure if I can.

Quote from: p26An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing.

Specialists in various fields gather together and observe a stalk of rice. The insect disease specialist sees only insect damage, the specialist in plant nutrition considers only the plant's vigor.

Quote from: p28[..] Seeing this [amazing natural drama], you understand that poets and artists will also have to join in[..] No one knows where [this phenomenon comes from], how they survive the winter, or where they go when they disappear.

And so the use of chemicals is not a problem for [scientists] alone. Philosophers, men of religion, artists and poets must also help to decide whether it is permissible to use chemicals in farming, and what the results of using even organic fertilizers might be.

Quote from: p29Anyone who will come and see these fields and accept their testimony, will feel deep misgivings over the question of whether or not humans know nature, and of whether or not nature can be known within the confines of human understanding.

The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is.

I'm not sure that's ironic at all and I don't necessarily share the viewpoint of Masanobu Fukuoka that science excludes this kind of understanding (is it not the point of science, to first acknowledge this fact? one cannot explore the truth without knowing that there is an immense, even infinite, amount to find), but I have also not participated in a great deal of science, and I have often found myself drawn away from the types of rabbithole-detailed study which seems to flourish there. But reading all this put me in a great perspective to receive the start of the next act, which begins as follows:

Quote from: p33Make your way carefully through these fields. Dragonflies and moths fly up in a flurry. Honeybees buzz from blossom to blossom. Part the leaves and you will see insects, spiders, frogs, lizards and many other small animals bustling about  in the cool shade. Moles and earthworms burrow beneath the surface.

Reading this introductory description made me want, deeply, to make a game which evokes it, which allows you to experience this, but not in literal terms... But if not, then how?

I've arrived here before at this thought: I want to make and play games which are like nature, which provokes doubt that a thing -- this thing? something? anything? -- "can be known with in the confines of human understanding." It's not necessary to solve the resolution problem. That is, I don't think it's necessary for a videogame to simulate something incomprehensibly deep and complex, as tempting as it is to try.

Haiku games are a direction to go, evoking haiku, which are often minimal evocations of nature, which in their way are minimal evocations of infinity.

I don't think it's necessary to be minimal, but the idea of minimalism provides shelter from, and a counterpoint to, the allure of the maximal simulation dream. A game may truly make the effort to allow you to experience at home on your computer the dragonflies, moths, spiders, moles, and earthworms. But, I think that mistakes the feeling of infinity for the counterfeiting of it.