i think art that promotes or stands for or expresses values that make me uncomfortable is great.
but  games can go beyond promotion and expression, they can perform a more tangible act of coercion.
and this coercive act is what i regard as fundamentally part of 'gameplay'.
i guess i do have to define gameplay.

Quoteis your point today REALLY a very contrived variation of "art that isn't immediately obvious to understand is just trying to mislead people and real art is all about directly bluntly stating good clean values to people"??? I WONDER IF ANYONE'S EVER SAID THAT ONE BEFORE. kill abstract art btw

this one is a really really bad misunderstanding of how i feel, which isn't to say it's a misinterpretation of my words.
i don't think that art should be immediately obvious to understand, i rather think that it should be absolved entirely of such responsibility.
real art is about directly bluntly coming into being.
my issue with gameplay is that it, as i perceive (or i could say define) it, is too concerned with controlling how the work is perceived and experienced.

back to narfnra

QuoteYes, it is a provocative statement designed to make me reply to it online. Hence I am doing so now. I have nothing against people saying risky things. But in turn, I am allowed to say when I believe these statements are under-baked and lacking in meaning.

There are real points within this field of discussion. I truly do feel like the perspective is sincere. But sincerity on its own does not mean you can't be walking off into self-destructive and obsessively utilitarian angles that just come across as fash to me. Is that bad faith reading?

Perhaps! But just as the original statement can be provocative in turn, so too can I note when you're drawing suspiciously close to age-old brain traps. And I really think there is a higher standard when branding and sale gets involved. I don't like it.

branding and sale. yeah. i don't like it either.
"self-destructive and obsessively utilitarian angles that just come across as fash to me." i dont know anything about fash. maybe i should read up to figure out what it actually is so i can figure out... what it is? what is fascism, what has it lead to, how have its functional components lead to those consequences?
i think i assume that these thoughts are related:

- puritan hand-wringing
- preachy
- fash

Jake Eakle

Quotei know him personally (but we're not close, we just hung out at GDC once and then chatted a handful of times online) and frankly i share a lot of your concerns here and have tried to talk to him about it a bit... but i do also think there's real value in there, too. it's confusing and frustrating.

like.. he'll tell you over and over it doesn't really mean anything, it's just the phrase that has lodged in his brain to encapsulate an inexpressible cluster of feelings developed over a long career, and it's something that has demonstrably gotten him out of a creative rut and Making Stuff again.

but like.. yeah, it lands the wrong way for just about everyone? and i think i agree with you that there's some kind of responsibility that comes with a platform... but there's also good in pushing people to look more deeply at things, to interrogate their angry responses to abstract provocation.

I'm not willing to say "you should never say anything online that might hurt someone". that way lies silence. it's a nebulous, precarious balancing act and you can never know all of the relevant factors so deciding "correctly" is impossible but nevertheless i do think it's good to take risks.

and like. as much as i vehemently do not "agree" with "kill gameplay", it /has/ gotten me to think & talk to people about ideas in a way i like. and it has gotten me the droqevers, which are really great games (with great gameplay in them). haven't played teog yet but i prolly will soon...

but even given all of that i think you're absolutely right that it's kind of too much and there's sort of an abdication of specificity in some of his posts on the subject, so again.. frustrating and confusing!!

"it lands the wrong way for just about everyone" is interesting. im not sure i agree with that but maybe people just don't tell me! or, i mean, i guess that's not true. i hear a lot of people tell me... they dont get it or they dont like it. then i talk with them about it wayyy too much and then they are like, ok you're way too extreme but i kinda get it. so i  guess i DO agree that it lands the wrong way for just about everyone, lol.

i agree w everything that jake eakle is saying about it being a confusing and frustrating thing for me to be saying. like, i don't know! what am i supposed to do! i'm confused and frustrated and, perhaps, have a really bad habit of just saying shit online. so i say it! i mean, i said it in person too, i said it to my friends, i said it many times. i'm going nuts over here. and i agree with everything that jake eakle is saying about it being a weird fucking balancing act. i don't know!!! do i really have a platform??? i just say things and i know a bunch of people. some people have much larger platforms. i think everyone has a platform and is equally responsible for the things that they say, but i could be wrong. i'd love to absolve myself of responsibility and just do things.

i am currently pretty conflicted! i don't know how to resolve this internal problem:
- im pretty sure art is bad, purposeless
- people make art and i love them
so maybe the issue is that it doesn't matter if art is bad (i.e. morally bad, evil) ???

jake eakle replies to the thread.

Quotelike i'm sorry but it sounds like the point you're hitting on now is "we must return to doing real meaningful work and not waste our time with evil amusements that trap the human soul and pointlessly drag mankind down from its true greatness" like dude get a hold of yourself this is bibleposting

is your point today REALLY a very contrived variation of "art that isn't immediately obvious to understand is just trying to mislead people and real art is all about directly bluntly stating good clean values to people"??? I WONDER IF ANYONE'S EVER SAID THAT ONE BEFORE. kill abstract art btw

no it's... not? it's not that? i'm not sure where that comes from. and im not sure whether kill abstract art is like genuine or ironic. whats your actual position, person who is speaking but who will never see this?

Quote"i didnt say that" well you're sure as hell not being particularly clear are you? "make the complex parts of your art fake!" we're out here hand-wringing about whether we have any evidence games are making us better people, why exactly is that seen as the only meaningful goal of this shit

why do we even draw pictures? they may serve some utilitarian purposes at expressing concepts but ultimately they just exist to fill the human mind with nonsense that isn't real. i wouldn't trust any fiction if i were you. stop reading books, they're just making things up to keep you down

and then after spending every other day rambling about the flaws of art and how it's evil and shit you're gonna SELL US ART ABOUT IT??? what am i supposed to take from that?! i don't think it's intentional but it sure comes across really goddamn weird

the reason i made this whole post tbh is because i thought this was a good new take (the last in this series of 3 bleets), i haven't very closely considered the issue btwn saying something kind of wonky and unclear and then selling art about it. i just made a thing that i have a lot of strong feelings about, and this seemed like the only way to release it? i have wondered often whether i should have released it in this way. or at all!

but im also kinda like, is this person just a hater...? i don't really understand what narf does want. i mean i'm also just being a hater. "kill gameplay!" i holler. so this person replies with kill abstract art, and... i guess i just want to know if there's a coherent argument being made in response? so if making us better people isn't the only good goal, what else is? this isn't rhetorical. ive heard a wealth of responses. they do so bounce around in my mind.

anyway back to the thing i thought was really interesting: nobody has really asked me or confronted me with the idea that selling "the end of gameplay" after saying "art is evil" is weird. i would love to have that conversation but i don't think i should insert myself into this person's notifs.

Quoteand what's really annoying to me in particular is that there are perfectly good kernels of solid points you can find in the depth of some of these ruminations, they occasionally approach real revelations or comments of practical value, but then shrug and veer away to slogan chanting again

chanting! chanting! i literally, unfortunately, don't... have... the capacity to construct a coherent argument. i've tried.
maybe at some point i will arrive there, i don't have a process of getting there.

"real revelations or comments of practical value" -> connects to "refuses to reduce down to any actionable point"! -> i have thoughts about this. i don't really want it to get to the point of becoming an actionable point. that feels even worse to me than a weird slogan. i don't want it to have an effect that i intend.

Quotelike as someone who routinely traumadumps shit i shouldnt online i think when you get a certain size of following especially in a public-facing space that leans academic you start having this urge to convey all of your fears and thoughts as some sort of preachy take in unhelpful ways

do i have a certain size of following??? "a public-facing space that leans academic" (bsky?)
preachy take. i don't know, i'm pretty clear that i don't have a clue. i think i understand the link btwn "puritan hand-wringing" to "preachy" though. i think it's just because i use words like "evil" etc.

all of my fears and thoughts.

https://bsky.app/profile/narfnra.bsky.social/post/3lprenzqmuc22

Quoteok gonna stop beating around the bush i dont follow this person and im not trying to start a fight or anything but a lot of their influence bleeds over into my space and i'm tired of it, i subtweeted it before and you know what i'm gonna just post about it now directly

he death 2 gplay stuff is like really particularly frustrating to me and just to be clear it's not even b/c i like games. what i really don't like about it is that it's basically weird puritan hand-wringing that refuses to reduce down to any actionable point and is more about a fancy slogan

going to collect "puritan hand-wringing" here for later revisiting
"refuses to reduce down to any actionable point and is more about a fancy slogan" -> not sure, i think something is being said here but... hm
fancy slogan.
actionable point.
does it have to reduce down to an actionable point?

OK this wasn't directed at me so i'm not going to like smash my way in conversationally. but i happened upon some bleets and i wanna think about them.

after reading All Our Hidden Gifts, i have a kind of contact with the idea of magic. not the 'real' thing, just how it feels to believe.

anarchy... i know that i am not politically-minded. i am not interested, so much, in the reality of an anarchist society (although i have done and will continue to do my best to learn some things). what i am interested in is the value structure, the feeling.

The Dispossessed painted the most distinct picture of life on its anarchist moon world, Anarres. i was sad for a time after, in its absence--not the absence of its fantasy-world, but the absence of its value structure, the absence of something born of belief.

of magic.

i just finished watching The Fall (2006/2024), and there's a scene where Roy says to Alexandria,

"The story was just a trick to get you to do something for me."

and she (a 5-year old ESL Romanian girl whom he has been tricking and for whom his tricking has lead to actual serious bodily harm) replies,

"But I need the story."
"I still want to know."

the feelings bound up in this scene are insane.

Quote from: takunomiI shone a light on every detail in order to understand why such and such is done, and tried removing or changing all of it.

yes... this is something i am contending with a lot now actually: something can be intentional even if we can't give a reason for it. sometimes, analysis can be very destructive. i call for more intention. (and more blood.) but i think it's incredibly important to also be explicit that i don't mean things that you can defend verbally, for instance. or even explain to yourself.

Quote from: takunomiI suggest the ma and noise of gameplay . . . The negative space of gameplay. . . . What you do, but aren't supposed to do. . . . The otherplay. . . . it's unintuitive to me to design with otherplay in mind, but that's where the real playfulness exists. . . not delightfully surprising the designer with the toys they gave you, but having fun with the nails they forgot to remove from the carefully constructed playground.

oh, takunomi! we're so close! there are a few statements that you make that i want to counter, then i'm going to try and wrap up.

Quote from: takunomiThe game that you DON'T play.

i think that the grammar here is sort of muddled and am assuming takunomi means something like, otherplay is what happens when you don't play the game? the game that isn't the game, that you DO play?

Quote from: takunomiit's unintuitive to me to design with otherplay in mind

i don't know if you should, or even can. this is the weirdest part. i really think that my ideal is to stop thinking about the player experience completely, and especially stop designing for it. if the goal is otherplay, if the goal is to see your players "having fun with the nails [you] forgot to remove", then the only reasonable thing to do is to not seek to give the players any toys at all, don't construct a playground.

construct something else. construct something interactive but incredibly loose. not a playground, not a toy, just a thing. make an apartment building and let the player explore it. build a doghouse, a ladder, a boardwalk. don't make a game. just make something that can be touched.

Quote from: takunomifilm production is hard to control and what ends up on the screen is what the creators managed to do and were allowed to do, but not necessarily what they wanted to do.

reasonable, but, it is ultimately still something that they accepted. in the case of what appears on screen in a game, and what is part of a player's experience, the creators do not get to pass final judgement on that. it's very different.

Quote from: takunomiSecond, the ma that Miyazaki describes, is (I think) . . . also the many moments that a director can't account for and the moments that build the world, but not the story. This is noise too. . . . And it's the "suggestion" aspect of wabi aesthetics. If I may prod Droqen, this is where gameplay exists in sequential media like books and cinema.

hmmmm. i'm having some trouble following at this point. there are a lot of different bits going on.

- the moments that a director can't account for

- the moments that build the world, but not the story

- ma

- the "suggestion" aspect of wabi aesthetics

- gameplay

i think that takunomi is proposing that all of these separate concepts are related but i am especially having trouble with the first two! the moments that a director can't account for and the moments that build the world... there's something interesting there, i suppose i am presently interpreting takunomi's perspective as story or plot-centric -- perceiving non-story world details as
- outside of the director's control
- inherently the negative space, emptiness
- necessarily "suggested"

re: gameplay, we're about to get into a lot of "gameplay" so i'll get back to it in a sec.

Quote from: takunomiI definitely see the idea of play being deeper if certain aspects are only hinted at. In paintings, this idea might be presence of a landscape where you only paint the clouds behind a mountain. In play, having controls that are hard to grasp, work against the player, or are only accessible through experimentation might relate to this.

hmm. this is very crucial; what takunomi describe is the absolute opposite of what i would take "suggestion" to mean. see my "a HAIKU games manifesto," especially "a haiku game's complex parts are all fake."

controls that are hard to grasp are not the equivalent of the presence of "a landscape where you only paint the clouds behind a mountain"; the difference is that the landscape invokes the imagination and nothing else. you may imagine a landscape behind those clouds, and that is where it ends.

by comparison, if the controls are hard to grasp, or especially if they are "only accessible through experimentation", it demands some imagination but it also demands something else -- experimentation is some part imagination, and another part killing imagination to replace it with reality.

i am interested in parts of play that are only accessible through imagination. this is huge. i want to talk to takunomi about this.

what is the "noise" in Death Stranding, according to takunomi?

Quote from: takunomi. . . the slightly cumbersome controls
. . . the clumsy way your character behaves
. . . the off-putting dialogue and acting
. . . the wild juxtapositions between serious moments and childish silliness

takunomi also refers to this as "negative space"?
in any case, if i am judging correctly, then takunomi may be pointing out that these four items have the appearance of unintentionality, which is quite surprising to me, but i think aligns very well with takunomi's first path - it involves removing the appearance of unintentionality from The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit, 'fixing' surface level issues.

ah ha, i get it now.

at this point i don't understand the Miyazaki quote's relationship to this, however.