Games that create a shared expressive space... it's easy to make a difficult game, I understand the language of challenge and problem and obscurity, but I don't want to use it.

I forgot this feeling.

[ A. What do I want to use Self-Determination theory for -- how can I apply Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness to get my games to encourage the particular form of creativity that I like? What is this form of creativity?

  B. Apply SDT specifically to the player's internal processes -- not how to win, or even to think about and understand things beyond the boundaries of their self. I am interested in the player's Autonomy, as it pertains to their self-image. I am interested in the player's Competence in understanding and choosing themselves, and in their self-development. And, I am interested in the player's Relatedness regarding their self as it exists in the world. (see page 2)]

I like the name of that article. "scheduling criticism..." hmm. there's something clarifying about the idea that  my goal is to get something to a state where i am ready to schedule criticism for it? hmmm

Alright, that's all well and good.

What about self-criticism and self-doubt? I wonder if there is a way to apply the lessons I have learned from this article . . . to my own habit of undercutting my ideas. Hmm. It may be totally out of scope but I'm interested in thinking about that a little more.

The article itself contains a good manifesto-like summary of what I'd like to be more conscious of in my own processes.

QuoteWhat feels fun and enlivening to share, and what makes you inwardly cringe?

If it makes you inwardly cringe, that's a sign sharing it would interfering with your thinking.

It's not possible to understand our mind fully and have an explicit idea of all the ways that sharing something private can cause problems. A lot of the things I've been talking about happen at the inexplicit or subconscious level.

Discomforts and fears are part of the intuitions you can use to form judgements about what to share and when.

I like the idea of thinking about this 'cringing' as a sign that sharing would "interfere with [my] thinking", and that 'not sharing' in response to this feeling is not an instinctual fear response, but a sort of emotionally-rational, not-fully-understood-and-yet-measured, type of response.

[ B. Before sharing, ask myself: Does the idea of sharing in this way make me cringe? If so, consider how sharing might interfere with my thinking. (Don't worry about other impulses that might be driving the desire to share. Let them go.) What do I want out of sharing this? Can I share it somewhere else that makes me cringe less? Can I get what I want without sharing? ]

This isn't a Close Reading article. So what is it?

[A. Not Close Reading, i.e. not a summary or a pile of random garbage
 B. It's ...? ]

I think I want this to turn out something like my 'a HAIKU games manifesto,' which while I have discovered it is not really all correct anymore, I found that its statement of process-intent was more useful to me than other similar types of prescriptive manifesto-like things, such as (for example) the berlin interpretation which defines a result or goal, but not a process.

[ B. I'd like to describe or evoke a process, an inspirational pile of things that lead to doing things differently. ]

Note: I think it's interesting that I'm writing about this here in this strange semi-public space. I know a few people keep an eye on the updates of this forum -- because you guys have messaged me at sort of random times and it's been unexpected but also nice. (Hi!)

For the most part this works because the only people who keep an eye on this forum and message me about things are very nice people who I am always happy to get messages from. Nothing even approaches 'criticism'.

I am a poor planner.

I like to do things out in the open... for reasons which I won't get into.

But @reasonisfun on twitter wrote this article (many years ago) and happened to send it to me (days ago) and, wow, mind blown.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iSRCrE82G4dindJHZ/criticism-scheduling-and-privacy

At night I saw you again to the east

Above the bright skyline opposite our great tower

In the direction of home

You had passed beneath me all day long, travelled through a cosmically vast distance in such a short span of time

It makes me dizzy to think about those distances

In the morning I saw the moon to the west

In the blue sky between tall buildings

In the direction of home

It slipped in an hour beneath the horizon

There are shorter term programs! I need to take notes since there's way too much information for me to process at once. How does anyone do it??

it perhaps has a play-overlap with roguelikes and roguelites. the feeling that anything is possible lingers on the tip of your tongue. when you walk into a room, a new level, a new run, you think... of all the infinite possibilities... which one will i choose today?

which one will i choose...

There is a deeper hunger present for expressive movement controls than there is for weird little maze-puzzles, that's for sure! I find a pleasure in carving out such navigable spaces but I don't think others enjoy them as much as when they have a powerful moveset with which to confront them.

Structural surprises... they provoke a certain positive response, but not a major or sufficient one...

In any case, I am not sure whether this description of a design space is coherent to others or even to a future self, but Cruel World and we-met-at-the-summit had such one, as did Starseed Pilgrim -- a kind of bounded infinite mobility?

As in the puddles that fill the unnoticed depressions making them recognizable as traps for water,

So too do these droqevers reveal bright and dark spots in the droqen-made platformer design space.

Between June 24th and today -- two-ish months -- I have posted eleven games to droqever,

Eight of them in the last sixteen days. Wait, really? That's so much. That's probably too frequently.

Don't do it.