https://www.tumblr.com/variousauthors/761897217326022656/metroidvania

In the comments of his Mental Backlog & Metroidvanias, boghog says something that bugs me. I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

[AB]

Re Lajos Egri's
"The Art of Dramatic Writing"

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 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

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

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.

(edit: this is my 1st read, my 2nd read is here)

[AB]

"LOL, someone in my D&D group last night tried a stunt check on a soul coin powered motorcycle and rolled a nat 1, eating shit and almost killing a new player character that had literally appeared 30 seconds earlier." — https://x.com/thetrin/status/1822298892953596346

[AB]

https://x.com/han_tani/status/1821339952237703642

[AB]

recently i was chatting with a friend about my relationship to making games.

if i imagine making a chair, i know the features that i expect out of a chair. you could say, also, that my first relationship to chairs is that i sit in them. when i imagine chaircraft i imagine eventually sitting on the seat. maybe the way it supports my lazy lower back, or whether i could sit in it cross-legged.

i have had to come to the conclusion that i don't make games this way.

the hypothetical chair-artist

often when i am making a game if i show it to someone with a good eye for design, they will make very reasonable and good suggestions -- the types of very reasonable and good suggestions which i in turn would find myself making if someone asked me to help them with their game design.

it can often seem impossible to reject such suggestions in good faith. sometimes there really is no 'good' reason to turn down these insights. i imagine sitting on the most uncomfortable chair in the world: what would i tell the chair-maker, the chair-artist? do i suggest removing the spikes that dig into my bum? do i suggest adding a few more legs so that i don't have to do all the balancing myself? do i suggest making it a little shorter so that i don't need to use the stepladder to sit on it?

at some point i might have to question whether i have really understood what a chair is.

on the other hand, i know what a chair is. maybe the chair-artist is wrong.

being the chair-artist

maybe i would like to be so wrong. to understand myself through the lens of this absurd character. why does the un-chair have one singular long leg? why is its seat so spiky? these are the right questions, inasmuch as questioning is the right response.

which is to say, questioning is not the right response.

i think that i most enjoy making games in this way: unquestioningly.

i comprehend the logic of the game designer but i have no love for it. how could i ever, when the accomplishments of the designer are so hollow to me? when and if i play videogames, it is with brutal hostility towards its design, even if it is with openness towards its creative vision.

that is to say, i know the features that i expect out of a game.

but i do not care to regard them with more than a passing neutral gaze.

"ah!

"so that, too is something you could do.

"how interesting," said the chair-artist,

whittling a seat into sharper spikes for no-one.

[AB]

GGGGMMMMKKKKLLLLB

A shadow on a smooth dirt path connecting street to street
Its human shape with eyes and mouth and arms and legs and teeth
Its shape like mine I thought in passing watching it as it watched me
Its face unseen I shook my head and said it couldn't be.

-

When you wrote letters for your parents living far away
They cut them into ribbons and confetti day by day
When they wrote back, their words ascramble, you knew anyway
What their nonsense words meant or just what they meant to say.

-

The lifted work of art put on a pedestal by them
Can just as well be taken down at any moment when
It suits the suits machine which operates to turn the earth
Unfurled the suits with their machine know nothing of their birth.

+

The end of everything and everyone and everywhere
The falling crashing crumbling, the end of here and there
The ending of it all cannot be seen a sad affair
There's no-one left to weep or to solemnify the air.

-

Design a crypt in which to bury secrets of the dead
Beautiful revelatory things that ghosts have said
Install the hundred traps without asking questions why
And if a few of them break down, so be it, let them die.

Let out your own few secret pains in ink and blood and code
Unassuming machinations know just where they go
Bleed a little more than the good maker really should
Be a little self-indulgent as you cut the wood

Be a little more.

[AB]

- *bigbee
- game design
- boids
- jul 8 until now?
- hmm

it was D & K who showed me the way
though B raised the curtain
and F clambered through
oh and i couldn't have done it without K (2)'s map
or — i could've but i wouldn't have
known to.

[AB]