Book 3 finished.
The dinosaur at the end (the Toad stand-in. Why a dinosaur? Why the cute bunnies that get all evil and angry? Why are the goombas these little rock fellows?) doesn't seem to know who the Princess is . . . affected by the time-forgetfulness, maybe?
I killed the boss enemy in its Lair, and felt a twinge of regret. For the most part I felt like these puzzles were a little more laborious, less breezy. More effortful. The twinkling green mechanic of 'things unaffected by time' were chosen carefully - there were very rare situations where I regretted permanently changing something green. Aside from the boss fight (where i felt the mild regret of 'killing a thing') everything was a gentle setback, a tiny annoyance, at best. 'oops, whatever, it will take me another ten seconds.'

I have started to think about the jigsaw puzzles. What do they depict? This one has a guy with a wineglass. It is focused on the wineglass(es) and some plates.

Walking by the puzzle pieces is the same feeling as starting Book 2 without being able to start Book 1. On the one hand I'm helpless to do anything but accept that I'm starting somewhere 'wrong', I'm missing some piece of the whole. On the other hand I'm accepting of it. I move on.

Interlude:
I went to sleep and woke up. My thoughts about gameplay . . . they linger. How did playing Book 2 make me feel?
How did it feel to play through it the first time ever? How does it feel to play it now?
Now it feels gently familiar. It feels easy, but not too easy. I'm solving puzzles. I bump into tiny problems -- Oh, this goomba guy, I have to rewind because I killed him too soon.

I have to walk past a few puzzle pieces because it's unclear how to get them. (In fact I remember that they are not possible to get yet; I need to get future puzzle pieces and do the puzzle later in order to get them.) This doesn't frustrate me. I move on. Maybe there is a naivete to this feeling . . . I don't have to solve all these problems! It's all good!

What is the place of everything within the whole? Not 'regret' but 'power over regret'. I make a mistake, I can easily undo it, I can try again, it takes only a little bit of time. Some things are not solvable, but this is not because of mistakes . . . it is because I'm missing something fundamental.

Having played all of Book 2 just now, it is still Braid. I don't think that having read those books lent me a deeper understanding of the play, nor did the play help me to understand the books... Of course, I say that as one who has played the game already. I already know the mechanics, the little quests I must go on for the pieces. This does not seem like the promised medium: A story next to a toy that lets you understand, slightly better, what the story was saying.

I like the story so far. I have just read all of the books in Book 3, and I like them, too. I'm really looking forward to more, actually. But the approach is far from game-breaking (where here the 'game' is the 'medium', the game of game design). Nonetheless I understand what's being done. It's humble and nice, in a way.

Book 3. Time and mystery. Books in opening.
- Introducing an interesting wrinkle to the story. The first book (Book 2, and this is interesting, I want to see where Book 1 goes with this, this foreshadowing) was naive and presented the idea of hidden mistakes so plainly and, as I said, it was quite cute! Here we have writing which indicates weaknesses. A desire to hide parts of oneself from the time-travel-rewind relationship that they (naively) opted into, assuming all would go well. This is an interesting direction to take a narrative... I want to read this story, not play this game. But, I will play Book 3 soon. I see how its mechanism relates. There is the green glowing thing which is immune, as Tim wishes he was sometimes immune. But this is such a tenuous link. I don't feel like it's necessary for me to understand it. It's like the pictures in a children's book. Yes, look, this is what it looks like when Emily feeds Clifford the Big Red Dog. You can already imagine it, but here it is spelled out twice, just in case you're still learning how to read, or learning how to imagine things in your mind, or have never seen a dog before.

Very opening scene.
Nameless character. You learn how to control yourself.

Book 2. Time and Forgiveness. Books in opening.
- Actually kinda cute?
- Introduces your avatar as Tim.
- Introduces this little story, and the naive concept of 'what if you could make mistakes, go back in time, and learn from those mistakes without the damage done?'
- Slippage between narrator and character (player-level, and narrative-level).
1.
"Suppose we could tell her "I didn't mean what I just said"
and she would say "It's okay, I understand.""
2.
And yet, the mechanisms of the game are . . . mechanical time-rewinding. The previous example is one of equality, to some degree. "We" (We being Tim and the player, together, the player-avatar collective 'we,' perhaps even the player-Tim-Jonathan collective unit, or perhaps some other ungiven subset) make a request and "she" complies.
Time-rewinding, time-travel, is a one-sided power.
3.
"Tim and the Princess . . . their mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked away between the folds of time, safe."
Where in (1) Tim makes a request and the Princess says yes, here in (3) we see that the mistakes are hidden, unknown to both of them, somehow. And yet Tim can also learn from his mistakes, somehow? The ones hidden from him. The ones tucked away between the folds of time.
4.
Or maybe I'm reading this all wrong. Tim makes the mistake. The Princess says, "Yes, you can learn from your mistakes, and I consent to having the harm done erased from my mind." They have both made mistakes and harmed each other. They have both learned from their mistakes. They have both forgotten every mistake made by the other.

Based on some things I've been exploring lately, I was struck by the oddest urge: to play and analyze Braid.
-Reading Jesper Juul's "Handmade Pixels"
-Reading a few of Jonathan Blow's quotes from a few different places
-Other notes and perhaps more detailed context to come

The questions running through my mind

1. What is Braid about?

2. What did Jonathan Blow want to communicate through Braid? That is . . .
   2a. What kind of "connection" was he looking for?
   2b. What did he think was "special" about it that "not many people understood"?
I hope to come to my own understanding of what ran behind these quotes of his.

3. Why is it a game, and does its nature as a game undermine its message? In particular, does its nature as a game undermine its message in a way that is broadly applicable to games with messages?

P. 324, "GEOMETRY: UNIQUENESS, REGULARITY, DIFFERENTIATION"

     During the onrush of the late 20th century, love of the unique --- at least in places and things --- sometimes appeared almost quaint, a desperate search for humanity among the inhumanity of dull repetition, stereotypes, and nearly identical McDonald's shops and Japanese cars. Uniqueness, a lost quality, still existing only in a few fishing villages, was regrettably now kept only for vacations. Daily life itself was marked by replicas, by sterile repetition, by the loss of uniqueness. Video-tapes of films, identical cars, bags, packages, refrigerators, houses, windows, streets, created a sense of a modular world in which parts were not unique. We were informed, solemnly, by the architectural theorists of that century, that modularity was an inevitable aspect of production, part of the march of progress, and that it would lead us to the triumphs of technology.

P. 317

Although the generative sequence itself is fixed (and needs to be fixed in order to embody the dictates of the fundamental process), the variety this sequence generates, when interacting with a variety of contexts, is very great indeed --- indeed, it is essentially infinite.[8]

[8] . . . My friend Dan Solomon, the San Francisco architect with whom I was joint-venturing the creation of the zoning ordinance, came to me and told me that he felt the generative sequence was an offense against architects, that it abrogated the individual freedom of expression of any self-respecting architect who might wish to apply for a building permit in Pasadena, and that he could not agree with the idea that the ordinance would contain the sequence as a major component. . . . It is significant, I think, that the fundamental rightness of generative sequences, as a source of life in buildings, was so deeply misperceived by a fellow-architect, who felt it to be a denial of freedom. It was, of course, only a denial of the freedom to do something willful and "creative" in the name of architecture: just the very aspect of architecture which caused so much damage in the 20th century. But the generative sequences are the origin of real freedom in the creative process --- if that freedom is aimed at creating living structure.

P. 322

The single most important thing that happens during the process of making anything, is the ever watchful task of getting the next bit of sequence right and modifying it as we go along. Paying attention to what has to be done next, and getting this right. . . The more one understands the key role which sequence plays in the unfolding process, the more it becomes clear that the process of design and the process of construction are inseparable.

I have plans to meet a friend and make a new friend tomorrow and I'm going to try and make them do the teahouse thing with me. In the meantime, the remainder of chapter eleven... is incredible... just mind bogglingly inspiring. I have never before now felt any level of confidence in my ability to convey how I approach level design, or design in general. The way Alexander says it, it is so obviously simple. It is always just a series of steps... Is there even anything I can quote here? I will quote a piece of step 9 of the "generative sequence for apartment buildings in Pasadena", "an old town with a nice history recently ruined by an influx of ugly multi-family apartment buildings" which leapt out at me in particular as I read it, but please remember this is one part of one step of eleven. It may mean nothing on its own.

P. 311

Cut up the [overall building volume which has been established in previous steps] into apartments in such a way as to define the best and most pleasant apartments. There should be no attempt to make apartments of a standard shape. Rather, each apartment should take a shape which is appropriate to its unique position in the building volume and with respect to daylight, access to outdoors, and entrances. The living room or main room of the apartment should have a garden view if possible.

This chapter is talking about that one part of The Timeless Way of Building where Christopher Alexander gives a list of patterns and describes his process of mentally building a house by following those patterns. . . Again this chapter merges with all previous chapters to form an even stronger picture. These patterns are step-by-step adaptations, but now Alexander says the order of the steps matters. These patterns are always creating centers. These patterns start from the whole and always work at it through differentiation.

A series of patterns or a 'pattern sentence' is named here a 'generative sequence'.
~ SYNAPSE: Generative Sequence of Patterns

I haven't read the middle of the chapter yet and I'm saving it for later, and you'll understand why when I copy this quote:

P. 302-303

     The following twenty-four steps give the generative sequence for a traditional Japanese tea house. To understand the extraordinary power (and effectiveness) of this sequence you should, if possible, ask someone to read it to you while you sit with your eyes closed, and allow a vision of a tea house to form in your mind. . . . After you have heard all 24 statements, with a bit of luck you will have a complete vision of a teahouse in your mind. The process is almost effortless.
     Please, if possible, do ask someone to read this to you, now. And please do close your eyes while you are listening, so that the images can form freely in your mind (as they cannot if you merely sit here and read the words yourself).

// He asks so nicely. I must comply.

I still love consensus games. If anything this makes me love them more. A consensus game is an identity-risking game. It's a relationship-risking game. To believe in consensus is to believe in flexibility of relationships, of identities, and of ideas. If you're wrong about one, the others will suffer. You have to put yourself out there and trust everyone.

It is the complete opposite of a 'social deduction game', where you are tasked with deduction, while under the effect of a corrosive truth that someone is not worth trusting.

In a consensus game you are tasked with faith and problem-solving, which is or may only be possible under the effect of a -- perhaps even deluded -- belief that everyone is worth trusting, worth working to integrate, worth supporting at being themselves.

Consensus games can be dangerous. It's not just about consensus... It's not about making people agree, but about finding a way forward while respecting everyone's wishes, and requires us to ensure everyone is respecting their own wishes. Someone who hurts themselves to help the group is not helping the real consensus game.

Okay, new term?

I watched a movie called Fall recently. There was some kind of quote from a rock climber character in it, 'If you fear death you might as well do what makes you feel alive.' It wasn't a very good quote in the first place and I'm only further butchering the thing, but the point is I think it's been said before by many people across many works. Oh, and in Point Break, a documentary about tennis. And that thing about bushido. And that thing about the mirror of erised.

Now, how the hell am I going to tie all these thoughts together?

To play with something is to practice lightness regarding it.

To play is to practice lightness.

To play is to practice freedom.

Jack and I were talking a little bit about accepting an external image as an internal image, and it made me think about this idea of consensus games, again, as in some ways a bit of a risk. Is playing consensus games a way to build the habit of succumbing to the external image, or is it a way to play with it to prove (to myself?) that I'm not held in thrall?

To play with agreement is to play with opinion, to play with identity... To play a consensus game is to own the flexibility of one's identity, to risk it, to show that it is not so important. To play with anything may be a way of practicing lightness regarding it.