i've read through the whole book (the main actual book, The Art of War, not the bonus post-book, Sayings by Wu) and am now reflecting back.

first of all, i skipped the introduction by tom butler-bowdon. who needs a preface these days. not me!

Oh, yes. Back to Snow Game. I apologize to the artist. My judgement of Snow Game has very little to do with the contents or the medium, and much more to do with my interpretation of your relationship to our art form, my projection of my own recent years of dissatisfaction upon you and yours.

I cannot look at Snow Game outside of its context. I can only understand Snow Game as someone who has played a hundred, a thousand, simple games wherein you control an avatar in a world of tiles with the arrow keys on your keyboard. In the past such games were almost always about solving simple puzzles. Then players of these games felt a longing to move on, players as much as makers. Rather than move on, some of them, some of us, moved deeper and struggled to claw what we could into our little hole.

I suppose that my feeling is that this is a niche within a niche. A very low local maxima.

Returns diminish.

Jack sent Snow Game to the letterclub crew, and so I played it.

Some weeks ago I happened to check out increpare's... twitter? cohost? I'm not sure, it was on some feed-based medium. I saw that increpare was making a lot of puzzle games, to a similar or greater degree of prolificiency (prolificness?) as me. And, playing them, I noted: This is a lot of puzzle games.

Something I noted about myself is that after about, I don't know, five or ten daily platformers, I get tired of making platformers, and I want to do something else with it. But then, I do something else with it, and I think: Ah, this isn't really as good as making a platformer the right way. Whatever that means.

So, when I played Snow Game, I thought... this is that type of creative work. A quivering. A vibration along a straight line to nowhere.

A certain idea from game poems comes to mind. My summary of one thing that the book identifies as interesting to the author -- and to be clear about my own position, I do not like it -- is that the game poet plays with the extant language of videogames in order to do something with it. Magnuson writes "Videogames have established visual and auditory vernaculars that are ripe for poetic intervention" and I think I can see increpare here at that same sort of "play."

To me, it is not play. It is struggle, it is pain, it is disappointment.

I wish now that I could say I have lost interest in the language of videogames and therefore lost interest in such intervention, such struggle, such play. But I am in too deep. I have spent decades playing and making games. I know too much to leave it all behind. At the same time, I do not think I am interested in playing with games. To play requires a mutual respect, a willingness to cooperate on some level, a certain collaborative spirit.

No, my relationship to games is becoming something altogether different. So I am not a good collaborator. There are other relationships one can productively have with a thing.

See: The Art of War

It is not enough to refuse to make or consume boring art. We must go to war with it.

i could not explain the direct link but i came to the conclusion immediately after reading sylviefluff's "Because My Heart Is Illegible"

reading announced here i guess: https://x.com/droqen/status/1792965930001002595

QuoteWhat would happen if we, collectively, refused to make or consume any more "boring art"? If we agreed to escape the ouroboros together by opening our eyes to all the things we've refused to see until now — the stories we've been robbed of, the player types we refuse to look for, the range of non-violent experiences and mechanics games could be exploring, all the new people and perspectives we could have in the hobby if we didn't put up barriers to their entry, the critical voices that could light up the landscape if we dared to stray from the predictable and the expected?

There's a whole world of possibility out there for us. What if we've only just scratched the surface?

Kat's proposed solution is collective action against boring art. It's not easy. It's not easy to call for something like that. It's not easy to have the faith to go for it, either. I am slowly understanding that my own solution, the only one that makes sense, is just to do what makes sense to me, and to in. But it can be painful, inviting others down a blind alley. What lies at the end? If I get hurt, it's just me. If you get hurt because you followed me down here, how responsible am I? What if I didn't even ask you to come along, I just said I was going to do it and you happened to come too?

I want to go beneath the surface, and I will keep going beneath the surface, and I don't want to put you at risk. But I see no other option, I guess, than to do something wrong, and to try my best not to hide it.

If I go under and never come back up, I want someone to be there at least to note my disappearance.

QuoteGamers, developers, critics, fans, creators — we're all just stuck on repeat, trapped in a rut we can't even see.

Oh no, I hope this has a good ending. But thank you for reminding me.