death.
i have been thinking that i love my bunny game, The End of Gameplay, too much. it is too precious to me. because of its preciousness, i am unwilling to let it go. because i have not let it go, when i have new feelings -- they are tangled up in it.
in 2024 to early 2025 i was seeing an art therapist because i wanted to study psychotherapy, and in particular, art therapy, for reasons i won't get into here. and at the time, i was working on the end of gameplay, and i had decided i was going to release it into the world. she asked me a simple question, why?
i didn't have an answer then. my answer was awful, it was something like, "i showed it to as many people as i could bear which was two people, and then i felt like i could show it to a few more friends," and ultimately i said that it was just something that was going to happen. a natural consequence of things. now on the final day of the year (i mean, it's 4 AM on the final day of the year, so i have plenty of time before the year ends, but it sounds dramatic so bear with me, let's have some fun) -- as i was saying, before i so rudely interrupted, now on the final day of the year i think i understand why i had to release the end of gameplay.
and i also understood that i had failed.
based on an excess of very weird feelings about games i felt the sudden urge to put my "elegies (https://droqen.itch.io/elegies)" online after four or so years of them sitting around on my computer. i thought i didn't want to release them out of a sort of kindness. that is, i felt that they were going to do something negative to someone. but, i think it was something else. i was still holding on.
so i posted them. this was an hour or so ago. the elegies, after four years, out. i felt a kind of lightness about the place where the elegies had come from. and i worried, maybe someone will say something stupid about them. they will make me feel like these three precious little 'games' are not important.
well, the truth is, they are not important. they were important to me, four years ago. and four years ago, rather than unburdening myself of these objects, i carried them with me. this was important: to hold on to them.
when i set the price for the end of gameplay to $20 USD i did so out of fear. this i am certain of.
the end of gameplay is an incredibly precious thing. i cannot describe to you how precious it is. and yet, i have swaddled it in so many protective layers that it has remained precious and safe for the majority of the year. it came out on may 12th (on the night of the full moon, of course), and it is now december. it didn't even take me this long to make it.
i used to think that making games and releasing them and falling out of love with them was undesirable. i wonder now if it is the natural way of things. it is what happens. i have an overwhelming emotion--an obsession. i allow it to build up inside, in safety. then i expose it to oxygen and it withers away and suddenly it is as though i am a new person, who could never be so consumed by something so insignificant and foolish.
i think this is how i become a new person.
i'd like to do the things that scare me. i released the elegies quite late. i wonder if i still have anything to learn, or if the moment has passed. the idea that i will move on from the end of gameplay scares me now. a day will come that i look back on the bunny game with quiet pity.
when that day comes i will know i've moved on from something that was very important. something large that receded long into the distance.
obsessively creating and then releasing art. what could be better?