"The End of Gameplay is itself about a shared struggle. I made it BECAUSE I wanted to talk about something important & vital that was hard to talk about."

I would not have made The End of Gameplay without "kill gameplay." I made it because I was no good at explaining or describing or even understanding, myself, what I meant or what I wanted. Now that it's done and out, when people leave reviews of the game & reply to me, it feels like an extension of that larger conversation.

So, I recently received a negative review... on May 21, now it's May 23. I've been sort of obsessively thinking about it for that two-day period. Two days can seem like a short time or it can seem like forever. Of course, I am still living life. I am going on long walks with my partner in the rain. I am cooking and eating food. I am buying groceries. I don't mean to say that I'm sitting in a concrete box alone with nothing but my thoughts and My First Negative Steam Review. But it sits in the mind and lingers. It's easy to have openness and love for positive reviews, to interpret a "thank you" with generosity and kindness, but can I do the same for a review that is, more than negative, sort of insulting?

I think it is possible. I'm making a video on it, and then I will perhaps respond to other Steam reviews without responses. This has been an emotionally productive (and emotionally expensive) side-project.

Start of the project, the first 18 reviews.

A workshop for artists to learn & express themselves through Downpour.

What are the necessary basics?
- The very basics of using the tool: photo, box, text, links.
- I think it's much better to take the photos first, then arrange them afterwards.
- Deciding, what is the topic? Creates a work with some coherence
- What topics are genuinely meaningful to you? Memory, for me.

uh think more about this

"C____'s dad was mad all the time, lashing out at C and C's mother. As he grew older, he mellowed out."

But what happened?? I feel like there's a huge space for a story in there -- just the shit of life that transforms a person, in so subtle a way.

~ backlinked from PAPERS (music video)

The aesthetic. Reminds me of the Symphony in Acid video, though i found that one struck me more powerfully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56EG957YinM

maybe the same control scheme for other objects? the empty hand. a camera. a mirror, a lens, a gun? receiver-like, the object may be placed anywhere on screen...

in a first person game, in the darkness, a light shining in my face. i hold my hand up to block the headlights, occluding an awkward hand and wrist and arm shaped blob so that i can see everything else...

a game

using data to track the moon, detect whether the user's camera is pointed at the moon, also detect if the moon is visible with visual confirmation (?)

it's no fun if the moon is too easy to catch; maybe the goal is for everyone to catch the moon at all times, a global cooperation? multiple mooncatchers at the same time... wow, but, hmmm

Lena; For some, the structure of number go up, there's safety, you have validation that you're playing correctly. How do you respond to that Droqen?

me: . . go into it knowing that that's its function, and not going further than that? It's . . easy to make systems, this is a number that the player wants to go up, the reason it's there is so that the player can engage with something and be creative themselves but there's something very seductive once you have a cool gameplay system that's compelling it's easy to lose sight of why you wanted to compel them in the first place. . . . draw them in even further, I feel like that's the bad stuff...

 Jim : ARE YOU READY TO DEFINE GAMEPLAY

LENA: IN ORDER TO PLAY, YOU HAVE TO ESTABLISH A FEELING OF SAFETY FOR ALL THOSE INVOLVED, FIRST.

<3

.. children play question (such a good question)

Jim: Looking back on my play experiences . . I would never have any ideas (for creative storytelling play), I would follow someone else's lead.

someone out there must be thinking,
HERE'S MY VESSEL FOR EXPRESSION [BUT] IF I WANT TO MAKE AN INTERACTIVE THING, OH, THE PLAYER SHOULD DIE SOMETIME, THEY SHOULD COLLECT SOME POINTS, THEY SHOULD HAVE A LITTLE CHECKBOX TO TICK OFF...

lena : your recent bsky posts seem very "i'm going to kill starseed pilgrim" "it's going to take starseed pilgrim down"

me : i don't even remember . . . people have very strong reactions that you take things down . . . starseed pilgrim can live on.

[if i take it down, it is the community's game]

cruel world???

me : ok, hold on, let me rein it in, there's the ssp of it all... i feel like it's distracting from the kill gameplay of it all.

jim : this is no longer a useful approach to this conversation, then

me : something that i've encountered . . . gameplay . . . there's a lot of defaulting to what's the player gonna be doing in game design . . . i get it . . but it consumes a lot of time that isn't necessarily expressive time . . . expressive space for game developers everywhere. . . all i understand is myself so i'm trying to do it for myself . . . if i want this . . . someone out there also has to be craving, i just want to make a game that conveys something . . . here's my vessel

oh boy, i'm going off the rails here, but i finally say something...