P. 360, "ESSENTIAL CENTERS NOT GIMMICKS"
. . . examples of developer architecture and postmodern "image" architecture, which put the accent on image, not on the essentials. . . . the accent is on the box, not the flowers. . . . In the fancy staircase balustrade, all the emphasis is on the impression which the balustrade will make --- not on the problem of holding on. . . . image-conscious, and sterile. . . phony.
-----
In the Italian case, the rough plastered trough for flowers is unobtrusive, what matters is the flowers. The flowers are intense, they are at just the right height to see them, smell them, experience them. . . . In the economical iron railing, which comes from an 11th-century palace, the essential thing is the beauty of the steps, and getting upstairs to the door. . . . simple, often cheap, and goes to the guts of the situation in a way that matters. . . real . . . They go to the heart of the structure that is already there, they summarize and encapsulate the essence of the real life that is going on in people's hearts.

I have been trying to read each chapter without succumbing to the desire to copy every single quote that grabs me, but this chapter is too much. It's too much. I want to capture the whole idea of the chapter, not every little bit, but I fear . . . what if I miss the trees for the forest? What if I forget every little gem? I think it helps to sit down with the chapter and read it all in one sitting. If I break it up into little pieces, half paying attention and half not, then the wholeness escapes me more easily. Then it helps to grab every quote I can.

I am in that position now, distracted; so I will grab the quotes.

P. 366
The essential centers are those whose presence is already latent in the field . . . the essence of the real life which is going on.
. . . in a period of history where people like to stress the arbitrariness of all things, such an idea may seem doubtful or impossible to accept. But the crux of all life is, nevertheless, the difference between recognizing the essential thing and separating it from the trivial thing.

//

Quote from: Ian BogostBy holding everything at a distance, we trap ourselves within our imperfect minds. Irony doesn't protect us; it only makes things worse.
--Play Anything

Bogost suggests that play is to see a thing for what it is, to accept it. The contrast is irony, which is to 'hold at a distance.' There is a mirror here . . . to play is to pay attention to the essential thing, irony is to hold it at arm's length and pay attention instead to a trivial thing, to the wrapper, to something else. Hmm

As I was throwing away years and years of memories ("memories", memorabilia of my life, paraphernalia of the past, nothing I have any attachment to as my present-day self) it occurred to me that that twinge of sadness I had often felt before, when giving up things I thought of as 'part of my self,' was weaker than ever. It was there, but I let go of those things almost effortlessly. Almost.

What does it mean to consider a thing part of your self? When a person drives a car and gets into a collision even if they themselves were not hurt they may say "You hit me." Me. Is it more than just a semantic trick? Do we accept our tools into our sense of self, does it become harder to let go of things once we have let them in? When I play awake I am the eleven-eyed thing. Even when I cannot see myself I am me.

So then what happens to me when I die? When I stop playing awake I let go of that eleven-eyed facet of my self. What happens when I stop owning my body? It is supposed that the brain is the source of consciousness, of sentience, and if that is the case, if I am born locked into my own skull, then it would be foolish to dissociate from my brain. But what if the brain is merely a tool too? My body an avatar?

Writing on a whiteboard, I can even think somewhat differently than I can without it. What if that is all the brain is? An elaborate, beautiful whiteboard. A calculator. A hook into sensory organs. What if without the brain I am still me? What if without the body I am still me?

Think of the self as something other than the body, other than the brain. Think of the body and the brain as a vessel. A powerful, wonderful, beautiful vessel.

What then would a picture of the self look like?

I've had this question lingering in the back of my mind: Why is Christopher Alexander not more well-known as an architect? Of course his ideas might just be wrong, but this passage made me think that part of the problem is his bedside manner. His way of describing his approach and involving others in the process was blunt, cut to the point in a way that people do not find comfortable. I can relate.

P. 355

[My clients] quickly realized that this discussion was . . . a discussion about [their] whole way of life. . . . Both of them felt that their future . . . was on the line. The discussion of spaces, and centers, itself harmless, but profoundly disturbing in its implications for family life, for the relation of man to woman, and much more, created tremendous anxiety. We had to stop talking for a while.

Suddenly noticing similarities between this 'unfolding' and Wolfram's "Beautiful . . . Fundamental Theory of Physics"

When we begin a project, we are faced with the empty canvas, and we puzzle about what to do. Our clues about what should be built, what should be done next, must come from the context. In any sane process which is able to make living structure for people, we must give proper attention to what people need and want and desire to make themselves comfortable.

This chapter will prove useful for understanding game design -- not all game design but game design in context.

P. 342
In any sane process which is able to make living structure . . . giving proper attention to the functional basis . . . to what people need, and want, and desire, in order to make themselves comfortable . . .

P. 343
When we begin a . . . project, our clues about what should be built, what should be done next, must come not only from the land but from society, too, and from the culture where this is being done. We are faced with the empty canvas, and we puzzle about what to do.

P. 343 - 344
It is the human family which makes us build a house, it is the concept of transportation and community which makes us seek roads and sidewalks; it is the way that people are in their custom and behaviour, which provides the all-important physical subtleties. . . . a true unfolding process must be rooted, always, in the whole, in the cultural and human whole and the land and the ecological and natural whole and the physical wholeness [and the technological, digital wholeness and the genre tropes and and and...] of that place which forms the context of our work.

The idea as far as I am able to understand and express it for myself is that there is a uniqueness which arises from following common patterns. A common process, that is, a non-unique process, so long as the process pays attention to context or has "respect for what exists" (the name of the 6th and final section of this chapter), produces unique results constantly and infinitely.

Put another way, space is already unique. . . every spot of space is unique in its relationships to other spots of space. Every person is unique too, in this way as well as many different ways.

Uniqueness does not take effort. Uniqueness is already present in every moment and every part of every life. We can appear to produce unique results by paying very close attention to what already exists.

It is this common uniqueness which I struggled with, above. Uniqueness not as a struggle to create, but as a quiet noticing. Notice that latent uniqueness and strengthen it; respect it; step-by-step adapt to it; create new centers to do so; unfolding in sequence, one will discover that every part is unique.

P. 337

Just make it nice at every spot.

P. 340

If we concentrate on understanding by what process each part must become itself --- in just the right way which emerges from its position in the whole --- it will be tied to the whole, harmonious with the whole, integrated with the whole, yet unique and particular according to just the unique conditions which occur in that part of the whole. This will give us the living process, and our understanding of it, too, in its entirety.

P. 325

During the 20th century, our ideas about repetition and uniqueness were distorted. . .

First, by a conviction that it was inevitable that a modern industrial process could only make exact replicas, if it was to be efficient, via mass-production. . . . it was an aesthetic idea, a philosophical ideal, an intellectual extension of the ideas of mechanism [and the 20th century mechanistic view].

Second, our concept of repetition was distorted by a conviction about atoms and fundamental particles, which seemed to provide a basis for thinking that the world is, in its essence, modular. . . . At one time physicists believed that atoms --- then thought to be the ultimate constituents of matter --- were the modular units from which everything was made. Later it was thought that electrons, neutrons, protons were the identical modular units . . . Later still, quarks and strings . . .

P. 325 - 326

. . . the intellectual bias of the century was often mixed with the philosophical (and practical) dream of a small number of components which could be combined in infinite richness of arrangement to create beautiful things. . . . [but if] wholeness as it is expressed in Book 1 turns out to be correct, and if the unfolding of wholeness described in this book turns out to be fundamental, then one must come to expect that each atom and each particle will be different according to its context, and that there are no ultimate identical constituents of matter at any scale.

I stopped reading for a few days, troubled. How do I feel about uniqueness? I like it of course, but how does it come to terms with this passage from my recent letterclub post?

"Modern values suggest common feelings are not that important, and rather it is individuality that has an overriding importance. "It's not for everyone." "There's no accounting for taste." "Your difference is what makes you beautiful." And so on. // I point this out because this [common] feeling of life cannot be fully understood without first acknowledging that underlying feeling which it contradicts."

The more I read over this though the more I understand that it is not in conflict... still I'm left a bit unsettled. Did I really sound so anti-uniqueness? It's not that I don't value, or that I undervalue, the unique... but that I value the common, too. The ayy lmao between 🌀 uniqueness is worthless, and 🐉 everyone is unique in every way or else

I started reading this book on the subway, and took notes on my phone.
Here are my notes.

Quote"[In 2005 the idea was brewing that game design should be about] experiences, such that the starting point for any game project was not technology or genre, but the experience a player was meant to have."(78)
A dichotomy is presumed: the starting point is 'technology or genre' or 'experience', not both. However, genre is plainly rooted in experience, and (in video games) experience is rooted in technology.
Speaking more generally, feeling (which I substitute for experience) is rooted in that felt artifact, which must be understood in the context of its creative process (that is, the process which resulted in its creation).
Therefore the idea as described removed focus from process, in favour of focus on some particular result, and furthermore implied or was based on, and by virtue strengthened, the foundational assumption that any return to focus on process was not game design, ergo not valuable to the game designer.

"Casual games, as I prefer to define them, are games . . . that appeal to a broad audience and are easy to start playing. . . . they provide flexibility, allowing players to decide . . . what length of game sessions. . . . a casual game is designed to fit into the player's life." (84) ". . . some of the core tenets of casual and independent games were completely opposed: if independent games were meant to express the developer's personality, then casual games were meant to be products made to please the audience, often belonging to a different demographic than the developers." (86)

Note to self: Choose festivals based on the people you want to see. This much should be obvious, but it's not been... Think about what type of player you want to meet, and select a festival that... is for those players? What's to be done if that doesn't exist? Think about the long game of each festival: what do they aspire to 5 years out? Can I be a part of that? Improv on the scale of decades. Play along.

Wow, p150-156 is all about Authentically Opaque games and is critical of them! I disagree with Juul's opinions, and agree with Blow's and Anthropy's. Juul concludes with "Perhaps the sign in New Super Mario Bros. Wii is not a problem." (156) but from whence does this argument rise? He says opaqueness can "[lead] to interesting new games, without being true as a universal claim about video game design" but universal claims are all I'm interested in. Patterns, dawg.

But what purpose does opacity serve?

"Perhaps . . . authenticity also can be an oppressive way to think about games or culture. . . . ideas of authenticity help us think of new games to make and to consider that more people should make games, but . . . has the potential of shutting down innovation and change as well, of narrowing the range of games that can be made or played."(186)

I cut away a few elements of Juul's tone to help me understand the heart of the statement; these were "Perhaps the truth is that authenticity..." and "if misused, [authenticity] has the potential of [negative effects]."

These belie Juul's own bias... he too wants to find the truth... and he has an idea of what is use and what is misuse. I wish that he would make these claims outright, but I suppose this is not that kind of book, as explicitly seen in the following quote,

"I have throughout tried to avoid absolute is questions: Is this game independent? Is this game authentic? It can be better to ask as questions: How is this game understood as independent, as authentic?"(180)

Noncommittal. Use better words to which you can commit, then.

My conclusion for now is that I think I understand Braid a lot better than I once did, and though I don't think it should have been developed or designed differently, it has not changed my mind in the slightest about how games relate to deep meaning. Braid has many puzzles which seem like a smokescreen to what really matters --- a way of keeping people at a distance. It perhaps speaks about this tendency and its consequences, but succumbs to the tendency and its consequences, too.

Of course, I am biased here. I don't like solving puzzles, and the more I do it, the less I like it. Games tend to get harder and harder, for whatever reason; I like the puzzles that serve to show me one crystal-clear concept in a satisfying way, but the puzzles in Braid actually get worse by this metric as they often do in puzzle games. They show me muddier and muddier concept-heaps that are increasingly ugly and convoluted and unnecessary. It is truly unfortunate.

In my opinion, games should get easier and easier as you go along. What else is the point of gaining familiarity, skill, and comfort in them? They should get easier and more satisfying, not harder and less satisfying.

Braid explores some interesting concepts and the gameplay does serve those concepts to a point, to a degree. I won't summarize the concepts here, now, but I might come back to this idea later.

The end.