project complete. result: more of an NPC than a PC! realized that an interesting protagonist may be a terrible player character! not every good or even great protagonist would make a good or even passable player character. cool insight.

I have this feeling that I struggle to hold many small parts in my mind at once, much easier for me to hold one large object in my mind. Moreover, I think other people are . . . different? More capable of handling, or more comfortable with, or more preferring, a large body of little pieces? I wonder what it is -- whether rooted in choice, or nature.

In this chapter Alexander highlights difficulties of focusing on the whole. He suggests that we all have "some negative voice . . . discouraging us from really and truly making every process structure-preserving o the larger whole. This is a kind of mental inhibition (something fuelled by ego, sometimes by greed) which continually makes us focus on the local . . ." and forget to focus on the whole.

He says FORGET as if we all know that focusing on the whole is right, and that anything else is a misstep. I am inclined, strongly, to agree, but I also wonder about this idea of a difference in mentality. Is it a difference in ability? Do people's brains allow them to picture wholes and parts better or worse than each other? What he really says is that we "forget that it is our responsibility, at every turn, to heal and make more whole, the structure of the world." As I said: I am inclined, strongly, to agree, but all I can say for sure is that this is certainly my feeling -- that this is my philosophy or very close to it, and to forget that is a genuine forgetting. A misstep.

Then comes "6 / AT EACH STEP DECIDE ONLY WHAT YOU KNOW WITH CERTAINTY" (p 257) which comes from combination of this step and the previous (i.e. THE WHOLE + STEP-BY-STEP ADAPTATIONS): "Each step is, in a sense, a return to the whole and a starting over with a "first step."" One should not, then, jump at the first idea that presents itself... but consider many ideas and "reject most of them. If we do accept one, we should accept it, reluctantly, only when we finally encounter something for which no good reason presents itself to reject it, which appears genuinely wonderful to us, and which demonstrably makes the feeling of the whole become more profound."

Accept only perfection. Alexander says "If we do accept one"! This implies that we may not accept any of them. I have written in Paradise that I would like to aspire to ". . . perfect games, or perfect art. It's not that a perfect work has no flaws; however, when I produce such a thing, I feel as though I need to make no excuses for what it is, and it makes no excuses for itself." Perhaps Alexander is here to give me another piece of this particular puzzle; a perfect work can have no flaws if we think about each and every decision made in the pursuit of its birth as a thing which can be right or wrong. A perfect thing has unfolded perfectly: without mistakes. Perfection is back on the table, baby.

Oh and the dude literally brings up painting and wholeness and while I wrote "I want to experience a game like I experience a painting, all at once" I of course want to make games like that too...

It's not a perfect bridge but there is an echo. The idea of comparing a painter's process to the process of building an entire building is similar in audacity. The painting is made step by step, without much of a clear idea of how it will turn out (or so he says, anyway). If we can do this with a building, surely we can also do it with something as simple as a game.

"The result must be unpredictable." Alexander invokes the butterfly effect to explain how the building process which genuinely has this feature, which I shall summarize as "adaptation to feedback at every step," must not have a fixed result determined ahead of time. Now, he has constructed buildings with purposes, and I believe that this is highly distinct from a fixed result. To build a school, you shouldn't look at a school and copy it... you should ask yourself, What purpose(s) does my building have? To build a game, you shouldn't look at a game and copy it... you should ask yourself what purposes or needs your game seeks to satisfy. You should seek what they tried to seek. I've struggled with this in the past, and I probably will continue to struggle with it.

What are games for?

Quote from: @droqeni spent a couple decades learning how to program and design computer games. i've become disenchanted over the past few years. please refill my sense of purpose:

how have you - and others you care about - used games and computers to make your life better?

(especially recently)

tweet

Lots of interesting replies there, which shows how long I've been thinking in these terms (if not, probably, longer). But this also explains the extreme difficulty of building up a game from an idea, and depending on the rigidity of the idea, the deadness of the process... However, an idea may contain a nugget of 'purpose' within it.

My thinking now... Game ideas are like concept art, and when building a game, the design ideas are like the wrapper of the feeling you're after. The game idea is not about the mechanics but about containing, deep inside, the secret of what the game is really trying to satisfy. Naked purpose is difficult and uncomfortable for people to convey, if not impossible. Easier to express something so subtle through a piece of art, a higher-level idea. Through a medium. wow

I really need to summarize this later on.

P. 225
I believe future understanding of living process --- if the concept survives in future generations [I will fight for it] --- must have at least [these features] . . . In the next chapters I shall discuss these ten features of living process in detail.

// I'll try to recap each 'feature of living process' chapter in its entirety as I relate to it.

Anyway, returning to the topic at hand, whether it is in line with Alexander's thinking or not, there is a hole in Gage's talk (yes this is the goal but how?) which is perfectly filled by Alexander's living process of strengthening latent centers (i.e. looking for common "invented problems" and making the process of engaging with those problems more satisfying). He also describes how this tends to produce additional latent centers without even particularly trying, and advocates for thinking about the wholeness (i.e. how all the centers relate, i.e. how a change will affect all the other aspects of the game). An additional interesting wrinkle is how much he insists nothing new needs to be, or even should be, added. Everything should be already practically there upon examining the latent center and the wholeness; what exists should be the source of inspiration, and shocking new existences will spring out of that, uninvited.

If I hadn't already felt that way myself I would be hesitant to just follow suit, but I have within me a deep sense that adding new things is always inferior to adding variations of old things, of what is already there or is already obvious.

That is, The Nature of Order is, just as The Timeless Way did, providing a strong framework for existing convictions I already have. He's preaching to the choir, but teaching me what rhymes along the way.

And there are so many beautiful rhymes.

Alas, Alexander does not give any higher-level abstract wisdom about mistakes. In fact many of these mistakes on surface reading seem more like the sort of mistakes that are handled by QA and QoL, with the exception that he advocates explicitly for a process which handles all of these mistakes during the process of generation, rather than afterwards, and in a computer software context, no less!

I cannot find the page it's on, but he specifically describes giving a talk to computer software developers about his 'structure-preserving transformations', hearing from them that 'we already do this!' and thinking about it a while and concluding that they do not in fact do this. Maybe I'll find it or someone will stumble upon this and find it for me. Who knows!

The Nature of Order, Book Two P. 190 (quoted text follows)

     Let us consider the kinds of things which are, in my definition, "mistakes."
     A window sill may be just right to put things on --- or it may be too small. A window may look at a favourite tree, or it may be placed to look at a wall. The path may be built so that one hardly has place to put the soap; or it may be built with a comfortable shelf where soap and shampoo can be without falling off. The light in a room may be placed to create a comfortable atmosphere at night, small pools of light in just the right places, or it may be merely a light fixture wherever the builder put it. . . . It is well-adapted to need because of specific, small, features that it has.
     Each of these things . . . depends on adjustment, attention to position, dimension, comfort, and adequacy. If missing, they are mistakes of adaptation --- adaptations that were not achieved.

Book Two discusses mistakes and uses them as an argument for the power of an adaptive, living process. . . a process of "fabrication" which produces the design all at once will have many mistakes. Anyway, I'm just going to go see how Alexander describes mistakes and how they are applied here.

[pingback: INVENTING YOUR OWN PROBLEMS as LATENT CENTERS]

[pingback: INVENTING YOUR OWN PROBLEMS as LATENT CENTERS]

<<. . . absent of any problems to be solved, players are forced to invent their own problems. [Some examples from spelltower are] "Can I spell a 6 letter word?" or "Can I spell a word with a Q in it?" . . . answering any of these questions will teach you things that make you better at SpellTower. . . . they're a self-guided tour into the exact areas of the system that matter.>> --Zach Gage's "Designing for Problem-Solvers" http://stfj.net/DesigningForProblem-Solvers/, emphasis in original text

I don't have a quote for this, but in The Nature of Order, Christopher Alexander defines centers and in particular latent centers (Book 1) and describes 'living process' (Book 2), a process by which a thing is created by looking at a space and noticing latent centers (in games, in Gage's language, the problems which players invent when forced to invent their own problems, are latent centers) and strengthening them.

This is actually, legitimately, the heart of the process of finding a game design of this form. I remember watching Zach give this talk (just a recording, alas I did not see him perform it in person) and thinking 1. awesome, and 2. wait but how?

Gage does not say how to get there, but Alexander does.

Ah, yes, there's my thought. "Doing things that are easy for me." There's a deep pleasure in doing things that are easy for me, and I also really enjoy making new things easy for me, but I don't really enjoy doing things that are hard other than for that reason.

I also don't enjoy things that are completely trivial. I like easy things, relaxing things, comfortable things, but not bland things. I like doing something that's frightening but turns out to be easy. I like to be pleasantly surprised by the ease of doing something.

Again - this deserves another thread somewhere, it's completely off point.

No, I don't need a week, I can tell already that even the talking games aren't just there to make us talk! We are obviously imagining people and stories. Talking games are just the medium, like computer games... There is a problem with the language, because we also have tactics games and puzzle games, and these are not the medium but the message / the content. Hmm.

Anyway, I am really into talking games, and I am really into story/storytelling games, but I think I am still really into computer games, but I'm not that into even problem-solving games. I am more into . . . oh no, what was the phrase? It's not expression games. Performance games, maybe. I went to karaoke and it was fun to sing and sing bad and know that I could get better if I felt like it, but also that I didn't have to. If I got better it would be for myself, and if I got any positive feedback it would be . . . I would not be getting better at a performance game because I wanted the praise, but for some other reason. Some mysterious 'unnamed garden game' reason.

Why does it feel so good to set my own goals and achieve them?

Deserves another thread somewhere.

I've been looking for a name for the kind of tabletop roleplaying game that I like to do, that I aspire to play, and I think that name might be "Talking games". The point of these games is to talk. A conversation . . . is a form of talking game, or possibly the output of a talking game, but either way they are deeply related. Going on a walk can be a talking game. But also, a lot of tabletop roleplaying games have components of 'talking game' in them. Those are the parts that I like. I even like talking about the numbers and the rules sometimes, but I lose interest quickly because it's obvious that the play is not about the talking anymore, the talking is instrumental in nature, the talking is about conveying ideas, and the talking is not really the play, the ideas are. The game is about the ideas, and the talking is just ordinary talking.

The point of talking games is not to talk ordinarily, but to play-talk, to play a game where talking is the thing, or something like that. I'll have to come back and see what I think about this in a week or so.