No-one can read videogame text anyway; it's not actually text, it's like a texture.

This was a really impactful read. I'm going to go through it sometime but not right now.

QuoteThis is the main screen. So, you can see I'm just going into speedrun mode: there's no point paying attention to the text because no-one can read videogame text anyway; it's not actually text, it's like a texture. You have to read every sentence in a videogame three times before you're able to parse it as human language.

[A massive block of text appears on-screen.]
Case in point. You see this, and the first thing you say is, "Do I need to read this? Is it just like flavour text or a tooltip or something?"
And then you're like "*sigh* Uh, okay, I guess I gotta read, so I gotta just scan it and see like, Uh, Hotel, Test card, World, Hotels, Hotels, Hotels, Hotels,"

And then, if you can't figure out what it's meant to be saying from that, you have to set your mind down to reconstruct it as actual language.
But that's a worst-case scenario [which] generally, videogame 'best practices' try and avoid.

This is reading play. "What do i end up reading? what will i miss? what can i miss?"

This is writing play too. i don't know what pieces someone will read... i think writing is always like that, actually. you never know what phrase will snag any reader's attention. Reading is not a straight line, it's a jagged line with hills and valleys of attention and repetition.

am i the only one who goes back to a sentence i liked to reread it, or skips a word or sentence i think i might not understand if it's not particularly interesting or necessary?

"Nobody reads the text in videogames!" said thecatamites (find talk/timestamp) link

text as texture.

I want plausible deniability, accidental reading, nonlinear exposure to writing, permission to miss and ignore details. text that goes by too quickly to be caught (enter the void credits sequence).

The word 'garden' is used because a garden takes a while before yielding fruit (or whatever you're growing lol)

But it really is or can be a grind. I don't want to eliminate the grind, because 'risking time' is one of the key aspects of the mechanics of games. It is a strong emotion I like to play with. Risk, faith, investment, fear (of losing something).

- garden/tiger
- garden/tiger/mountain
- just garden/mountain?

From the thinky games discord.. risk is important and interesting to me. QoL changes often serve to reduce or eliminate risk wherever possible, but instead I like when the risk is pleasant.

The garden is a nice grind. You grind, and then test your (something) by paying to climb the mountain. You test your theory, your mettle, your skill...

QuoteA game is "Dead" when it has no human designers. What I mean by this is that the game is, largely, 'designed' by non-human forces of desire for profit, and desire for scale. In a Deadgame, the human game designer a proxy for capitalism's demons to accumulate money.

link

What does this mean? Why is desiring profit, scale, and accumulating money seen as a non-human force? These are things that people like, that people are driving. Capitalism is a machine made of people. It's a game. What forces are 'human' and why?

(Deeper questions about appealing to humanity without stating what that means. Similar to appeals to nature, appeals to morality, appeals to goodness.)

In eating and having sex, the human is a proxy for their body's demons to consume food and reproduce. This is pleasurable, just like making money and becoming more powerful is pleasurable. Are these seen as non-human forces?

"Enrich the lives and humanity of those who play it"

Yeah. Save the world. But how do we do it? I want practical advice about how to do this; even hypothetical theory would be great. It's not that I'm incapable of thinking about it myself, but most of the discourse regarding Deadgames and Alivegames is: oh, yes, good, my aspirations are validated!!!

Why are so many mental and emotional resources thrown into the hole of validating obviously positive goals?

QuoteA game is "Dead" when it has no human designers. What I mean by this is that the game is, largely, 'designed' by non-human forces of desire for profit, and desire for scale. In a Deadgame, the human game designer a proxy for capitalism's demons to accumulate money.

link

Strangely, the idea that I have of Deadplay is most strongly connected to something I wrote not even in response to the Deadgames/Alivegames piece, but this one in response to Daniel Cook's tweet thread (click the 'Quote from' link for context):

QuoteAll art forms involve mastery and knowledge.

All artists become blind to issues new appreciators will face.

The issue is with the context in which games audiences appreciate games, not inherent to the form of games.

If a game is 'dead' when it has no human designers -- when it was created as a result of no human desires -- then perhaps any activity is 'dead' when it does not refer to other human actors, or their humanity. To call something a Deadgame is a judgement of the drives of its creators and players as inhuman; to accuse something of being a Deadgame is to be a Deadplayer yourself in the game of life.

I think it's an interesting point, but what is a human force? The Deadgames and Alivegames article doesn't really cover the topic of what someone might want to make a game about. I recognize that this covers a great deal of territory, but I want more talk about techniques in context of how to make games about humans. This is the closest it gets, and all it's saying is "don't make these games."

QuoteAn Alivegame is a game whose purpose is something to enrich the lives and humanity of those who play it. It can be as simple as a 1-hour game made for a friend's birthday. It is a game that respects the complex layered history of humanity and refuses to create characters or narratives that boil them down into easily-digestable (and figurine/merch-izable) build-your-own-trauma-chipotle-bowls where a character's complexity neatly and mathematically maps from whatever unfortunate events happened to them.

link

Daniel Cook's Game design patterns for building friendships is interesting.

Is it what I'm looking for?

Though I cannot put forth a logical argument as to why it is helpful for me to have a place to organize my thoughts (especially publicly), I do have a track record of needing such an outlet.

- twitter
- i started some private discord servers (2 active, 1 semi-active)
- letterclub.games📨
- physical notebooks (i've thrown away so many physical notebooks)
- physical zine: 'droqen was here' (for friends and patrons (link removed))
- digital notebook on tablet (Noteshelf 2)
- devlogs on discord servers
- devlogs on forums
- mailing list
- nice long conversational walks with friends and acquaintances
- many blog posts across many blogs over the years

Some of these have been more successful for my brain than others. I think a forum might be an extremely helpful outlet. Why? I answer that question here.

Look, straight up, I just love forums. I grew up on the TIGSource Forums and also there was a secret forum that had a very special place in my heart (though it is now ded). Other forums exist, but a lot of them have tags and a weird new feed-like look. I am not here for that. I just want an old-fashioned forum like I'm used to, with posts and boards and things like that. I'm old.

Some features that forums have that I love

- Adding things after the fact is simple/intuitive/part of the medium

- Hyperlinking, images, other post customization (compare to most social media, where many things are out of your control)

- I can host it on my own server and access it from any device

- Access can be shared with others easily (with powerful controls for customizing the level and detail of control)

(from sep 19 while i was reading Deadgames and Alivegames; other thoughts from that day start here)

I only really have one thought, but I think it's a very interesting twitter thread to revisit and examine for tools as well as holes, so I may return to it.

Quote

[..] An expert game designer is 20x more effective than a newbie. They are correct 20% of the time instead of 1%. [..]

[..] An expert painter does not produce a completely broken picture 80% of the time. Why is this so hard? [..]

3. Game developers often are corrupted playtesters. Many games involve mastery and knowledge. The designer, due to knowing what they know, becomes blind to issues new players will face. Empathy only goes so far, even when designers roleplay the 'new player'.

link

All art forms involve mastery and knowledge.

All artists become blind to issues new appreciators will face.

The issue is with the context in which games audiences appreciate games, not inherent to the form of games.