being a child, now, i enjoyed being a child, to some extent, but i also was frustrated. i wanted to understand everything. i wanted things to make sense. imagine if i were to bring to life a wish fulfilment fantasy as a child: i would make a videogame. i would make a videogame out of rules. i would make a videogame that shows you, look, look, look at all these silly little pieces. aren't you interested in them? aren't you interested in how they work?

and then i would figure out how they all work and i would smile, i would smile and clap and make the little toy engine go and i would be pleased at having figured out a toy system not understanding that the value of a toy system is to help me understand a real system, and not the fuegorika of having learned something meaningless.

not that.

when i played the waking knot, i felt like a stupid child being lead through my first math class. solving problems. one plus one equals two. three plus eight equals? yes that's right, carry the one, it's eleven! so good! only, cryptic, and while as a child i did not understand that math might someday be useful, here i think there are overtones of that desire for childhood's simplicity. you don't understand why this Higher Being is teaching and guiding you, so you follow along, having faith.

only, in this case, the Higher Being is a fictive creature. text on a screen. at the end of the day learning to play Yet Another Broughlike does not bring you to any truth, it drags you deeper into a hole. there i was, at the bottom of the hole, wondering.

i have had this experience enough. i did not like school very much.

The Waking Knot (demo) on Steam

My advance apologies to Stan and Bill.

More than ever this reflects on my own distance from games rather than being any judgement upon this game's creators.

i must better measure money and attention. what are the forms of money? what are the forms of attention?

easy, effortless, obvious. do not reinvent, do not create from scratch. what has already been created for me? what is already there, undefended? (unsatisfied, perhaps.) do not fight on distracting ground. wait until you have the advantage... find a place where you already have the advantage.

where do i have an advantage?

1. look for weak points. not where things are busy, popular, well-defended. look for the quiet places.

2. do not destroy. take whole. i must reflect further on this. take whole.

and what place has the war against boring art among the various facets of this problem?

i will return to read the art of war with this in mind:

- i have no clear enemy, opponent, or ground. i am able to choose the ground of battle.
- victory is measured in a quantity of external value assigned to haiku games, measurable in mass attention, measurable in money.
- the presumed target is the games industry, is gamers, is the social corner containing games, but it is not the only target, nor is it the necessary target.
- the necessary target is people, of some sort. people.
- victory is measured in value placed not upon the act or process of creating haiku games, but of something external to the haiku game, something regarding the produced artifact.
- i am able to choose ground of battle.
- i am ready & willing to produce the necessary ground.
- i will find the ground.

edit:: here is an interesting twist on the wartime perspective. what if i presume that value is zero-sum? where do i want to go to steal such a thing? where can i go to wage battle, where i can be certain of victory, and be certain that my victory is virtuous?

i am ready to find value for haiku games anywhere i can.
on steam. in old people's homes. on the street. in the valley.
online. offline.
but as i continually recognize, it is a chicken and egg problem...
as long as haiku games are loosely defined, i cannot perceive their inherent value.
and, as long as that value-giving context is loosely defined, i cannot place haiku games within such context.

which comes first?

the features of a haiku which i presently regard as crucial:

• composed in one sitting, by an individual.
• about noticing experiencing something real in the world. (haiku were written about nature, senryu about human nature. these are 'real' things. haiku are not written about haiku, or about other art forms. another description of this feature might say "haiku are not meta.")
• requires no special equipment or knowledge to appreciate or transmit.
• the tools are available.

i do not think that all of these things belong to the true nature of a game. a single game of tic-tac-toe does not teach you how to play, it does not necessarily give you a satisfying experience... it exists within a context.

this is the goal of this thread: a value-giving, life-giving, context for haiku games (which, themselves, are not perfectly well-defined -- which is a problem, but one i hope to tackle here while solving the problem of context).

a major problem with 10mg is that each of the games found it necessary in some sense to stand on its own. each of them was one steam game. people did try to engage with the mass of games, but each one was responsible for almost all of the other things that a game is expected to do, e.g. have an individual identity, teach you how to play, give you a satisfying experience.

when i was part of 10mg wombat shared his intentions publicly. he said in the interview linked: "10mg is a psyop. The goal is not to make money, or to immediately convince people that short, experimental games are worthwhile. It would be great if that happened, but 10mg is primarily about shifting the overton window of the game length discussion."

i think that in some sense i have adopted his mission. if anyone has been psyop'd, it's me.

my god, is it nfts? surely not

"inhabiting someone else's unique artistic vision." i want that. it's rare for me to play a game that draws me in that way these days. how many experiences have i had that creak under the weight of their ssssystems? hm. i will read a bit of game poems again.

something that comes to mind for me, in the meantime, is the question of what is the nature of the container which holds games in it? i have been making websites... websites... these remind me of flash portals, once home to good small games. suppose i am tired of games bearing the brunt of having to support smaller things within them. what would it look like for a larger structure to support the smaller games within it? what is that structure? is it a website?

if there is a format that can buoy a hundred haiku games, let me make that form, whether it is a mainstream videogame, or a website, or a publication, or a patreon, or anything else. this is the battle. i'll start a new thread for this...

emotion, vision. why still life games, why haiku games? right, because this is war.