gosh, i didn't even get into Cath's other post, but maybe that's okay. i replied on bluesky and Cath has yet to respond (it hasn't been very long and it's 3AM for me, so, i don't expect one). i'll take a beat and see if any more interesting stuff comes of that conversation.

what so irks me about the state of game design is this persistent mental model--and i don't mean to single out Cath, but these two articles are so straightforward that it is easy for me to use them to get a handle on it (thank you Cath)--of human activity as essentially understandable and solvable. human psychology as a straightforward vessel. people as machines.

Quote. . . the process of designing a game consists of a sort of back and forth where you try out new ideas and mechanics which will more often than not fail to satisfy your expectations, but which will also provide you with an opportunity to better understand the question you're trying to answer. I propose that what distinguishes good game design from bad is being conscious and intentional about the problem you are looking to solve. There is no infallible recipe for success, but if you ignore the problem that motivates your work, your game will almost assuredly end up feeling lacking or arbitrary.

what is Cath interested in?

QuoteWe can start by exploring other rituals, like the ritual of making coffee in the morning. That ritual is typically short and easy to carry out once you have enough experience.

the ritual is easy, Cath speaks of experience
gaining a skill

QuoteReturning to game design, the question then is: how much strategic choice can we allow before we start damaging the sense of familiarity and flow we want to achieve?

Cath discusses "the sense of familiarity and flow" and ascribes such desire to "we"--i can only suppose that the 'we' is 'game designers', specifically those who remain fascinated by my enemy, who shall remain nameless (i remind myself)

QuoteThe system is designed so that fighting is fun and frictionless, while shops provide an opportunity for strategic choice, novelty, and self expression.

fun, frictionless-ness, novelty.
strategic choice, self-expression.

QuoteThe designer always has in mind, either consciously or unconsciously, a specific problem they would like to explore.

Diego Cath's Starting Point

Quote[The] concept of a game that can be integrated in one's life and played every day is highly interesting to me. . . think about the characteristics such a game must have. . . . [Followed by: a detailed account of the act of game design.]

I am convinced that all game design follows a pattern similar to what I just described. The designer always has in mind, either consciously or unconsciously, a specific problem they would like to explore. . . .

So then, what problem are you currently exploring?

the actual examples given in Cath's article will become crucial quite soon, but i would like to frame them first as belonging to the species of thought that i first identified in "2025, dec 5 - a new year's resolution." i don't yet have a name for it, but the quick way to describe it is a particular interest in...

ah, but i don't even have a name for it. i could say, an interest in the way people act, or think, or behave, or the way people model the world, or the way that something tends to move through someone's mind, but the truth is that i haven't identified it except by the singular word "gameplay." it's frustrating, but i hope to, eventually, someday, some fucking day, arrive at a more concrete answer. i made The End of Gameplay because i hoped it would help me give the mindset some shape, but i feel, still, so impossibly far off. how are people compelled and driven? how do people solve problems? how do people settle things? there is an interest in the psychic haze which surrounds decision-making paired with a matching dis-interest in actual decisions.

liz ryerson once described game design as the closest thing to practical psychology (i forget if this was the exact term, 'practical psychology'? it doesn't sound right). yet, there's something else, something about the magic circle. what did she say, was it experimental psychology? liz, if you're reading this, help me out here

anyway, the reason i bring that up is because there's something particularly un-practical, and purely theoretical, about the whole affair to me. it seems so strange to realize that i have surrounded myself with an art form so interested in what people do, which is yet so distant from what people "really" do. when i see that distance i feel a familiar cutting urge.

i have digressed much too far. i will return to Cath's article in my next post.

i have been engaged in a few conversations with Diego Cath and while i don't think our interests are aligned, in breaking down Cath's two medium posts i am beginning to understand something that is inaccessible to me: why others do things. and maybe why i do things. but before i get to that... the posts.

how does the simple introduction of 'interactivity' or play derail the basic idea of existing in a world where things of importance occur? every videogame is trapped within that 'magic circle'. i keep returning to this 'navigable structure'... when the experience is nonlinear, and its shape changes in response to player action, then the experience is less "designed", less authored. this introduces a lower skill ceiling to the artist's capacity to affect the experience. for some this is not antithetical to a role that games play in their lives.

they are of course wrong but also legitimate

a navigable structure. how to construct a work such that it can contain all of

• free navigation (like a painting, book, or gallery)
• a sensation of events having weight, and
• the player's personal involvement?

if choices are positioned in space and the player can step away from a choice to make it later. there are some choices that don't work that way. but i don't (personally) feel the need for narrative or plot-based pressure in the thematic structures i want to weave. that's a device that i can take or leave.

when i open up a book to read it -- on my phone or in my hands -- there is often the choice to linger, or go backwards. taking a step forward is an action, and it feels purposeful. am i in the right mindset to proceed? i like the feeling of a book's volume, its bulk in my hands, past and present and future.

it takes some doing to recognize that truth of reading a book. it did for me, anyway--so used to travelling one from beginning to end in an uninterrupted stream.

oh no

i do not like the word 'conclusion', i don't have a better way to describe it, though. it isn't the moment of conclusion which matters specifically, but rather the quality of a work's coverage over some domain. 'replayability', as in, unboundedness regarding the nature of experiencing the work (in games 'replayability' as a positive: positive unboundedness), has some negative impact on the quality of such coverage.

whether the coverage is desirable or undesirable will not be addressed here.

it's really frightening, closing a window for good! i speak of endings.

specifically it would be the thing to say that "endings are hard", as in, hard to write, hard to design, whatever it is. but an ending is really just closing a window. most of the time, you must have an ending. i enjoy a narratively open-ended conclusion like three billboards outside ebbing, missouri or the claymore anime: but these still have endings. structurally, the work is over.

my experience with many games is that they do not present endings, or they do not do so with confidence? or maybe i haven't historically paid them enough serious attention? when i played fallout 3 i thought i would come back to it, but i tried and it did not happen. what i mean to indicate is nothing about fallout 3, but it is more about the experience of holding in one's mind the potential for replay, or replayability.

i can summarize this into some sort of concrete claim.

the concept of 'replayability' acts in opposition to the sensation of 'conclusion', both to the player and to the artist. as a result... it undermines both the supply and the demand of well-made conclusions.

replayability is quite a vague concept, but i would like to allow it to remain vague and broad, for now.

the window closed.

i'm writing this because these tiny windows are at once giving me a sense of dissatisfaction. i'm not a completionist but i am a perfectionist. i know very intimately a completionist so i have seen what that is like, and i think i've started to see the echoes of each in the other one. i closed the back cover on magic for liars, catching a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the author's life, a photograph, inside thank-yous meant for other people and not for me, inaccessible. "hologram love behind glass."

there are works that do not feel this way. maximalist works that paint vast, ugly worlds, in so much detail that by the time i am done with them i am done with them, exhausted. oversaturated. jason shiga's demon was this way for me. i am already over-oversaturated with one piece and it is not even complete. one of my favourite games, FJORDS, was so voluminous. i can scarcely imagine returning to its vast body as i did the first time. when i have tried, there are too many little levels, too many permutations. it's noisier than i remember and not in a way that enriches my memories.

there are the rare strange perfect works that deliver a perfectly sized thing.
corrypt.

i wonder, does this really matter? surely this is just serendipity, that leaves me without wanting more. i don't know.

i just finished reading magic for liars. this is the day after i played spikes & kitten, the evening after i listened to the 'secret lives of games' episode on the annual ghost town pumpkin festival. magic for liars is a novel that tells a story. it paints a world, a vast world, through a too-tiny window, through the perspective of a person. but the person themselves is also not whole: ivy gamble's life is painted through a yet-tinier window of plot.

does that make sense? there's something that feels, not incomplete, but also not whole, about magic for liars. spikes & kitten feels not-whole because i know i haven't completed it--it's too hard, i see how it's theoretically possible but i don't want to spend the time, the effort, to see into those last few corners. i can imagine what's in them. white paint. then there are the corners literally unseen but which i've felt, physically, enough to know their contours.

the annual ghost town pumpkin festival is out of reach. a digital festival, an event planned and held and gone. i heard a description of it, a hazy memory.

tiny windows.