after reading All Our Hidden Gifts, i have a kind of contact with the idea of magic. not the 'real' thing, just how it feels to believe.

anarchy... i know that i am not politically-minded. i am not interested, so much, in the reality of an anarchist society (although i have done and will continue to do my best to learn some things). what i am interested in is the value structure, the feeling.

The Dispossessed painted the most distinct picture of life on its anarchist moon world, Anarres. i was sad for a time after, in its absence--not the absence of its fantasy-world, but the absence of its value structure, the absence of something born of belief.

of magic.

i just finished watching The Fall (2006/2024), and there's a scene where Roy says to Alexandria,

"The story was just a trick to get you to do something for me."

and she (a 5-year old ESL Romanian girl whom he has been tricking and for whom his tricking has lead to actual serious bodily harm) replies,

"But I need the story."
"I still want to know."

the feelings bound up in this scene are insane.

Quote from: takunomiI shone a light on every detail in order to understand why such and such is done, and tried removing or changing all of it.

yes... this is something i am contending with a lot now actually: something can be intentional even if we can't give a reason for it. sometimes, analysis can be very destructive. i call for more intention. (and more blood.) but i think it's incredibly important to also be explicit that i don't mean things that you can defend verbally, for instance. or even explain to yourself.

Quote from: takunomiI suggest the ma and noise of gameplay . . . The negative space of gameplay. . . . What you do, but aren't supposed to do. . . . The otherplay. . . . it's unintuitive to me to design with otherplay in mind, but that's where the real playfulness exists. . . not delightfully surprising the designer with the toys they gave you, but having fun with the nails they forgot to remove from the carefully constructed playground.

oh, takunomi! we're so close! there are a few statements that you make that i want to counter, then i'm going to try and wrap up.

Quote from: takunomiThe game that you DON'T play.

i think that the grammar here is sort of muddled and am assuming takunomi means something like, otherplay is what happens when you don't play the game? the game that isn't the game, that you DO play?

Quote from: takunomiit's unintuitive to me to design with otherplay in mind

i don't know if you should, or even can. this is the weirdest part. i really think that my ideal is to stop thinking about the player experience completely, and especially stop designing for it. if the goal is otherplay, if the goal is to see your players "having fun with the nails [you] forgot to remove", then the only reasonable thing to do is to not seek to give the players any toys at all, don't construct a playground.

construct something else. construct something interactive but incredibly loose. not a playground, not a toy, just a thing. make an apartment building and let the player explore it. build a doghouse, a ladder, a boardwalk. don't make a game. just make something that can be touched.

Quote from: takunomifilm production is hard to control and what ends up on the screen is what the creators managed to do and were allowed to do, but not necessarily what they wanted to do.

reasonable, but, it is ultimately still something that they accepted. in the case of what appears on screen in a game, and what is part of a player's experience, the creators do not get to pass final judgement on that. it's very different.

Quote from: takunomiSecond, the ma that Miyazaki describes, is (I think) . . . also the many moments that a director can't account for and the moments that build the world, but not the story. This is noise too. . . . And it's the "suggestion" aspect of wabi aesthetics. If I may prod Droqen, this is where gameplay exists in sequential media like books and cinema.

hmmmm. i'm having some trouble following at this point. there are a lot of different bits going on.

- the moments that a director can't account for

- the moments that build the world, but not the story

- ma

- the "suggestion" aspect of wabi aesthetics

- gameplay

i think that takunomi is proposing that all of these separate concepts are related but i am especially having trouble with the first two! the moments that a director can't account for and the moments that build the world... there's something interesting there, i suppose i am presently interpreting takunomi's perspective as story or plot-centric -- perceiving non-story world details as
- outside of the director's control
- inherently the negative space, emptiness
- necessarily "suggested"

re: gameplay, we're about to get into a lot of "gameplay" so i'll get back to it in a sec.

Quote from: takunomiI definitely see the idea of play being deeper if certain aspects are only hinted at. In paintings, this idea might be presence of a landscape where you only paint the clouds behind a mountain. In play, having controls that are hard to grasp, work against the player, or are only accessible through experimentation might relate to this.

hmm. this is very crucial; what takunomi describe is the absolute opposite of what i would take "suggestion" to mean. see my "a HAIKU games manifesto," especially "a haiku game's complex parts are all fake."

controls that are hard to grasp are not the equivalent of the presence of "a landscape where you only paint the clouds behind a mountain"; the difference is that the landscape invokes the imagination and nothing else. you may imagine a landscape behind those clouds, and that is where it ends.

by comparison, if the controls are hard to grasp, or especially if they are "only accessible through experimentation", it demands some imagination but it also demands something else -- experimentation is some part imagination, and another part killing imagination to replace it with reality.

i am interested in parts of play that are only accessible through imagination. this is huge. i want to talk to takunomi about this.

what is the "noise" in Death Stranding, according to takunomi?

Quote from: takunomi. . . the slightly cumbersome controls
. . . the clumsy way your character behaves
. . . the off-putting dialogue and acting
. . . the wild juxtapositions between serious moments and childish silliness

takunomi also refers to this as "negative space"?
in any case, if i am judging correctly, then takunomi may be pointing out that these four items have the appearance of unintentionality, which is quite surprising to me, but i think aligns very well with takunomi's first path - it involves removing the appearance of unintentionality from The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit, 'fixing' surface level issues.

ah ha, i get it now.

at this point i don't understand the Miyazaki quote's relationship to this, however.

alright, let me interpret this differently: perhaps takunomi is suggesting that i may be misreading signal as noise. when takunomi writes  "It has so much noise, but I dare say the noise is there by design"  perhaps this means that there is stuff in Death Stranding which i and others may perceive as noise (i.e. unintentional), but which is in fact intentional.

this is possible. moving forward i'll refer to this sort of noise as "the appearance of unintentionality" and this will refer to both:
- actual unintentionality which also appears, truthfully, unintentional
- intentional choices which may or may not be made to appear unintentional, but which are in the end incorrectly 'read' as unintentional

yes, i think a clearer definition of what i was talking about would have been clearer - i use words pretty loosely and terribly, haha.

Quote from: takunomiConsider a game like Death Stranding. . . . It has so much noise, but I dare say the noise is there by design.

this seems to be the opposite of what i want to say about "noise"... i should compare it to my literal text, though. i wonder what i was even saying, back then.

Quote from: droqen, on 'noise'. . . in a session of a videogame i am able to experience so many moments other than the one i am after. how much of [this is] intentional? desirable? . . .

. . . it is not only moments other than what i am after, i also receive moments other than what the designer was after . . . this noise is troubling to me, as someone who wants to think about the work. . . .

. . . the presence of noise, i understand. even wading through noise is not the worst. but it is the volume of noise over signal that makes me question . . . who am i hearing speak?

no!!! i think i was actually pretty clear. i think takunomi is going in a somewhat different direction than what i am talking about, actually.

ma. emptiness. noise.
alright, we're getting deeper into the territory of takunomi's read on noise and emptiness.

Quote from: Hayao MiyazakiIt's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally.

Quote from: takunomiThe Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit . . . is finished, yet has issues. Such is the nature of computer programs.

Quote from: takunomiWhen I consider what kind of sequence I could make, I see two paths . . .

1.

Quote from: takunomiI could . . . give [players] an even better experience of what they enjoyed before, and really convey what I wanted the first time. Less noise, a clearer vision.

2.

Quote from: takunomi. . . I could switch it all up. . . . a completely different kind of game. . . . The original noise was special and interesting, so . . . I can't repeat that. It would be stale and pointless.

Something I find interesting is the way that takunomi has interpreted noise and its solution; takunomi's vision of removing noise is a "prettier, snappier" game, "with fewer moments of frustration," one that's "smoother", "more interesting", "more clever", and "easier to understand".

almost none of this is what i would regard as "noise" which i'll here clarify to mean "unrelated to artistic intent or vision." rather, takunomi's first 'path' mostly describes a work which has more appeal, rather than one which removes things unrelated to artistic intent or vision.

adding generic appeal
- prettier
- snappier
- smoother interaction
- more interesting
- more clever story
- easier to understand UI

removing things unrelated to vision
- fewer moments of frustration

~~~

at least, this is how i see it. takunomi may not be happy with the style that The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit was able to execute on, but here the details don't seem to me to indicate an actual sense that the game has that much "noise" to remove.

then, the second path essentially involves pursuing a completely different artistic vision.

i talked with my partner about what i said here, in this quote, and figured out that i am essentially saying that in games there is a lot of stuff going on that is unrelated to artistic intent, artistic vision. and i'm frustrated by that both as a maker and as a player. all this stuff makes 'playing games' a poor choice of activity if what i'm interested in is conveying or receiving artistic intent/vision.

dear takunomi,

first i'll note that a clearer definition of noise, for me, is "things that are not related to artistic intent." there is another definition that i think you are using in some cases, which is more like "the appearance of not being related to artistic intent." it's been pointed out to me in the past that i'm interested in "the aesthetic of intentionality." ultimately, i don't think that that's true (i.e. it's not the aesthetic that i'm interested in -- rather, it is the truth of it), but such an aesthetic is a good entry-level way to indicate that such intent exists.

i believe that you might still be conflating the two. in your first proposed path, you suggest that making the game "prettier" with "more interesting" and "more clever" mechanics and narrative might be a way to remove "noise". for the first definition ("unintentional elements"), this is not at all a viable solution. but for the second ("lacking the aesthetic of intentionality"), it might appear to be. as already mentioned, i personally think the second definition is ultimately not important, although it may be a useful stepping stone towards removing "unintentional elements", whether or not they appear intentional.

your idea of "otherplay" is interesting; to me what is important is not designing with it in mind. this may seem kind of counterintuitive, and it might not even be truthful. it's hard for me to say. this is very much at the heart of kill gameplay for me. especially when you say "not delightfully surprising the designer with the toys they gave you," i feel a strong resonance. but then, my proposed solution is: don't give the player toys at all. computers and people are capable of a great many things. what if we lean on all those things, and think about how to allow these pre-existing abilities to shine through our interactive works?

i'm not sure if that makes sense. i'm still figuring it out.

rough notes below. you may find those more interesting than this summary/letter, but read whatever piques your interest.

love, droqen.

when i open my eyes or close my eyes
i see the orb you see too red
i see a shining sphere perfection incarnate
i see blood and you watch the knife
turning, turning, turning in my hands
"oh," i say, "i've forgotten
i was holding this." stained red
you watch the knife.

maple trees and ruby concrete and scarlet mayors arguing red
setters and bay coats and roan horses and bad hdmi cables and red
noise and prince edward's bright clay and overripe red
mangos and my least favourite socks and blood red

the orb.
more than the knife the orb
is all i ever wanted, is all my dreams, is red.
who cares who i cut as long as the orb
is red.

when i hold the blade of gameplay's knife the orb
realized itself in the world just like they say
in PlayStation advertisements of yore:
"play in ours."
ours, and ours. i turn the knife.

when i hold the handle of gameplay's knife the orb
emerges without screen, without mouse, without eyes the orb
is there as i saw it, a red thing, dripping
wet.