Contains spoilers.

1st Read: What happened? What was that all about? It was so confusing.

Reflection: The ending... was it fictional or did it really happen?

Later, I was thinking about how a work of art is just a wrapper of devotion around elements of meaning, to give those expressed meaning more gravitas. (e.g. If the author spent so much effort to deliver this message, then it must be more important than it seemed upon first glance?)

I thought of a game which tells you upfront its meaning, then says it again at the end, the same message but with that new context of gravitas the second time. "I already told you this but now look at it again, you thought it wasn't important but now you do."

Then I thought back to the ending of Goodbye, Eri. The first explosion in DEAD EXPLOSION MOTHER seemed like a joke, like an error, like something silly, something to grow out of and fix.

The second explosion said, no, it was perfect.

Virtual paradise in the hands of the machine
When I make a videogame it is a world imprisoned in computers
In some way, Apple's frustrating policy of deleting old projects is in touch with reality, is honest:
Digital universes are ephemeral, kept alive only as long as they can float in an ocean of living circuits.

The custody of such an ocean has become a humanity-wide project,
Something which we created and which now burdens us,
Creates work for people,
Gives us purpose.

Videogames are this artificial purpose made into art.

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

Note: contains spoilers for this short story, as well as for a pair of films from 2013 and 2016.

Set upon a background of blinding cyan, we can read 30 translations of Matsuo Basho's Frog Haiku. Each translation is necessarily imperfect and incomplete, and carries a little of the translator in it.

Borges' short story is reminiscent of a pair of films* which are about the non-use of time travel: not time travel as a tool for overcoming, but as a lens for the appreciation of life; with the power to change things, what if we left them exactly as they are?

I really enjoyed this one, the surreal take on reinterpretation of a work, as well as this line...

Quote[This] technique, requiring infinite patience and concentration, encourages us to [..] read Mme. Henri Bachelier's Le jardin du Centaure as though it were written by Mme. Henri Bachelier. This technique fills the calmest books with adventure.

It's an absurd curiosity to imagine reading a book as though it were written by a different author, but considering making the attempt is enough to unlock a new way of thinking. What if we applied that new way of thinking to the way things actually are? Partake of a work of art as though it were created by the person who in fact created it, but with the same mental consideration as if that were an equally absurd act to imagining it were created by some other person. (Or persons and/or process(es).)

What could we learn?

The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

I've been reading Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones.

A pay-to-win game rewards money spent.
A good book rewards time spent, as well as reading comprehension.
A masocore videogame rewards time spent struggling through failure, rewards learning strange new skills.
A sewing machine enables people to sew things faster and with greater precision than they could have previously; this is a reward given for time spent learning proficiency with this machine.
A deep fighting game.
A co-operative board game.
A language.
A relationship.

Videogames do not have to be sterile sanctuaries, but I have practiced the lusory attitude as if their magic circle is a pristine space unsullied by reality. As I think about and study the art form further, and experience other elements of life at the same time, I think that this attitude has at its core a fundamental conflict: life always goes on.

For a time, I dreamt of MMORPGs which afforded all players equal access, as opposed to demanding devotion (whether expressed financially or in time played). I explored games without win-states (Playables) in order to escape this idea that a game might gate access depending on its players' devotion.

But all games are pay to win; the only difference is what currency they value.

The Lusory attitude involves "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles".

An attitude towards game design can take an immaculate stance, which overlaps with certain philosophical stances -- that a game and its players should not overstep certain bounds (see, for example, the negativity inherent to the terms pay to win and unbalanced), and that a person should aim to have no [negative] impact on the world around them.

I'm not there yet, but playing around with real-world art forms -- fashion in this case? cooking? etc -- has been slowly opening the gate. Is it still a game if we play with things that are important? Is it still play? I think the most important lusory attitude is to play with whatever material comprises our lives, and I think the life well-lived is comprised of only things that matter, that are real.

When I turn off my shower, the shower-mode toggle (a little metal plunger thing) either stays lifted up (in shower mode), or drops down (reverting to faucet mode). I wanted to make sure that every time I turned off my shower, I left the toggle down. Since sometimes the toggle was already down, I didn't have to do anything, so I didn't do anything -- meaning the habit never took root. I tried making a habit of looking at the toggle each time I turned off the shower, but it wasn't enough.

I have no problem with turning off the shower; I do that by habit. So why not this?

My solution was to build a stronger habit: Lifting the toggle up, and then down. This has so far been successful. So what are the requirements for a habit which can be built? It's subjective, of course, but...

• A habit takes the form IF X, THEN Y.
• Both the trigger "X" and the action "Y" must be discrete (i.e. non-ambiguous) and tangible (i.e. have strong sensory evidence).

Anyway, this is definitely a game design pattern. I think any kind of pattern regarding human activity is a game design pattern.

When I was going to do my driver's test, I told my dad I was nervous. He asked, was I nervous because I might fail, and have to go through all this again? (E.g. driving to the testing facility.)

I said no, I was nervous because I thought I might let the pressure get to me and not enjoy the process.


I have to remind myself to feel this way, to fear only a failure to perceive the beauty of the moment, to fear only lack of presentness.

Explicit, inexplicit, and unconscious ideas.

I think David makes an error here though.

QuoteAs soon as you are instructing your legs to move in one direction rather than another [..] as soon as you've deliberated and caused your legs to do one thing rather than another, you have an explicit theory.

Lulie: You can do deliberation by intuition.

Okay, well, at the very least it's very close to the borderline of explicit, because if someone asks you, what have you decided to do, you'll say "I've decided to turn round."

Because earlier (close to the beginning of the video, starting at 1:25) he says...

Quoteinexplicit ideas [..] can't be expressed in language like, for example, when you're playing tennis and the ball is heading towards you and you're thinking "oh, it's going to go out now, no it isn't, I'd better run for it," that kind of thing. The words "it's going to go out now" do not appear anywhere in your mind while you're doing that, and yet, it is knowledge that you're creating. You're creating a theory about where the ball's going to strike.

Perhaps this is just a bad-ish example, because I do understand what he's talking about. I'm just not so sure about the legs thing being particularly more explicit than the tennis thing. If the turning around thing is borderline explicit, the tennis thing seems like a bad example of what an inexplicit idea is (though it may be a good example of what a borderline explicit inexplicit ideas is).