[birds] When a bird sings, what does it mean? I should know; I have spent the better part of my life hiding out with birds, behind their flocks, among them, making myself inextricable. Yet... my only claim to understanding birds is weak at best. I know how to make my best guesses about where they will spend the day, and where they will spend the night. I know how the winds carry them from place to place, and how they carry themselves, too.

Best of all, I know how and when to stand perfectly still.

[biggest-beef] I happened upon the writing of a game designer's game designer named biggest_beef at some point. Now my computer serves up his* blog now and then. (*Tonally, I have to assume he's a dude. There are no pronouns listed anywhere and i just have to guess based on vibes. So, beef's a he/him until he tells me otherwise.)

He serves up bits of game design wisdom that aren't wrong, but they come from such a specific place that I can't relate anymore. He writes about randomness like it's one of those lawnmowers you can sit on and ride: a machine with an engine designed to carry from here to there. "Don't leave the engine running," I can just imagine him writing, "unless you're ready for the player to steal the keys." This would, of course, be a genius piece of clickbait for a too-mechanical dissection of something that could be otherwise beautiful.

The end result of exposure to these blog posts is, in me, a frustrated and misplaced attention to the wrong parts of my work: Have I left the engine running? Will the player steal my keys? What is the sound of one hand clapping? The game designer's kōan places me in the wrong place -- the point is not to have the right answer, but the right question.

However, I do not want to even ask the question that the game designer asks.

I want to slide past the moon and into the stars.

[AB]

- *bigbee
- game design
- boids
- jul 8 until now?
- hmm

does it go the other way? i wrote to someone, once, that games do help me make sense of the world, and i think part of that is a beautiful illusion. some part must be true, though, too. if a videogame allows me to isolate some very small, very abstract part of reality, and gives me a deep understanding of what that part is, in itself, as isolated from everything else...

do i gain something?

abstractness is capable of, or makes us capable of, seeing things in something closer to their pure and timeless form without the distraction of mere coincidental connections du jour.

this is not some unambiguous good, but it is something i love, whatever consequences may come.

the final sentence of the epilogue of dreyfus & kelly's all things shining is: "all things are not shining, but all the shining things are."

i have made it through to the other side.

so who started it all?
surely not me
nor J, or E,
nor S (whether 1 or 11)

the road that we took
took us all
all the same
the same way
way before
before heaven

or — as I said once —
heaven (2).

there M, and M (2), and M (3) too
— and M (4) (but we don't talk anymore) —
were all shiny and too faced
the mirror along
with W, X, and U.

G and — what's-his-letter — and S and K (3)
followed K — that's K (1) — in the first place
then all that remained was to follow after A
and before i knew Z it was that time of day

it was D & K who showed me the way
though B raised the curtain
and F clambered through
oh and i couldn't have done it without K (2)'s map
or — i could've but i wouldn't have
known to.

me attempt to describe to zeigfreid via discord (10:50PM)

Quotei'm working on boids game
there's a thing that seemed very obvious to add to the core game of playing boids
i'll just call that Game B
at the time i added it, it was subsidiary to Game A, call it an A-strengthening transformation
i was working on the whole thing and poking and tweaking things and then i was like, oh,  OH,  Game B is its own center, i can't only be thinking about Game A all the time
i need to make Game B stronger too. stronger in itself, but also... Game A needs to change, so that it strengthens Game B in turn
this mental shift was huge

- boids avoider core game
- space navigator metagame, from a latent center
- at this point the structure serves the core game
- but i have just had the realization that this fit must go the other way too:
- how can the core game, the original center, be moulded to fit and serve the structure?
- as well, how can the structure become a stronger center itself?
- the subservient center must come into its own
- with my help.

[AB]

"I'm going to describe a room to you. I'm not going to show it to you, I'm just going to describe it to you."

"[Based on just the] description I'd be like ... I hate it! That's so hideous! But now let's look at this image. This is one of the most beautiful inspo images I've seen online recently."

"My point is ... when you're relaying a vision to something, know that other people can't see the vision; if someone explained this vision to me I'd be like, 'try again!' but this is so stunningly beautiful ... whether you're designing a space or you're trying to broadcast the dream business that you want to start ... it is so hard for anyone who's not living in your head to be able to see your vision the same way you do. They're not in your head, they can't see the vision."

[9:23 - 11:26]

[AB]