cultist simulator shows the individual following your trail. as a player you can observe the system at work: even if it were inevitable, the sense of dread is too tangible to provoke even a smidge of genuine paranoia.

uplink's invisible pursuit, you don't even know it's happening until it's too late. the paranoia comes all at once, activating every shred of doubt that you swept under the carpet.

that stuck with me.

the eye watches.

at some point i sought to lose my sense of paranoia, which i felt most keenly in one awful moment while playing uplink.

so you're a scrappy little hacker, right? and you're hacking away, slowly improving your rig--it's like an idle game, almost. incremental.

thought 1. uplink and the eye

thought 2. i really need to re-read Ugly Feelings

get weapon / i don't know what you're talking about

get gameplay's knife / which one?

get gameplay's knife from the corpse / which one?

get gameplay's knife from the still dead corpse / you take gameplay's knife from the still dead corpse / it was dead when the knife went in and dead it remains / it flashes red and illuminates the hilts of each other weapon / you hold the knife / you are the killer / you are the dead.


you got gameplay's knife!

i am not you, now, but i could have been, could still be.

astronaut

superpositions

- states, variables, values,

- models, understandings,

- motivations, desires

- many paths interwoven

- literal paths

- imagined paths

- unreal paths nonetheless experienced

- is a game all of these paths?

- no but yes

- consider the weapon's design: a retina scan, a fuel injector

- which weaponmaker takes responsibility? we are all part of the world

- many paths interwoven

- a branching structure

- this, that

- making it interesting by adding something to all states regardless of their place in the structure: an act of escape, an act of ignoring. why do this?

- making it anything by adding something without utilizing the structure

- flattening the structure, flatgames, kinetic novels

- a branching structure, a non-branching structure

- where the structure could branch but doesn't

- where the structure couldn't branch but does

- choices (artistic)

- choices

There remains a discriminatory element which separates a game from a system. I have not discovered this discriminator.

For future readers, by "states" I do not mean computer-states. Systems may themselves be mere descriptions, models. The game of tag defines a system within reality. Its system involves some parts of reality and some fabricated/abstract/imaginary parts (Juul's Half-Real may be relevant reading on this). In the case of tag, a 'real part' included in the system by necessity is the position of the players, and an 'imaginary part' is the designation of the tagger ("it").

I do not suggest that the state-space has perfectly hard edges. See:

On February 4, Llaura Orrealis blote thus:

Quote. . . cosmic rays are a rule. every game has them. somethings they hit a bit and flip it.

link to bleet

However, the idea of a defined set of states remains useful. Any system is a defined set of states (and connections, but I consider these connections to be endemic to the states - more on that later, but some parts of The Nature of Order (Christopher Alexander) may be clarifying); definitions are themselves prone to dissolution and shifting. I cannot think of any real system with hard edges, and yet despite the hazy edges I can still think about a system's specific, well-defined shape.