specifically, michael identifies a few things about his experience developing "roguelikes" as opposed to "abstract art games":

abstract art games : a "shallower" "pond"; "I felt like I was onto something interesting - but I didn't keep finding more to make there that I hadn't already covered"

roguelikes : a "deeper" "pond", these "kept revealing more and more"

i've above professed my personal interest in the former category, rather than the latter; from my perspective, michael's "I felt like I was onto something interesting - but I didn't keep finding more" reads as admission of accepting a lossy defeat, abandoning "interesting" directions in favour of "more." i don't begrudge michael for choosing any particular direction, and if pressed perhaps he would say that neither direction was specifically more 'interesting' than the other, or maybe even that the roguelike direction was the more 'interesting' one.

michael makes some statements about "gameplay" (ostensibly in response to my 'kill gameplay' position) that i don't think can be really defended. the word itself may be accursed nonsense, of course, but:

QuoteTry to take out all the "gameplay" to just have it somehow be pure art, and you've just dug down to whatever your default assumptions of gameplay are. Platformer jumping or first person 3d wandering isn't any less "game mechanics" than grid puzzling or tech trees, it's just that person's comfortable default.

without any qualifying factor, there's nothing that isn't gameplay. if it's a category which has no boundaries, then each statement regarding gameplay is meaningless. one cannot sensibly proclaim that every form of interaction is gameplay and also respond in any meaningful way to kill gameplay.

QuoteCreative expression needs a frame to support it. Droqen [is] still making platformers. [..] These gameplay models provide the structure for the art to happen in. [..] more structure gives more space for expression. Gameplay and "art" aren't in conflict: with more of both they can each support the other.

i could interpret michael's "gameplay" to be essentially synonymous with all the tangible material of all artforms. but if that is the interpretation of gameplay, then this detailed rejection of my so-called death of gameplay is strictly unnecessary; it is wholly subsidiary to a generic rejection of the idea that art can be made without any material whatsoever "to just have it somehow be pure art," and "kill gameplay" must be understood as simultaneously killing inks and paint, canvas, the written word, paper, plastic, steel, clay, papyrus, all forms of fiber, and so on.

i don't think anyone actually thinks this is what i mean, but the apparent contradiction that the end of gameplay "has gameplay" continues to be pointed out.

it's not a contradiction! "gameplay" in "kill gameplay" plainly does not refer to "all forms of material interaction in any game." it never could have, and it never did. i am certain the work contains some number of very serious contradictions, but this is not one of them.

i found myself reading a blog post of michael's for a class i'm attending because i read a quote from it that felt really relevant to me:

QuoteLooking back, I could say that I was trying to fish in two ponds, and one turned out to be much shallower and one much deeper than I was expecting. Having made several abstract art games, I felt like I was onto something interesting - but I didn't keep finding more to make there that I hadn't already covered. Meanwhile the roguelikes kept revealing more and more.

looking back at michael's oeuvre, i've tried to put my finger on exactly what it is that endears me to specifically some of his works (especially corrypt, the sense of connectedness, and specifically the basic language-learning phase of cinco paus -- the absolute least roguelike part of it) over others, and i'm so intrigued here by his direct addressing of the point -- in describing his pursuit of "roguelikes" over "abstract art games," he highlights a dichotomy that helps me to clearly delineate where i've found my preference to be exactly the opposite to what he has lately pursued more of, lately.

at the time, i thought i was reading a quote from a strangely prescient thought from the past -- michael has so many of those -- but then he mentioned me and links to the end of gameplay and i was like, oh! this is a contemporary, post-kill gameplay take! what a pleasant surprise that michael has not ahead-of-the-curve'd me on this one:

QuoteCreative expression needs a frame to support it. Droqen can declare "death of gameplay" but he's still making platformers. Tale of Tales were doing the same ten years earlier. Try to take out all the "gameplay" to just have it somehow be pure art, and you've just dug down to whatever your default assumptions of gameplay are. Platformer jumping or first person 3d wandering isn't any less "game mechanics" than grid puzzling or tech trees, it's just that person's comfortable default. Which is fine! These gameplay models provide the structure for the art to happen in. It's just very not dead. And what I've found for my own work is that more structure gives more space for expression. Gameplay and "art" aren't in conflict: with more of both they can each support the other. If - as always - it's done with taste and sensitivity. Feels like a good direction for me. Other people have to find their own directions sorry.

so, i wanted to think a little bit about my response to what michael has to say about these ponds, and about gameplay, and about some recent thoughts flowering from the fourth type of playfulness tracked in Peter McDonald's The Impossible Reversal, "oblique repetition."

the earth
invisible pathways and demons
circle, you're good with your hands

right,
click and open the frog
forever its organs
adjacent the funk of formaldehyde
living for a few decades longer
in the dying library

in the palace

all systems, bright
a cube with all sides
and every sunbeam warm
and
whatever shines collected
by, i lightly left

the course can stay
if the mood doesn't.

steady, cut a lime wedge
cut out
cut yourself some slack.

while-you-wait
syrup and sunglasses blue
match blue
and for a change feel blue
too, so changed.

and if the course is still red
then set course for red.

nothing has to change for it to follow.

edit :: ah yes, the other important thing
is that everyone is doing this all of the
time. what's meaningful to someone
else isn't unmeaningful to me because
it's unmeaningful. i think this is the mis-
understanding that underlies kill game-
play: it ceased being a useful site of ex-
ploration for me personally. gameplay
(forever) and a way to dance all alone
both served as strong evidence of that
for me.

i must kill gameplay because its essen-
tial function for me is to be devoid of
meaning.

but the larger picture is that gameplay
once meant something to me and i feel
sympathetic vibrations with whom it
still means something.

being near that makes me want to keep
searching. i cannot say that there would
be no point to continuing to search --
that's what makes it a search! i don't
know for sure what i'll find.

but each time i draw from the well of
gameplay i come up wanting. i have a
thousand invisible arms but gameplay's
wells alone number in the trillions if
they are even countable.

kill gameplay.

a simpler way to say what i am trying to
say is that i am holding, returning to, re-
affirming, my belief that others' pursuits
of meaning have little to do with mine--
not because mine is special, but purely
because of some unbridgeable gap that
separates us in our different towers.

"No one ever learns except
through their own activity
and there is, strictly speak-
ing, no such art as teach-
ing, only the art of helping
people to learn."

i am yet to completely resolve these
conflicts in my mind, but at times i do
wish that i could be there with some-
one inside, be the same person, and
help. with this hope my mind produces
a seductive and beautiful illusion that it
is in principle even possible to do such
a thing.

it is not. we live in different towers and
must regard only the stony outsides as
shining.

i must pursue my own meaning.

i left some discord communities, shedding
silken layers. i couldn't explain why at the
time.

wondering, i played gate's SUPER FLUID
HYPER FLOW! and while navigating be-
tween orbs i recognized what it was that i
was doing:

others had achieved their high scores and     (thus, i reasoned)
through such devotion expressed a sense
that the thing had meaning to them, and i
wanted to find that meaning, too, taste it
for myself. my high scores in SHHF! aren't
anything special, they're much lower, and
i thought: maybe there's something here
i'm not yet touching -- reaching -- getting
-- tasting -- meaning if meaning is a verb.

maybe everyone is searching. in any case      (maybe everyone is just searching)
what i came to recognize was this habit of
looking for meaning in the same place that
others had already found it. a reliable kind
of meaning.

the term "self-effacing end" came into my
vocabulary recently, regarding pleasure, &
play. i think it could also describe meaning.
my pursuit fails because i am searching for
meaning based on evidence of meaning,
rather than submitting myself to whatever
sense that is actually capable of sensing
and finding that ephemeral unquality, un-
and ephemeral like beauty.

     A simple videogame structure to
construct: produce, according to some
algorithm or principle, a large state
space; and add or subtract to this space
by means of altering this algorithm or
principle (usually 'code' or 'rules').

when i play a game like this
the effect is quite intoxicating
and likewise making is thrilling
and surprising and frustrating.
as brlka writes,

QuoteI love avoiders because they're easy to
make, but still meaty and engaging to
design and play. They're the closest I've
found to a gamedev equivalent of
sketches - a piece you can bang out in an
afternoon that might end up being one
of your favorite things you've made,
something I've always loved about
making music.

there is an effect that making and playing games that are composed of
this structure has on me, which is that it takes me further away from
intentionality, and i start to lose touch with something that i love about
making things at all.

do i have control over my mind or what it outputs? this is arguable, and
the question may not even be sensible. however, there is a difference in
kind between a process of creating something and a process of coming
to love and appreciate something.

the structureless object that i discover does not reveal to me anything
about my mind or my thought processes. i do not wonder, when i
lose myself in the vertigo of an algorithmically generated structure such
as these, about the mind of a person.

i perhaps have an experience, but i cannot describe this experience as
empathetic or reflective.

i feel a little bit dizzy, and i will rest now -- convalesce from all the
vertigo of gameplay.

i think this was enough. playing gameplay (forever) for hours on end showed me something more.

playing a way to dance all alone for hours (while tweaking, while making) showed me something else.

i should not say "something less," but what, then?

on July 23, i purchased and began Splatoon Raiders, and i think that gameplay (forever)ing was some kind of extension of that, and although i played Splatoon Raiders together with friends i think that a way to dance all alone shows some fullest-extent of where this structure goes. i am a little sleepy, tired, but i will write one more post about structure before going to bed.