the literal space that one navigates in gameplay (forever) -- the material of the 'level' -- is randomly generated, with very minimal designer intervention.

an example of the 'designer intervention' i speak of can be seen in these four lines of code:

if rows > 10:
    if randf() < 0.02: randomtile = 35 # poison
if rows > 50:
    if randf() < 0.08: randomtile = 35 # poison

the 'poison' tiles (which have various 'negative' effects -- the player loses control briefly, the music glitches out, and the player's score number goes down) do not appear uniformly across the entire level, but do not appear in the first 10 rows, then only appear in 2% of tiles in rows 10-50, then in 8% of tiles in all rows 51 and onward. all these particular numbers have been designed, and it could be imagined that a 'more designed' version of gameplay (forever) would contain more such interventions.

as a design process, this relatively undesigned level is a test for the quality of the bunny controller: if gameplay (forever) contains all possible level spaces with no design whatsoever, and the bunny controller can be used to enjoyably navigate this undesigned space, then the bunny controller is well-designed.

in theory, if gameplay (forever) was not fun, this process would lead to changing the bunny, rather than changing the level: thus the level will remain permanently 'badly designed' by design.

on the other hand, it may make no sense to even speak of the design of gameplay (forever) without speaking of the design of the bunny controller.

dot does comment on the player controls -- mostly negatively or neutrally -- so in that sense it may make sense to extend his judgement to the bunny controller: claim #1 would follow in this case ("gameplay (forever) is badly designed [because i don't like the controls]"), but not claim #2 ("gameplay forever is badly designed on purpose [because i'm not supposed to like the controls]").

but this is getting too speculative and i still have three claims to talk about!

however, if gameplay (forever) is undesigned on purpose (see #3 above), then if what dot means by "badly designed" is "undesigned", then the following claims do follow:

dot's claim (#1): gameplay (forever) is badly designed
dot's claim (#2): gameplay (forever) is badly designed on purpose

in designing the end of gameplay, the role of gameplay (forever) cannot be understated: if i can enjoy its gameplay (forever) given endless undesigned variation, then as a level designer i have freedom to "design" any shape that i desire, and know its gameplay will be enjoyable.

there were other things going on in my life, of course, but i'll stop my digressions there.

what if concern over 'games' and 'play' and 'gameplay' as words was no longer useful? i considered the idea of doing pleasant tasks via a computer game. a volunteer job. when it gets right down to it, i like to do things. it's nice to happen upon an occasion in my life when i get to solve a small math problem.

it was at this point in the timeline (of reality) that i really began thinking about what dot had said about gameplay (forever). this level's presence in the end of gameplay reflects a common element of my platformer character controller design practice --

in order to properly know whether a character controller is 'good', i.e. satisfying to me, one of the first things i will often do is place the character in a single screen where blocks are placed randomly at runtime. usually the ratio is something like 25% blocks to 75% empty tiles. if i'm feeling fancy, i'll add a floor so that i don't fall out of the bottom of the world.

dot's claim (#3): there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what blocks appear where in gameplay (forever)

here is the code that generates block placement in gameplay (forever); lines 113-123 from file stages/13GameplayForever/^sliding_maze.gd:

var randomtile : int = 11
if randf() < 0.02: randomtile = 25 # frut
if abs(x-xhole) > 1:
    if randf() < 0.30:
        randomtile = 90 # WALL
    else:
        if rows > 10:
            if randf() < 0.02: randomtile = 35 # poison
        if rows > 50:
            if randf() < 0.08: randomtile = 35 # poison
maze.set_cell_tid(Vector2i(x,0),randomtile)

so, there is a definite process by which blocks are placed, and this process has a very long history, but each individual block has not been placed manually by a person, nor by any sophisticated algorithm with any human-like intention (for example, there is no code that noticeably emphasizes some particular shape over another -- say, flat wide platforms). to dot, this may be a negative and he expresses a potential consequence of such rhymelessness and reasonlessness.

i have already made and released a game that uses a similar generator, and though i'm not sure if i've written about it, my absolute favourite part of "playing" Probability 0 (or in other words "starting a run and attempting to survive and descend") is interacting with a very similar (but slightly more sophisticated) "blocks placed randomly" space, via the platformer mechanical constraints: velocity, acceleration, collision, and fall damage.

weaving the avatar through such a landscape involves recognizing and navigating countless patterns to no end: forever.

in very rough terms, the impossible reversal explores four "types of play" and concludes by arguing that videogames are often moving in between all of these types of play (or moving the player, or enabling/inviting the player to move, between all these types of play -- whatever, i'm not concerned at the moment about the provenance or ownership of play), blending them together in such a way that it's difficult to see this complex interplay of modalities. modalities! that's a good word, too; modalities of play. anyway, it's quite a moment. as a collection of these concepts and a peek into the past the book is incredible, but in retrospect the conclusion is a very rare harmonious moment in these kinds of conceptual non-fictions; while there's no clean conclusion that wraps everything up, to see mcdonald show in the space of only a couple pages Inscryption dancing between all of these vast concepts is quite a moment, reminiscent of the lovely remix levels in the Rhythm Tengoku (Rhythm Heaven) games.

so i was partway through the impossible reversal and, quite serendipitously, the fourth modality -- Oblique Repetition -- came to me at the exact moment that i was already dwelling on golumbia's proposal that "what we do when we use [computer and video games]" is work.

then i read golumbia's essay, games without play (on JSTOR)

here are a few of the passages that i found most impactful:

Quote[..] we have simply and in some cases uncritically accepted the views that all video and computer games are games and that what we do when we use them is to play. [..] The commonplace view that either narratology or ludology will be the right method for analyzing computer games turns out to be based on the unexamined assumption that the phenomena in question are stories or games to begin with. [..] To understand whether one can play video games, we need to consider [..]

questioning "whether one can play video games" was huge to me -- the question asks not only what if 'play' is not "what we do" with videogames, but what if it is actually not even possible to do? what if it is categorically not possible to 'play' video games?

QuoteThe path of use of an FPS has virtually no play in Derrida's sense; rather, the player submits to the issuance of orders and then follows them as precisely and efficiently as possible. The player only controls variables like the rate at which he or she fires a weapon or the choice of weapon itself.

then golumbia goes on to describe some details, i liked this one^

QuoteWhat separates WoW or Half Life from the worker's business world is thus not variability or "give" but rational certainty, the discreteness of goals, the general sense that such goals are well-bounded, easily attainable, and satisfying to achieve, even if the only true outcome of such attainment is the deferred pursuit of additional goals of a similar kind. [..] It seems hard on any account to call this sort of activity "play" and even less to understand why it is proper to see it as a "game."

and finally points out similarities between these things and work. he goes on and makes a number of comparisons like this, likening computer games to work and/or training. i wasn't completely satisfied but i had something to chew on. then i returned to my favourite book in recent times...

before i get to actually addressing those questions, though, how did i get here from kill gameplay? last thing i knew i was still holding the knife. well... dot's video was full of comments, and a lot of them (like a lot of them) were about sudoku. in a clip from dot's video, a couple people from the audience are cited as saying these two things:

Quote from: Audience member 1[25:57-]. . . we've always had things like sudoku or crosswords; stuff to keep your brain active. So I think when you're designing games, you kind of have to decide: am I making a game to express or relate . . . [Sudoku] is just to keep you active.[-26:15]

Quote from: Audience member 2[26:31-][Sudoku] makes you feel smarter[-26:32]

if you watch the video, i'm interrupting and reacting to these comments!
there are a number of comments on dot's video that talk about sudoku:

Quote. . . the mere mention of sudoku derails the talk - because it's existence and the fact that millions play it daily indicates that this just isn't an issue. (comment)

QuoteWhen the audience member brings up sudoku and how it doesn't express anything, Droqen is upset by that. Based on this, it seems as if he believes a game is not meaningful unless it expresses something, and therefore a game must be less meaningful if it spends less time expressing things and more time with mechanics. (comment)

Quotelosing one's mind over the concept of someone playing sudoku is ridiculously funny to me. every day after lunch, my dad plays sudoku. he sometimes replays old ones from months ago to see if his time got better. part of the goal is to retain mental acuity, sure, but he also just enjoys it. (comment)

etc.

something i've never done is make a sudoku puzzle myself, so i thought i would give it a try.

in part, my motive was to kind of show through demonstration that i don't have a lack of understanding of what sudoku is and how it can be fun and expressive - and through doing so i realized that i hadn't bumped up against a lot of these problems in practice in a while. i'll talk more about this at a later date, but i wanted to make sudoku according to both the constraints of 'good puzzle design' and certain idiosyncratic creative whims, and i re-discovered this:

making something the way you want to make it, while also following additional constraints, is harder.

doing one thing for no reason is sort of easy for me, but doing two things at the same time for no reason is harder, and the temptation to fold on one or the other is pretty strong, knowing that i could easily be done if only i had not defined the challenge so stringently.

i also did a few sudoku puzzles, copying them out of books i found at the bookstore. one i even completed on my first try! i don't think i need to do more, though.

in the above quotes, dot is making a large number of claims directly about gameplay (forever), and i thought: maybe i have something to say to all of this? here are six separate claims that i feel can be addressed in some interesting way:

• gameplay (forever) is badly designed
• gameplay (forever) is badly designed on purpose
• there [is] no rhyme or reason to what blocks appear where in gameplay (forever)
• gameplay (forever) generates impossible situations to climb through
• gameplay (forever) is one of a number of "lackluster parodies of better games"
• gameplay (forever) is asking why anyone would bother with it

the event that happened to motivate me recently was reflecting upon certain obviously (to me) incorrect assumptions/conclusions in this youtube video by "i am a dot." about my game the end of gameplay: "I Played the Game That Hates Gameplay and I Have Thoughts"

Quote from: i am a dot.[22:32-]In the case of "gameplay (forever)", this endless tower is badly designed. It's bad on purpose, but it's still bad. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what blocks appear where, which leads to impossible situations to climb through. Also, the controls are weird, and floaty.[-22:47]

this claim of dot's is part of a larger theme in his video -- he observes that many of the levels are, or appear, impossible, and concludes all these seemingly impossible levels comprise a kind of rhetorical expression of futility: why would you play, if there is no reward?

this particular level or sub-game or poem within the end of gameplay ("gameplay (forever)") seemed, to me, to be a particularly interesting site for making a counter-claim.

dot summarizes his observations about a series of levels, including "gameplay (forever)", as follows:

Quote from: i am a dot.[23:06-]The End of Gameplay gives the audience lackluster parodies of better games and asks why anyone would bother with them.[-23:12]