UPDATE: it was the next day (still august 2) and i was cleaning the kitchen while listening to jack crawford's video, '10 Games to Play If You Have No Idea What I'm Talking About'.

jack is describing the mechanical differences between Ghosts 'n Goblins and LURRUNA, and at timestamp 15:49, says, of LURRUNA:

Quote from: Jack Crawford[15:49-] You're just a little bit too powerful.

prior this statement (and after it), the things that he's saying are a lot more factual, mechanical, what have you.

Quote from: Jack Crawford[15:54-] The two action games in my mind that are great examples of limiting your movement, limiting what you can do, slowing you down, things like that, so that you're forced to play more predictively, rather than reactively. You're forced to think ahead, right, you're forced to anticipate things, and understand how the enemies work, more than just, like, react to them. [-16:16]

this felt related to the brlka breakdown above. there's a whirlwind of terms along the MDA spectrum being thrown around here, and i think a few of these terms, lost in the whirlwind, cause certain design discourses to become difficult to have in a way that is not necessary.

"too powerful", "play more predictively, rather than reactively"

something about these words is very slippery...

my interest is not in pointless criticism of semantics, but to explore different ways of communicating and thinking about playable systems in ways that might yield valuable results. earlier in the stream jack is also describing having trouble with perfectionism and seeing how small projects turn out and being dissatisfied with them and starting over... perhaps part of this (common) problem is that the creative field of 'game' design is not well constructed on any foundation?

(no conclusion.)

i would really like to think about "the entire possibility space throughout the entire game at once".

i theorize that part of the enjoyment of computer games is dancing with the impossibility of such complexity, and the moments in which one feels that a total understanding is even remotely within reach.

in The Impossible Reversal (mcdonald), the titular concept is related: there is a kind of play or pleasure that requires reversal of a seeming impossibility. first, something must seem impossible, and then one discovers its possibility. such a sensation cannot ever be realized without, first, the sensation of impossibility.

it is common for game designers to rely on qualia-based shorthands when referring to player experience, which is devastating to many of the concrete features that mcdonald proposes as key to what design is

(that is, if we agree that design is, or benefits from, or involves "A shared set of practices or techniques", then qualia-based shorthands like "X threatens the player" weakens design by weakening the sharedness of these practices or techniques because what it means for "X to threaten" varies from individual to individual in a way that categorically cannot be bridged in certain ways)

and, it is common for game designers to rely on player experience (either real experiences - i.e. from playtesting - or imagined/constructed experiences - from intuition) to navigate "the entire possibility space" of a game system. as jw puts it, "that's 4d/5d brain shit I can't do".

despite my response on bluesky in which i said "that's how i think about it yeah"... i relate.

QuoteI guess the way you can look at gameplay objectively is like the entire possibility space throughout the entire game at once or something? to me that's 4d/5d brain shit I can't do

from Jan Willem Nijman's bleet

QuoteDesign includes:

• A shared set of practices and techniques
• A public discourse about its values, goals, innovations, and limits
• A canon of existing examples and counterexamples
• A worldview that differentiates design from other kinds of activities
• A pedagogy that brings new practitioners into the community.

from ROMchip Presents: Peter McDonald on The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play (timestamp 44:59)

a high degree of reliance on qualia
- devastates the foundation of design discourse (todo: link to mcdonald's definition of design)
- is or seems to some degree necessary because of the immense complexity of games (todo: link to conversation with jw)

there is something missing.

when i'm 'playing' gameplay (forever), i am having a complex subjective experience that comes from countless interacting things, both internal and external.

i think that i am writing this thread because i have found that descriptions of aesthetics (in the MDA sense) is not very useful to me as a player, as a designer, as an appreciator, or as an artist.

this is not a new idea.

i believe the philosophical term that is most commonly used to refer to these things that are useless to describe is "qualia".

(end of examination of brlka's post.)