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.

My understanding is more about systems than games, but an understanding of games will be able to emerge from it.

Notation fully unfolded, a system can be understood as a set of states and connections.

A system is a graph of nodes and edges.

All other theoretical models of games are simplifications of this full system-graph view. Koster's "Any atom that involves risk must always have a failure state link" is a statement of simplification. This notation erases all states that do not contribute to a structure of choice-making and risk-taking, and therefore encodes an implicit definition of what a game "is."

In Koster's proposed notation, movement around a safe screen in a platformer is not an atom. As a result it cannot actually capture what games are. The notation excludes significant detail from consideration.


The map is never the territory, but we must remember to regard it as a map. The "Why?" slide fails to address the simplifying effect and presents this notation as territory.

I believe that I have in mind the abstract concept of the whole territory.

It was the immediate next two slides at which I stopped dead. They read as follows:

QuoteCost of failure

Syntactically, atoms must
always have a failure state
link, even if said failure is
only an opportunity cost.

QuoteWhy?

Any atom that involves risk must have
at least a binary result.

   This is why we do not consider
   moving a checker piece without a
   capture or a setup to be an atom.

   I've notated these using red arrows
   rather than blue.