recently i posted this image on bluesky (you will have to click here to see it) and i have found myself looking back at it, because it also just so happens to be sitting on my computer desktop for some reason. the blue gears on the yellow background, that strange headstone-like shape, it entices me, it feels like the calm quiet ocean for which my "shut up, xnfps" brain yearns.

when i read the r/infp posts i thought, what self-absorbed pricks!

when i read the r/enfp posts i thought, what needy annoying babies!

that's me. they're both me, right? i'm a self-absorbed needy annoying baby. i think it's well and good to be a self-absorbed needy annoying baby now and then. i also like it when the people in my life allow themselves to be their strange bad selves. it's honesty, it's beautiful, it makes room for real acceptance. but who else am i? not just that.

i thought, i like to make people happy.

i also like to make people have other kinds of reactions but my favourite is when people are happy. that's life. moving through a series of... emotions... that old terrible definition of games, to say that games are a series of interesting decisions... interesting decisions but to what end?

when you make a decision, it marries prediction with action. we feel good when we predict well. and we feel good when we take action. we see the world, we change the world.

emotion. a life well-lived is comprised of a rich banquet of emotional experiences. the ones we like, the ones we don't. suppose that i like to make people happy, but i also believe that richness is important. all play and no work makes jack a dull boy. then, what?

i like having a loose grip on reality. i like these happy little accidents that occur. i like not taking too much responsibility over others. taken together, i feel like i could come back to you, creating you, handing you off to a player. you will be unkind to the players, and we will make them happy together. i'd like to make something like that.

it's well past midnight, but anyway, this is about a memory of something that happened today (the 17th) and not today (the 18th). i have the strangest feeling that i want to remember. i was reading a couple of subreddits -- r/enfp and r/infp -- and i was getting kind of annoyed at both of them! when i read the subreddit that correponds to my partner i feel a lot of love and familiarity. but at both of these i felt an overwhelming sense of irritation. contempt, even.

who am i if i can't accept myself? what, after all, is "kill gameplay"? i have been playing angeline era and while i feel that ancient contempt i also think it's kind of nice to settle in to a screen and shoot some bugs. there is some room for one thing -- what is it, that noisy self-expression -- and that other, mindless thing. i don't have names for any of this, of course.

i forget the word that goes with "ludonarrative" at the moment but i'll say ludonarrative juxtaposition. it isn't that the people on these subreddits being themselves and sharing their thoughts are expressing a "narrative", but i became a little irate at something about this overwhelming flood of what i can only call expression. expression of emotions. expression of opinions. expression of desires. it all became too much and i thought what would i like to fill this void?

there must be some beauty in this world.

gosh, i didn't even get into Cath's other post, but maybe that's okay. i replied on bluesky and Cath has yet to respond (it hasn't been very long and it's 3AM for me, so, i don't expect one). i'll take a beat and see if any more interesting stuff comes of that conversation.

what so irks me about the state of game design is this persistent mental model--and i don't mean to single out Cath, but these two articles are so straightforward that it is easy for me to use them to get a handle on it (thank you Cath)--of human activity as essentially understandable and solvable. human psychology as a straightforward vessel. people as machines.

Quote. . . the process of designing a game consists of a sort of back and forth where you try out new ideas and mechanics which will more often than not fail to satisfy your expectations, but which will also provide you with an opportunity to better understand the question you're trying to answer. I propose that what distinguishes good game design from bad is being conscious and intentional about the problem you are looking to solve. There is no infallible recipe for success, but if you ignore the problem that motivates your work, your game will almost assuredly end up feeling lacking or arbitrary.

what is Cath interested in?

QuoteWe can start by exploring other rituals, like the ritual of making coffee in the morning. That ritual is typically short and easy to carry out once you have enough experience.

the ritual is easy, Cath speaks of experience
gaining a skill

QuoteReturning to game design, the question then is: how much strategic choice can we allow before we start damaging the sense of familiarity and flow we want to achieve?

Cath discusses "the sense of familiarity and flow" and ascribes such desire to "we"--i can only suppose that the 'we' is 'game designers', specifically those who remain fascinated by my enemy, who shall remain nameless (i remind myself)

QuoteThe system is designed so that fighting is fun and frictionless, while shops provide an opportunity for strategic choice, novelty, and self expression.

fun, frictionless-ness, novelty.
strategic choice, self-expression.

QuoteThe designer always has in mind, either consciously or unconsciously, a specific problem they would like to explore.

Diego Cath's Starting Point

Quote[The] concept of a game that can be integrated in one's life and played every day is highly interesting to me. . . think about the characteristics such a game must have. . . . [Followed by: a detailed account of the act of game design.]

I am convinced that all game design follows a pattern similar to what I just described. The designer always has in mind, either consciously or unconsciously, a specific problem they would like to explore. . . .

So then, what problem are you currently exploring?

the actual examples given in Cath's article will become crucial quite soon, but i would like to frame them first as belonging to the species of thought that i first identified in "2025, dec 5 - a new year's resolution." i don't yet have a name for it, but the quick way to describe it is a particular interest in...

ah, but i don't even have a name for it. i could say, an interest in the way people act, or think, or behave, or the way people model the world, or the way that something tends to move through someone's mind, but the truth is that i haven't identified it except by the singular word "gameplay." it's frustrating, but i hope to, eventually, someday, some fucking day, arrive at a more concrete answer. i made The End of Gameplay because i hoped it would help me give the mindset some shape, but i feel, still, so impossibly far off. how are people compelled and driven? how do people solve problems? how do people settle things? there is an interest in the psychic haze which surrounds decision-making paired with a matching dis-interest in actual decisions.

liz ryerson once described game design as the closest thing to practical psychology (i forget if this was the exact term, 'practical psychology'? it doesn't sound right). yet, there's something else, something about the magic circle. what did she say, was it experimental psychology? liz, if you're reading this, help me out here

anyway, the reason i bring that up is because there's something particularly un-practical, and purely theoretical, about the whole affair to me. it seems so strange to realize that i have surrounded myself with an art form so interested in what people do, which is yet so distant from what people "really" do. when i see that distance i feel a familiar cutting urge.

i have digressed much too far. i will return to Cath's article in my next post.

i have been engaged in a few conversations with Diego Cath and while i don't think our interests are aligned, in breaking down Cath's two medium posts i am beginning to understand something that is inaccessible to me: why others do things. and maybe why i do things. but before i get to that... the posts.

how does the simple introduction of 'interactivity' or play derail the basic idea of existing in a world where things of importance occur? every videogame is trapped within that 'magic circle'. i keep returning to this 'navigable structure'... when the experience is nonlinear, and its shape changes in response to player action, then the experience is less "designed", less authored. this introduces a lower skill ceiling to the artist's capacity to affect the experience. for some this is not antithetical to a role that games play in their lives.

they are of course wrong but also legitimate

a navigable structure. how to construct a work such that it can contain all of

• free navigation (like a painting, book, or gallery)
• a sensation of events having weight, and
• the player's personal involvement?

if choices are positioned in space and the player can step away from a choice to make it later. there are some choices that don't work that way. but i don't (personally) feel the need for narrative or plot-based pressure in the thematic structures i want to weave. that's a device that i can take or leave.