where will i land? i am so certain i can name fifty indie games.

but it's always sylvie doing something that makes me want to do it lol. sylvie tried: "can i recommend 50 indie games. probably not" and gave up after 10 games: "tapping out at 10 indie games, recommending stuff is too hard. now i'm forced to watch 80% of the game awards or something i forget what the original post said"

i first encountered zaratustra's inclusion of The End of Gameplay in a 50 indie game recommendation that had something to do with the game awards:

Quote from: zaratustraMashina. The Art of Reflection. Endlight. Lingo 2. Pudding: Lyre Knight. Puzzle Depot. FISH FEAR ME. Pocket Boss. HORSES. Blippo+. Mars First Logistics. Starstruck: Hands Of Time. The Trolley Solution. Rise of the Golden Idol. Kaizen: A Factory Story. Depersonalization. Öoo. Isles of Sea And Sky. // Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo. Sol Cesto. Bombe. Strange Jigsaws. Seeking the Guardian. Loophole. Ark's Wonder Dungeon. 4D Golf. PETS. Court of Wanderers. Babushka's Glitch Dungeon. Skin Deep. The End Of Gameplay. Yogurt Commercial 3. The Void Rains Upon Her Heart. The Button Effect. Lab Rat. // Every Draknek & Friends game. ENA: Dream BBQ. Gentoo Rescue. Leap Year. NO-SKIN. Gravity Circuit. Birdigo. Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip. Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity. Prodigal. Cobalt Core. PROXIMATE. Cape Hideous. Grunn. Judero. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers. Arco. Tactical Breach Wizards. // Play more indie games.

Quote from: the bleet zara quotedNew rule this year: If you post "Play more indie games" during the game awards, you are required to make a thread recommending 50 of them.

i loaded the video and didn't listen to it straight away.
then while i was carrying my laptop in an elevator it started auto-playing something that was unexpected to me.
it begins with the phrase quoted at the start of this thread, but all i heard was the voice instructing,
   "We are gonna ask you to listen . . ."
there was someone in the elevator with me (a stranger).
i immediately found the source of the sound and paused the video.
but i wonder, would i have remembered to watch the video had that not occurred?
when i arrived home at last i did watch the music video.
i had to know, why did it start with some kind of instructions rather than the music i expected?

two members of my nuclear family (E and P) came to visit yesterday, and this morning i found a piece of paper on my floor that read in cursive,

Quote from: The piece of paper on the floor2 Tiger
9 Ft Gate
16 ?ust
23 C. Cafe

i sent them a message asking if it was either of theirs--it wasn't. but in our group chat, once we were sure it was none of ours, E said:
"find someone who needs 2 tigers"

i replied:
"and a 9 ft gate"

and... what came to mind was this song by CAKE (although i misremembered the lyrics slightly as "long torso" instead of "long jacket"--it must have been some kind of internet joke meme thing). my brain was attempting to put these two messages together to the tune and rhythm of "i want a girl with a short skirt and a loooooooong jacket":

no.. no!! i'm still awake, let me make some revisions. "bored" doesn't capture it. i'm not interested in it. i'm compelled by gameplay for a short period of time, but quickly enough there is another mental process that catches up to what i'm doing, one that asks, am i... getting anything out of this? am i discovering something interesting? is there a sense of wonder? is there beauty? this process, or these processes, they all look at the gameplay and they go, eh. not really. not really!

beneath the moral valence there is some other process of rejection. or, as i say, possibly multiple processes?

i'm not used to having a process of rejection. it is new. (process in this case as in a psychic daemon, not a conscious procedure.)

technically it is december 9th, now. but, i haven't slept yet. it is still today. that is how i define 'today'. am i still the same person as i was before midnight? yes, because we have not dreamt yet.

something that is still frightening to admit is that a lot of games lose my interest--they bore me. i feel a lot of guilt about this. why should i? but, i do. and my response to that guilt--that guilt that prevents me from saying straightforwardly "i'm bored of this"--has somehow been to bury it under what i have been calling the moral valence. good and evil. how ridiculous! how absurd that i would find it more frightening to say "this is boring" than to say "this is evil." and yet i do. or, at the time when i relied upon the moral valence, i did.

now, having understood the type of response that an argument of morality provokes, having tasted of the harvest of fighting for a moral valence, i think it is clearly worse than saying plainly, "i am not interested." i wonder, did i ever believe that gameplay was evil?

beyond moral valence, what is kill gameplay? gameplay is boring! or to release myself further from objective claims and submerge myself more deeply into my own subjectivity--honestly, how terrifying--



i'm going to bed soon. that's it. no more of this. there are uncounted tomorrows to examine the findings of today. good night.

beyond moral valence, that is, beyond good and evil ((2003)), resides a plain and simple disinterest--a lack of engagement or desire to engage. it does not mean very much to say that there is a negative cost associated with playing games; there is a negative cost associated with doing anything at all! so my arguments along those lines can be thrown right out. of course there is a cost!!!

in this bleet i wrote, "[the initial statement] is straightforwardly and objectively false and all further statements built upon its foundation (either agreeing or disagreeing)  can therefore be instantly discarded . . ."

the important part is that all subsequent responses to a false statement cannot (necessarily) be retro-fitted to apply to reality if the initial statement must be revised. then, a torrent of noise can be quickly reduced to silence. i find this idea to be very peaceful.

i would like to refocus my energies on finding what interests me, what i want in my life. i apologize to myself and to all those who made subsidiary claims based on the idea that the 'cost' of gameplay is so high as to render it killable.

the cost is high. so what? a murder can be a work of art. that is not to say that artistic expression is more important than a human life. by that extreme claim i mean to remind myself that cost and benefit are not opposite sides of a scale.

i can love something and abhor it and recognize both.

the problem, the more interesting problem, is:

what is interesting?

how can i find what is most interesting?

i will pay the cost.

i am willing.

when i was asked what i meant by kill gameplay i eventually defaulted to moral arguments.

i now think that i was wrong to do so. discussions of morality do have a place but in my notebook i can see that i have written, "can a murder be a work of art? // of course it can." the idea of defining and understanding art and what makes it--or anything--have a place in my heart has nothing to do with its morality.

but, it was easier to defend my position that way, than to say what i was really feeling at a deeper level. setting aside the weapon of moral judgement, what's my beef with, as i call it, "gameplay"? i think that answering this question will be very important to me, and the key word will be "interesting."