when i open up a book to read it -- on my phone or in my hands -- there is often the choice to linger, or go backwards. taking a step forward is an action, and it feels purposeful. am i in the right mindset to proceed? i like the feeling of a book's volume, its bulk in my hands, past and present and future.

it takes some doing to recognize that truth of reading a book. it did for me, anyway--so used to travelling one from beginning to end in an uninterrupted stream.

oh no

i do not like the word 'conclusion', i don't have a better way to describe it, though. it isn't the moment of conclusion which matters specifically, but rather the quality of a work's coverage over some domain. 'replayability', as in, unboundedness regarding the nature of experiencing the work (in games 'replayability' as a positive: positive unboundedness), has some negative impact on the quality of such coverage.

whether the coverage is desirable or undesirable will not be addressed here.

it's really frightening, closing a window for good! i speak of endings.

specifically it would be the thing to say that "endings are hard", as in, hard to write, hard to design, whatever it is. but an ending is really just closing a window. most of the time, you must have an ending. i enjoy a narratively open-ended conclusion like three billboards outside ebbing, missouri or the claymore anime: but these still have endings. structurally, the work is over.

my experience with many games is that they do not present endings, or they do not do so with confidence? or maybe i haven't historically paid them enough serious attention? when i played fallout 3 i thought i would come back to it, but i tried and it did not happen. what i mean to indicate is nothing about fallout 3, but it is more about the experience of holding in one's mind the potential for replay, or replayability.

i can summarize this into some sort of concrete claim.

the concept of 'replayability' acts in opposition to the sensation of 'conclusion', both to the player and to the artist. as a result... it undermines both the supply and the demand of well-made conclusions.

replayability is quite a vague concept, but i would like to allow it to remain vague and broad, for now.

the window closed.

i'm writing this because these tiny windows are at once giving me a sense of dissatisfaction. i'm not a completionist but i am a perfectionist. i know very intimately a completionist so i have seen what that is like, and i think i've started to see the echoes of each in the other one. i closed the back cover on magic for liars, catching a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the author's life, a photograph, inside thank-yous meant for other people and not for me, inaccessible. "hologram love behind glass."

there are works that do not feel this way. maximalist works that paint vast, ugly worlds, in so much detail that by the time i am done with them i am done with them, exhausted. oversaturated. jason shiga's demon was this way for me. i am already over-oversaturated with one piece and it is not even complete. one of my favourite games, FJORDS, was so voluminous. i can scarcely imagine returning to its vast body as i did the first time. when i have tried, there are too many little levels, too many permutations. it's noisier than i remember and not in a way that enriches my memories.

there are the rare strange perfect works that deliver a perfectly sized thing.
corrypt.

i wonder, does this really matter? surely this is just serendipity, that leaves me without wanting more. i don't know.

i just finished reading magic for liars. this is the day after i played spikes & kitten, the evening after i listened to the 'secret lives of games' episode on the annual ghost town pumpkin festival. magic for liars is a novel that tells a story. it paints a world, a vast world, through a too-tiny window, through the perspective of a person. but the person themselves is also not whole: ivy gamble's life is painted through a yet-tinier window of plot.

does that make sense? there's something that feels, not incomplete, but also not whole, about magic for liars. spikes & kitten feels not-whole because i know i haven't completed it--it's too hard, i see how it's theoretically possible but i don't want to spend the time, the effort, to see into those last few corners. i can imagine what's in them. white paint. then there are the corners literally unseen but which i've felt, physically, enough to know their contours.

the annual ghost town pumpkin festival is out of reach. a digital festival, an event planned and held and gone. i heard a description of it, a hazy memory.

tiny windows.

i think i was already aware of all of these but it's still interesting to see them laid out in one place.
a lot of them are not exactly about structure, but what even is structure?
there are some games that i haven't returned to even though i want to dig deeper, like eliza.
why have i not completed eliza, but i've gotten through scarlet hollow? and consume me?

i think with eliza i have a feeling that nothing i do really matters--and i also can't fast forward through it like i could with a book? i mean, a videogame just doesn't, as an artifact, fit as comfortably into my life as a book does. i love a good book. it passes from one device to the next. i can get one from the library and hold it in my hands, return it, then get a different copy completely and pick right back up where i left off.

the last big linear videogame i tried playing was persona 4. in that game i lost my save file... oh no... i'm still holding on to that bad feeling :( losing a save file suuuucks.

losing a save file sucks. i've got to think a little bit more about how much of my unwillingness to engage with longer linear works comes from not wanting to lose a save file.

there are some structural requirements. i can tell this already. this isn't about "what makes a bad game", it's more like, "what makes a game something i don't want to work on or have made?"

- i don't play games with high system requirements
- i exclusively use a tablet or touchpad, so fps games are mostly out, unless i can control them with keyboard (see next)
- i don't have a controller, i always play with keyboard
- i don't develop for consoles, i almost never play indie games on consoles, that's pretty symmetrical
- developing for phones is really annoying, because of the storefronts.
- developing for web is totally fine. i like to play web games.
- most downloadable games i don't even play? hmm this one is interesting, it's probably why i keep trying to figure out a web platform for all my games... downloadable games are a pain in the butt because of all the different system requirements. web is a really nice home, i just don't think the games are really allowed to stand on their own there, whereas an executable downloadable has a distinct separate feel to it...
- i play some downloadable games. mac makes it annoying.
- i don't trust web games with save files; that is, i rarely return to a web game and expect it to have anything saved
- i don't make accounts for singular games for the most part (not that these are often requested) well, actually, i would. it's just not very common.

hmm.