;from your king's eye issues forth a green chevron-tipped vector, an arrow, a direction. it points toward that beautiful star that only you can see.

The function of this meta-activity is to act as practice. You are droqen, and you need to hone the focusing lens that resides within your own brain. How can you do that? The focus ritual.

the path branches and branches, multiplying. in the real world these paths are not pruned, but go on and on into the darkness forever without limit. endless endless roads sprawl (through a yellow wood or a white void or a grey e

what is necessary is a pruning device.

such a device is, becomes, terribly bespoke and overfitted. but the key is to achieve an understanding of these devices: to learn the skills of pruning device deployment, and development.

x

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.