"Rain World itself has a huuuge play element . . ." // What is 'play'? (boghog)

[droqen]

In the comments of his Mental Backlog & Metroidvanias, boghog says something that bugs me. I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

[AB]

[droqen]

. . . SOTN/the DS Castlevanias . . . clog up your mental backlog with an endlessly expanding and changing checklist of small, effortless tasks. . . . this is handled by the player, with no note systems . . . completing one task instantly creates sub-tasks, . . . it taps into your hoarding instinct . . . irrational compulsive behaviour. . . masks the lackluster nature of what it is you're actually doing.

In contrast, Rain World is really pure and immediate. . . . Your mental pipes are clean, stress is immediate, and it's remarkably easy to stop playing if you need a break.

. . . when playing CV, . . . I can feel the compulsion . . . Truly lab rat type of stuff.

the play [in Metroidvanias] is the wonder of exploring this big physical space . . . finding new things that can help you. . . seeing if there's clever ways you can avoid those things . . . [and] tiny untracked things

. . . how many of your total exploration time do these moments take up, 3%, maybe 5%? It feels like looking for crumbs of play & fun. I mean hell, Rain World itself has a huuuge play element once you get comfortable with its enemies and it doesn't need this sorta mental checklist design at all to achieve it.

[droqen]

I think I better understand what boghog is saying after breaking this down into pull-quotes for my reading comprehension. At the time, I was struck by the lack of clarity regarding the 'play element' depicted in this video.

Now that I understand a bit better, I don't think it matters to me a whole lot. Boghog likes games with a high replayability element, and a broad set of 'immediate' skills. I don't really care either way; I don't play many games, and the kind of 'play' that boghog
indicates and enjoys is not 'my' kind of play... mastery of a system. Hm.

[droqen]

Here we have mastery/knowledge over two distinct domains.

Azure (@AzureLazuline) describes a broad domain of things scattered around a world. The Knowledge of where things are and what they do.

Boghog (@boghog) describes a broad domain of actions available to a player but also to some degree things scattered around the world. Scavenger tolls are a little different than where to find a specific item, but still... they aren't everywhere.

To be honest I don't really see a very meaningful distinction at all. Hmm.

[droqen]

I place this well outside my area of interest. I don't care very much about the execution of these skills. I get a feeling of satisfaction from expressing mastery, of course, but this is a shallow, short-lived positive emotion. It's nice, that's all. Both commenters speak of the pleasure of having knowledge and exercising it.

[droqen]

I've been thinking about writing a funny response to my own letterclub letter. What do we want to get points for? explores something I've been struggling with for years, and I want to write one called something like "Points without points," or for long, "Having a point without getting points," or something. I don't know, I want it to have wordplay but that might be altogether unnecessarily and confusingly too clever.

(having a point without getting a point? idk)

Anyway, the real pleasure is not in the points. They help to communicate something, and receiving that impulse to follow them is part of the meaning, but it is not, cannot, be the meaning itself. Points aren't real. Points are just there as another vehicle for communication and guidance -- towards what the point is or might be. They're part of something.

Maybe I believe in game poems after all.

In Wdwwtgpf I wrote,

I want to feel the feeling of being connected to the center of the earth, now and then. I want to want to do something, it doesn't matter what yet, I just want to know that the thing that I'm doing is the most important thing in the world right now, and when I finally fall out of the sky and remember to notice the rest of the world, I don't want to think I was lost in some empty fabrication. I want to feel like there was some sort of connection:

that when i was lost i was lost in a beautiful piece of reality.

[droqen]

I don't really believe that anymore. Chasing that feeling has lead me down so many blind alleys, dead ends.

I want to transcend points. I want to move beyond the measurable into the realm of the immeasurable, into the realm of that which can only be felt and been[sic].