What Lies Beyond The End of Gameplay? Or: A Letter to a Developer

[droqen]

[20:47-] "I don't want this to come across as me doing self-promotion, but I don't know how to talk about my own relationship to my own art without sounding like a shill." [-20:59]

ah, shill, not shill, it's all the same to me, david! what i get from this isn't that you're a shill, but it doesn't matter how much i tell you that -- i think you're holding on to a self-judgement; you think you're shilling, and this is probably the overthinking about stupid shit (i'm loosely paraphrasing your words to throw them back at you for effect, not calling your shit stupid!) you were talking about earlier. i hope you can let it go, someday. i think you know why you're talking about your work. represent that and don't worry about misunderstandings. you can just clear them up as they come.

there's also, i think, a self-judgement in there -- what is a shill, anyway? i think you have a hangup about the idea of sharing or representing your own work as important or valuable -- of  being proud of it. the fear of being seen as a shill, or that your work might be seen as pretentious (though you didn't make this connection, i'm suggesting it now), is preventing  you from being comfortably proud of what you make.

[droqen]

Giles' inspirations.

Giles' habits, interpersonal and emotional.

Topics and projects, "The characters [in my book] are still in some way me. . . . the worst parts of myself being amplified." [-22:29]

". . . [Grieve Tiger, a game idea I have, is] just me processing grief from a pet cat . . ." [-23:04]

Giles' history with game dev, other history, family.

[droqen]

[23:45-] "I think taking in good art helps me make better art."

"I've always classified my art as some form of obstruct art. . . . this belief that I should put things to block the viewer from immediately getting what I'm doing."

"I don't want the consumer to get anything from my art without them putting in any of the effort themselves."

sounds exactly like how you've described certain interpersonal habits, too! you're sharing -- this is your experience, your life, your choices. "It's certainly given me exactly what you'd expect, no fans." what about the interpersonal habits? is there a pattern? "Still, I found myself drawn to this idea for as long as I've been a pretentious asshole." lol

"visual form of poems" -> "poems in Starseed Pilgrim"

[droqen]

Giles' poem. "I'd like you just to sit with it before I give my explanation."

and sit with it i did.

[droqen]

if you just sink a little lower, someone might sell all you've had.

[droqen]

[26:14-] "I guess I ask, what do you think it's about? What meaning, what emotion, what, like, what do you get from the poem? I know this is a lot to ask, sorry." [-26:24]

i could try to tell you what i think or what i thought, but it is, or was, formless. i don't think it would  survive the transition from my mind to the page. when i tried back then, i could only use the one word "longing".

i noticed that you are concerned with how you're received -- as an artist, focusing on terms like "good art" and pretentiousness -- and your response in some cases is to try and take control of such reception: asking me to sit with your poem and reply in a certain way... testing and pre-judging your own relationships with people... is my describing how i responded to or interpreted your poem a kind of test of our relationship? of your art?

when i noticed this impulse within myself, i tried to get a handle on it, i made newforum.droqen.com to let the hell go of notions of control and observation. i don't know who reads this, i don't know when or where they do so.

even now, haha! as i make passing observations about you (sorry), perhaps i am doing so to avoid admitting how i feel. should i share how i feel? i think i feel as though i couldn't experience your poem on my terms, and a lot of what you've said about 'obstruct art' is very close to the impulse that i feel in myself that i wanted to shut down.

i think i talk about this idea in this video from 32:00 onward, in a furious rant stoked by Liz Ryerson, haha. but especially "this belief that I should put things to block the viewer from immediately getting what I'm doing. . . . I don't want the consumer to get anything from my art without them putting in any of the effort themselves" strikes me as the role of gameplay in some games, though obviously this hostility is possible in any art form, in any circle of life.

in myself, observing your way of existing in the world, i feel inspired to strip away even more of this defensiveness in myself, to unblock. to ease effort. it feels counterproductive to what i want...

[droqen]

"the audience can never fully know you or your intentions and we only can go off what is in the text." [-28:32]

this is what makes death of the author so tempting, but that doesn't make it true. death of the author excludes something real about the work, it is a diminishing lens - one which might be wielded with purpose, but reflects the whole truth less.

[28:42-] "Have you ever written a  about a specific thing only to have another event happen in your life that recontextualizes the poem into a completely new meaning for yourself? That, in some way, is a part of death of the author that you are doing to yourself."

HAHA. I LOVE THIS.
i already left a comment on Giles' video to this effect.
"death of the author" as in a metaphorical acceptance that i am no longer who i was.

but i don't vibe with some of the ideas here about canon. i already regard myself as constantly dying, being replaced. i have such a loose grasp on who i was that i've long accepted that i won't even be myself as soon as tomorrow.

"You have chosen to disregard . . . killing . . . your own past established canonical interpretation."

regarding death of the author in this context, i think there is a considerable grey space between the author's perspective as canonically correct, and the author's perspective as realistically true.

i have never been a defender of canon! i haven't read enough about what death of the author truly represents; i like freedom. if death of the author suggests we may look at a work without considering the author's opinion, that's fine. but if it suggests that we ought to or must ignore the author's opinion, i.e. the historical context of the work itself, i think that's wrong - it's reality-rejecting.

[droqen]

"I get it completely. Nothing hurts more than having someone like art you care about the wrong way." [-29:20]

it may go without saying at this point that i don't relate ;)

but, i should say that i relate in a different way? i don't hate it. i sympathize for your hating of it, and it makes sense with my earlier observation. what happened to me with Starseed Pilgrim is that i actually absorbed what other people liked about my art, displacing my own delicate intentions -- what i enjoyed about making it, what i thought about while i made it. 'death of the author' indeed.

if i had hated people for enjoying my work in a different way than what i thought or knew was 'good' about it, then i'd be in a very different place now. as it stands, it took me a long time to dig myself back out of other people's perspectives in order to find my own again.

i still don't hate it! it's an honour.

[droqen]

bleed bleed bleed

[droqen]

parting thought on GOOD ART.

dear david, i'm curious about what good art even means, to you! is this is a subjective good or an objective good? actually, looking back, you even started your video with it!

one thing that you said clearly about good art was "I think taking in good art helps me make better art", and this made me wonder whether you think it's an objective thing, that there is good art, and there is bad art, and that your ability to extract value from good art is a reflection of your skill as a person.

i would define it the other way round, where any art that inspires you to do what you do -- for example, "helps you make better art" -- is good art. but this places it squarely in the realm of the subjective!

it's for this reason that i don't think of making good/better art much, or when i do catch myself, i try to define it and tear it down from that pure place of Quality. if good art is what people take away from it, then it's not my responsibility. i just have to make the art that i like making, and make it accessible enough for the right people to experience it.

who are those people?

scary question.

[droqen]

Hmm. I did 't mean to write a letter in here. These notes are meant to be for recording, making sense of my thoughts & ezperiences. I should keep that in mind, next time.