2026-01-17 a quantifiable goal for games

[droqen]

i'd like to make a game that is experienced in its entirety without great cost to the player, and that  which, when so experienced, provokes a large variety of different reactions

i am not sure yet the scope or limits of this desire - may these "reactions" be planned and designed? what constitutes "great cost"?

but, i do understand "experienced in its entirety". the systemic unfolding of my well known earlier game was a dream of the mysterious la-mulana that did not require exhaustive play to comprehend more or less fully.

i did not go far enough but there was something there.

the quantifiable goal means that i am approaching the ability to employ contemporary testing techniques on a work. i can measure its success on my terms. i can do science.

[droqen]

experienced in its entirety

the player must come to hold the entire state space in their head through accurate abstractions. this, as an end goal, is not well-defined, or if it is then it is impossible. that's alright. i have long since redefined my understanding of many end goals as their direction rather than a terminal point.

to say "a game that is experienced in its entirety without great cost to the player" and to define such as i have above is to describe a desirable process of developing better and better abstractions of a state space, in particular in a way that has the sensation of getting more and more complete. rather than the universe which expands and gets further and further away from us, these universes stay the same size, and shrink as we take these bites of knowledge from them. they get smaller and smaller like a cookie until even if a few crumbs remain we are not so wrong to summarize that experience as "i ate the cookie."

games are cookies

[droqen]

you don't want to get to the end and perceive the boundaries of a work of art but you must. art is finite. insufficient. it is very important that art remains insufficient.