The Grasshopper

[droqen]

Regarding Bernard Suits'
"The Grasshopper"

[droqen]

The superior chess player cautions his inferior opponent against a bad move not because he wants his opponent to win but he does not want to win, let's say, too soon.

Hmm. Something about this is rubbing me the wrong way. Doesn't the superior players do this out of a shared appreciation of the game, of the system? "You've missed this, let me help you get to my level." But perhaps at a deeper level the motivation is nonetheless to 'not win too soon?'

[droqen]

Within game playing, the paradoxical twin drives to continue, and to conclude (to win).

"a good game is just the kind of game which avoids the 'paradox'" -p82

A good game is one that continues as long as you want it to continue but where you eventually want it to conclude (to be won) and that concluding occurs around that time

[droqen]

games reverse the ends and means of other activities. [..]An impostor behaves like a Russian princess in order to be taken for Anastasia, but a player at make-believe chooses to impersonate Anastasia so that she can behave like a Russian princess. [..] a genuine surmounter of obstacles does so in order to get to other side, but a high-jumper tries to get to the other side only so that he can be surmounting obstacles.

[droqen]

(p124-126) Open vs. closed games
Games = players trying to achieve a state of affairs 'using inefficient means' (or the most efficient means within constraints). A 'state of affairs' may be a conclusion (the end of the game) or a sort of continuing, active state. These are 'closed games' and 'open games': does the state of affairs end the game or not?

[droqen]

[...] playing (genuine) games is precisely what economically and psychologically autonomous individuals would find themselves doing, and perhaps the only things they would find themselves doing.

Hmm. I find myself remembering a quote from 'What Should We Do With Our Games?':

The greatest trick the videogame industry ever pulled was convincing the world that videogames were games in the first place.

I feel as though a great number of videogames, or a lot of videogame theory, is a more of a Bernean game than a genuine game. But semantically the word game is being pulled in every direction and it's not very helpful at all. I'm not interested in fighting it, but I think Suits' approach is relatively good: within the boundaries of his work he uses the word to mean one thing and indicates other uses of the word according to their owners (e.g. 'Bernean' game)

[droqen]

a true grasshopper would sacrifice anything and everything to play a game[...] A true grasshopper already know what justifies [its] existence, for a true grasshopper already knows everything there is to know.

[droqen]

having become bored [in Utopia], [John Striver] wants some activity to be engaged in. [..] he wants to work at something, and he selects carpentry. Now, there is no demand for houses which John's carpentry will serve, because all the houses of whatever possible kind are already instantly available to the citizens of Utopia.

What kind of house, then, should he build? Surely it would be the kind whose construction would give him the greatest satisfaction, and we may suggest that such satisfaction would require that building the house would provide enough of a challenge to make the task interesting while not being so difficult that John would utterly botch the job.

[..]this activity is essentially no different from playing golf or any other game.

There is a part coming up where the idea of 'knowledge-seeking' games is discussed, which may defuse my present thought, but I'd better write it down anyway.

It seems as though there is a nesting problem. q1 and I discussed Tetris, and games of skill, within which the gaining of skill, or as we described it in a prophetically appropriate way, the 'building a house' (of knowledge (within the game)) is pleasurable, is part of the joy of the play.

When Grasshopper (in the quote above) describes a task not difficult enough for John to botch, that sounds pretty boring to me. I want a challenge that I can botch! Something that is demanding, which contains secrets to discover, which requires my whole self. Maybe that's just an issue of game balance, though.

In Grasshopper's Utopia I suppose that the perfectly balanced game would not be designed but would be made magically available to me, but if a machine can give me not just what I say I want but what it knows I actually want then am I making any decisions at all? As a game designer I feel like the act of designing games is something I value doing -for myself- and I cannot imagine someone else doing it in a way that I like better, but it is also a thing I do -for instrumental reasons-.

In a Utopia where there is nothing to do but play games, then what about making them?

[droqen]

the culture of Utopia will be based on plenitude. The notable institutions of Utopia, accordingly, will not be economic, moral, scientific, and erotic instruments - as they are today - but institutions which foster sport and other games. But sports and games unthought of today; sports and games that will require for their exploitation - that is, for their mastery and enjoyment - as much energy as is expended today in serving the institutions of scarcity. It behoves[sic] us, therefore, to begin the immense work of devising these wonderful games now, for if we solve all of our problems of scarcity very soon, we may very well find ourselves with nothing to do when Utopia arrives.

[droqen]

Come now, Grasshopper, you know very well that most people will not want to spend their lives playing games. Life for most people will not be worth living if they cannot believe that they are doing something useful, whether it is providing for their families or formulating a theory of relativity.

[droqen]

After which Grasshopper promptly dies.

[droqen]

After all this, I can relate quite well to the Grasshopper, who is evidently an idealist and also a fool without any answers. I see in his death my own death.

Skepticus: "Then tell me which you feared, Grasshopper. You alone are in a position to know."
Grasshopper: "I wish there were time, Skepticus, but again I feel the chill of death. Goodbye."

In struggling to find the answers, I don't think Grasshopper is playing a game, but doing instrumental work. In Utopia, one would not need to struggle to find the answers... I suppose that I would enjoy such a world. Philosophy is both play and not; the answers are forever out of reach, but we do not know if the answers exist at all.

The last Suitsian games are infinite in nature, pursuits of the unknowable. Supposing that there will be no reward for building a better house, a person might still desire to know, "Can a better house be built?" There cannot ever be an end to such forms of knowledge. Knowing a new thing spurs on new realms of knowledge.

I need Bernard Suits to read The Beginning of Infinity. But, like Grasshopper, he is dead.

[droqen]

There is an institution of chess which can be distinguished from any individual game of chess. Because of this institution it is possible to take a knight out of a box of chessmen and describe its capabilities, even though the knight is not then functioning as a knight, that is, as a piece in a game of chess.

And it is also possible to set out of the chess pieces in a checkmate arrangement without having to play a game of chess in order to achieve that state of affairs. Accordingly, although it is not possible to achieve the prelusory goal of chess aside from the institution of chess, it is possible to achieve it aside from a game of chess.

The word institution here is very useful. Some game designers have proposed that before designing a game one should design a 'toy' or a 'sim' or whatnot. I myself have pursued a similar idea of 'playables'. "What Should We Do With Our Brains?" claims "The greatest trick the videogame industry ever pulled was convincing the world that videogames were games in the first place."

Here I understand that a videogame is a Suitsian institution.