Dilation

[droqen]

I am willing to accept this not as a threshold but some other nearly mathematical trick.

[droqen]

A decision "is" or defines its game equal to the decision's dilation.

An experience or subexperience "is" to a degree that equals its dilation.

[droqen]

The more specific problem is that of artwork rather than all experience.
I will focus there.

[droqen]

In Handmade Pixels Juul writes that certain theorists worry goals and optimization "shift the player's focus away" from other things and I argue this is explicitly a concern about dilation.

~ Handmade Pixels, "dual worries" about goals and optimization in games

[droqen]

If dilation defines experience then it plays that same defining role in art.

[droqen]

A work that shifts the player's focus towards goals and optimization is defining itself by those things.

[droqen]

Finally I can arrive at the crux of my argument regarding dilation:

[droqen]

To design a game about anything,
that thing's experiencing must be
dilated in the player's experience.

[droqen]

Satisfying mechanisms emerge from systems built upon metaphor or feeling; goals and optimization make them instead games about those "unintentional" mechanics.

[droqen]

The infectious nature of fun in that described above does not belie a meaninglessness but originates from its compellingness and very disposition towards dilation rather than any meaningfulness or relevance.

[droqen]

In the hierarchy of dilation a subtler feeling can be overshadowed by other feelings more readily dilated.

[droqen]

Dilation defines experience and process determines dilatedness.

[droqen]

Dilation is neither virtuous nor sinful.

[droqen]

Just take care with dilation that the deep feeling is not lost to those experiences which have a greater predisposition towards dilatedness but are ultimately wrong.

[droqen]

The goal is not perfect dilation of that deep feeling.