Understanding Aliveness (letterclub)

[droqen]

Regarding Jack's
"Understanding Aliveness"
on letterclub.games

[droqen]

I haven't yet read it. I'm staring at the really beautiful icon-work that Jack did, that shows the "Understanding Aliveness" letter-postcard-icon with all of its connections to past letterclubs . . . in it I glimpse

• LIVING games
• What .. is res[ponsible?] .. Who .. responsibility
• .. Re[solution] Pro[blem]
• Em[ergence?]

[droqen]

1. It opens with a really strong gif. I've now added mushishi to my to-read list . . .

[droqen]

"I take it to mean in an 'organic' way, rather than an 'authoritarian' way [..] It is not asserting itself where it doesn't belong. It simply belongs." I think this is the way I take it too. It's good to call it out. I understand the 'authoritarian' feeling given off by the description of life and living . . .

[droqen]

"I think [What games are alive?] is a good first question to answer [..] Is aliveness a thing that exists when a player plays a game? Or is it something inherent to a game's design? Or a game's visible history of being played? // My instinct is to want it to be something inherent to the design, rather than something created by any number of human players."

I'm with you.

[droqen]

Regarding my quote "Something that respects the player's living process, as opposed to a game which boils play down to a number (e.g. a high score)"

Jack writes "Isn't chasing a high score a very alive activity? Or is it not enough to simply be an instrument of life? Is aliveness something more?"

Hmm. I need to remember what I was thinking when I wrote that . . . the activity of chasing is a very alive activity . . .
right, the activity is alive, but it's the post-action that is nonliving . . . can the game itself be allowed to 'forget' all of what the player did?

[droqen]

"I am hearing echos of 'What (or who) is responsible?' here."
--> I wrote 'W(ow)ir' . . . what was I trying to say there?
Oh yes, the problem of . . . specifically who is responsible for the resolution problem? I think I need to detangle, pull back. Think about the process.

Alexander does not give examples of humans interacting with things, but rather, the world and how it feels, whether it invites or not, and whether it has traces of the people who live there. Did people change their environment? It is specifically people taking part in THE ACTIVITY OF ARCHITECTURE that he is interested in, though not the capital-A Architecture, rather his more casual everyday sort of architecture, where anyone is in fact free to play with their environment. move a table. paint a wall. carve something into stone. as long as it is to . . . help the whole. an act of living process.

[droqen]

"[Play] is a transforming process, but what is it preserving? Is it up to the player to identify what is preserved? Or is it up to the game?"

[droqen]

"Alive," "living," may be a word with too much baggage here . . . there is a liveliness to games, in that they are played by people, living people, doing things. What about organic? Organic. Organic has the same association with life, with nature, with the living world, without the double association with movement and vivaciousness.

[droqen]

Having finished Book Two, and dusting my hands off, I can see that the idea of a 'living world' is very much about . . . how it is produced . . . the means of its production. It is involving people in the creation of the world, in the creation of their world. It is about a world full of adaptation.

Games already do this to a great extent. I have joked that certain games ask you to do some of the design yourself. For example . . . someone who does a Nuzlocke run, or a speedrun, is more actively participating in the 'design' of their experience. This is a good thing. This is what it means for a thing to be alive . . .

[droqen]

"It is a transforming process, but what is it preserving?"

The feeling.
The centers . . .
A game 'grows' out of a desire to play, out of some specific feeling of what it means to play in some specific way. That feeling of play is what is preserved . . . "I want to play with this," "I want to play with that."

[droqen]

"I said one of my big current questions was: "what makes a space something we connect with, something inviting, and rewarding, and staying?"" -Jack

[droqen]

Big topics. Trying to simplify, to understand what the discussion is at this point. I'm going to go back and re-read . . . what Jack said before, what I said before.

In my happy new year letterclub:

I'd like to put the questions to you three, coauthors, copilots:

What is letterclub?
What will, or should, letterclub become next? (if anything?)

Jack said:

letterclub is a place where we are encouraged to go out on a limb that has struck our curiosity, and describe what we find there, and what questions we still have about it. And to be inspired . . .

I have been wanting to synthesize some thoughts I've built up over my now five(!) years of interrogating the nature of puzzles and games. But that is not really a letterclub quest.

I want to touch this^! Bring it in. See if it sings. . .

I have also been thinking about worlds, and what makes a space something we connect with, something inviting, and rewarding, and staying. Something more than the gimmicks of game design. And this seems very much a letterclub quest. Even a continuation of haiku games in a way!

[droqen]

1. letterclub is a place for asking questions, exploring, being inspired by each other's perspectives.

2. jack has been thinking about his thoughts re: interrogating the nature of puzzles and games.

3. jack has been thinking about inviting, rewarding, staying worlds, 'more than the gimmicks of game design' [is 2, then, not 'more than the gimmicks of game design'?]

4. my post on living games, on aliveness - mmorpgs? something about seeing traces of people in the world. ah, perhaps this suggests an answer to the responsibility/resolution problem . . . i like to . . . see environments shaped by their inhabitants to suit their needs. a living game allows its players to shape their environment as much as is necessary for it to be well-adapted to their needs. sometimes this is very little shaping, other times it is a lot of shaping.

4b. jack brings up mario. i want to understand: what about mario is living? he writes . . . "'why mario?'. It really could be any game, I suppose, any game that you play well." hmm. 'play well.' will have to think about this more.

[droqen]

5. jack: a common feeling as platonic ideal or something we are capable of feeling?
as i've let go of semantics arguments so too have i let go of ontological ones. what really is the difference between a platonic ideal which we behave as though it is true, and the actual truth? i don't think i care, actually. there is a difference but unless the difference presents a problem i will ignore it. new tenet: "no more ontological hand-wringing"