Aliveplay disproves Deadgames. (complete)

[droqen]

A game is "Dead" when it has no human designers. What I mean by this is that the game is, largely, 'designed' by non-human forces of desire for profit, and desire for scale. In a Deadgame, the human game designer a proxy for capitalism's demons to accumulate money.

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Strangely, the idea that I have of Deadplay is most strongly connected to something I wrote not even in response to the Deadgames/Alivegames piece, but this one in response to Daniel Cook's tweet thread (click the 'Quote from' link for context):

All art forms involve mastery and knowledge.

All artists become blind to issues new appreciators will face.

The issue is with the context in which games audiences appreciate games, not inherent to the form of games.

If a game is 'dead' when it has no human designers -- when it was created as a result of no human desires -- then perhaps any activity is 'dead' when it does not refer to other human actors, or their humanity. To call something a Deadgame is a judgement of the drives of its creators and players as inhuman; to accuse something of being a Deadgame is to be a Deadplayer yourself in the game of life.

I think it's an interesting point, but what is a human force? The Deadgames and Alivegames article doesn't really cover the topic of what someone might want to make a game about. I recognize that this covers a great deal of territory, but I want more talk about techniques in context of how to make games about humans. This is the closest it gets, and all it's saying is "don't make these games."

An Alivegame is a game whose purpose is something to enrich the lives and humanity of those who play it. It can be as simple as a 1-hour game made for a friend's birthday. It is a game that respects the complex layered history of humanity and refuses to create characters or narratives that boil them down into easily-digestable (and figurine/merch-izable) build-your-own-trauma-chipotle-bowls where a character's complexity neatly and mathematically maps from whatever unfortunate events happened to them.

link

Daniel Cook's Game design patterns for building friendships is interesting.

Is it what I'm looking for?

[droqen]

"Enrich the lives and humanity of those who play it"

Yeah. Save the world. But how do we do it? I want practical advice about how to do this; even hypothetical theory would be great. It's not that I'm incapable of thinking about it myself, but most of the discourse regarding Deadgames and Alivegames is: oh, yes, good, my aspirations are validated!!!

Why are so many mental and emotional resources thrown into the hole of validating obviously positive goals?

[droqen]

Perhaps I can simplify. Creating a dichotomy of good and evil... I don't want to do that. Show me where I'm going, not what I'm running from.

Aliveplay is now Lifeplay, as in life-play (see jack's Recognizing Play), as in the act of playing with life. Living beings. Where possible, I want to fall in love with - or dislike - the life in something, the human desire and activity reflected in it.

Recontextualized in this manner, a big-budget, big-team game contains people driven by more sorts of things. But even acting in pursuit of money is quite fascinating as far as human pursuits goes.

The life-player can see that there is no such thing as a Deadgame.