How does play make me self-conscious?

• thinking about what I want to do and why I want to do it
• skating, I find something fun, something looks cool, it puts me in my body and not my mind
  • I guess that means I'm more self conscious in one way and less in another
• I mean play really ultimately makes me less self conscious I think, because it means in another set of rules or goals, I can try something without knowing why consciously. I guess that can then prompt consideration after the fact.
• it can absolutely be productive and transformative
• • so what is it that silos play into something unproductive?

what makes me less self conscious, more immersed?

• thinking about interacting and overlapping designed systems and rules
• gameplay, interacting with the game system exclusively rather than playing with real systems
• it can still teach you some things or train certain skills, but... I think is less... productive overall. not productive in the sense of capital but self productive or creating something new in general.
• making something new is good because otherwise we'd be static. we don't have to be doing it all the time but we have to do it sometimes, I think its very core to the human experience.

So in what cases can video games make us play with real systems(in singleplayer, multiplayer is obvious)

• making a video game
• playing a game in which you can feel the hand of the persons who made it
• video games that have specificity of place, or context
• relationships, the internet, social structure, infrastructures, genres (meta),
• I don't think the game has to be super meta though... when you're skating its not about the meta, but it is playing with external structures
• time
• shared concepts
• even droqevers, end of gameplay have predetermined points you have to reach in order to progress, designed environments

what's an arcade game?

• typically they progress until the player reaches the last stage or dies, with the goal of getting a high score
• hiscore enables comparison to other players, gives social context
• but it is achieved by doing what the game designer has determined will increase or decrease score, and decoding that system to find optimal play, competition ultimately becomes finding and perfecting predetermined system
• death stranding, dark souls messages, social media, hiscore is achieved by doing something other players like

• so how to remove optimal play? - remove score - or make score so ambiguous and meaningless as to make it mystical
• how to remove score (comparison ranking of how well you're playing the game) without removing social context?
• • the player has to choose when to end the game, or the game has to end at the same point every time
• • I don't know if its possible to remove social context anyways
• the player has to be able to choose how to play in the way they think is best
• not just a sandbox though...
• maybe like an arcade game about doing acrobatics, and it ends when you remove your hands from the controls
• or one that doesn't reset and you walk away and the next player picks up and plays from where you left off
• how do you make something that resets to the same point every time, and incentivizes quick replay, but not by training some predetermined skill
• • conway's game of life... about discovery by play with algorithms...
• • maybe it would require some player input at the start that changes the play field... but could specificity of person or place or system come through if only the toys or controls were determined and not the playfield?
• • something you can get better at, but by your own standards, or at least the standards of other players, and not by one standard... fighting games... multiplayer...
• • trying to make something more 'beautiful', more coherent, less coherent, to communicate an idea better, to know the game designer better, to know your fellow players better,
• opinions, ambiguity, but without it being a mega game of interacting systems like dwarf fortess or qud. those are valid too but most games will not be that because those are that way as a result of being life projects more or less.
• animal crossing (gcn) - persistence
• • I want beauty and ambiguity without persistence. you can take photos but you can't go back without doing it again (ritual)

How to make ambiguity without losing all specificity

• characters
• environments
• narratives
• reproducibility in a literal sense, if not in a practical sense
• all these maintain specificity ^

to make ambiguity:

• physics
• cascading effects
• limitation... there will always be limitation
• choice
• • of navigation
• • of end point

different stuff should happen... are algorithms or other player input the only way? the world doesn't require algorithms to be variable because its had gazillions of time to butterfly effect into its currently still butterfly effecting state

I mean the player themselves can just choose to do something different

I want it to feel like you're entering the same cave each time, through ritual, but coming out with a different experience. psychic wind

this is usually done through random environments, or character builds, or real world skill building...

so skill...
qwop

a tamagotchi, I think I'm trying to invent the tamagotchi...
it always progresses on the same timeline
specificity of place (characters, hardware)

so to conclude:

1. you start at the same point every time
2. there is generally no algorithmically random element, maybe time or local relative humidity... I mean ik thats how randomness is usually seeded anyways but ok
3. the only true fail state (forced reset of whole game) can be from totally walking away

• • but maybe maintenance of state is preferable, only player chosen reset

4. maintains specificity of place, personality, or system- environmental elements (character, setting) are mostly determined by the designer, to be manipulated by the player
5. skill is derived from being able to reach what you are trying to do, whatever that is - it is ambiguous
6. difference is derived from trying something new, playing with a different purpose, playing in a different environment, at a different time, with different people
7. rules can be made within it, but they aren't inherent to it (in terms of correctness or optimization. the inherent rules of skateboarding are, board, wheels, ground, gravity, weather, they aren't S.K.A.T.E.)

ok. game ideas

• game about collecting things of your choosing and then giving them to people, or bringing them to a party
• game where you play a spool of thread, and start by choosing where to tie yourself, then you roll and unravel and wrap around the environment until you are out of string
• Colossal Cave Adventure- game about learning to navigate an environment
• shmup about making interesting cloud patterns or something
• game about arranging a closet then choosing what to wear each day until you're out of clothes or you do the laundry
• game about starting a fire