Games do have a lot in common with candy. As kids, we find candy so amazing. As adults, we're honestly better off if we never eat it, but of course we probably do, here and there.

So... games are an artform, but they're different from other artforms in that they tend to ask for a lot of time and energy.

A great novel promises that by the end we will feel... expanded, wiser, more attuned.

A great game can do the same. But games in general ask for a lot up front and don't give that much back.

My perception.

As a person trying to make a game that asks for not much up front, but leaves you with a lot, I feel... insecurity. Can I manage that at all?

Also, I barely ever play games. If I weren't a person trying to make a game, I would have moved on from games long ago and wouldn't have much if any time for them.

I sort of push myself to play things here and there as if to do so were vitamins, which it kind of can be.

I still do believe in the form. But most games, when they load up, overwhelm with buttons and stats and flavor text and splashy, not particularly refined or noteworthy images.

If I had all the time in the world - or were a kid, feeling that way - I'd relax, or excitedly settle in and absorb what I see. I'd let the spices imbue me and time bake the pie of another world.

But I feel restless. Just loaded up this game advertised on Facebook, Hero Wars. Immediately I want nothing more to do with it. No time or energy or enthusiasm for this. Too much stuff, too little reason to care.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe it's enough to see this and say "Ah, I consider this and this and this a mistake. These are things I do not care about. This game is coming on too strong with points and metrics and cheesy, albeit vivid, drawings. It assumes I want to stay 10 hours at least, and I don't even want to give it 10 minutes. That is not necessary. I can do better. A gentler introduction and less presumption can work magic." 

There's something objective about art, as much as subjective. That's what gets me, the tension between opposites.

Some are offended that it's anything but what they make of it. But there is an artifact you experience, and everyone else experiences that artifact, also. The artifact makes the art, not just how we feel from it.

To me that's very satisfying and tangible, the brew of shaping. It's an intoxication to make.

Total fairness implies the existence of a game. You can only be fair with reference to some rule and some measurement. The universe on one level seems absolutely fair: we're all within exactly the same, apparently extremely consistent laws of physics. If we don't like this and find it still unfair (I find it still unfair, like almost everyone), then we create a new game within the game, and do our best to adhere to it. If the new game within the game became perfectly consistent, why, then wouldn't that be another universe in simulation?

Acting isn't always realistic, and actually this is something I like. Obviously it works most readily in comedy, but it can be interesting anywhere.

When actors go through a scene, they aren't just calling its real equivalent to mind - or a believable equivalent. They're also commenting on a moment that people will recognize. One way or another, every single acted moment plays on recognition - of similar moments, whether real, fictional, or thus far purely imagined, or before today never once imagined, and now for the first time in some audience member's mind. I mean, that's what acting and art in general do, right? They don't have to be realistic, just evocative - somehow interesting and engaging and compelling.

Because acting is also commenting, it's quite acceptable for acting to diverge from realism - in some sense, the divergence is the comment.

Sitcoms do this all the time. People say things in an exaggerated tone that gets the context in that character's mind across loud and clear. And often this is important, and works, because of the ironies - the contrasts between the situation as we in the audience see it, and how the character sees it - which is a comment both on that character (whom we may love by now) and on the situations we know and are reminded of ourselves. So divergence from what someone in the audience would intuitively expect can be a comment on the character or on the situation. In both cases, it's a comment on the audience members' own lives.

There's something wrong with my approach to life. I'm not getting traction - I don't know how to self-actualize or whatever, how to get my talents and experiences and plans to coordinate for long enough to get the results I have in mind. And maybe they're not the best results to have in mind. That's also possible for anyone, and it's surely possible for me. There are many reasons to doubt the wisdom of my goals.

Call me naive, but if the economy can't handle people staying at home to avoid a plague (a problem older than history), then there's a bug in the economy. I wouldn't even blame the plague, let alone excessive caution in the public. If the economy can't handle this, it is quite literally a problem with the economic paradigm. The sky doesn't fall in when people don't go to work. Plants don't stop growing. The sun doesn't stop shining. Buildings don't topple. Books don't evaporate. Inventions don't lose their designs or patents. Even most non-essential computer servers will happily keep on running, especially if they're drawing wind or solar or geothermal energy. If the economy caves in now, it's predicated on a lie.

If you have a garden and you leave town for ten years, and it's abandoned, it'll take some work to make it how it was. But that isn't a calamity. It isn't the ruination of anything.

If the economy cannot behave similarly, I say let's fix it.

Maybe the analogy is all wrong. Maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe it can't be done.

But I bet you it can.

(Wrote 2 years ago today.)