To add one last thing on the idea of irl games having gameplay that ought to be killed, thinking about the more constrained idea that kill gameplay is about gameplay systems sometimes leading to bad outcomes, which I've seen you reference before, with some obvious examples like games that incentivize gambling or any kind of compulsion, where the author is essentially profiting off compulsion, I don't think in the case of chess or football that's present, because their constraints seem to work exclusively to make the game systems work internally, but maybe examples of irl games where there is gameplay to be killed would be some tv contest type of games, also related to gambling, where players are made to do some thing for some prize and there's lots of lights and fanfare driving all the dopamine and such.

Also it makes me think, following the idea of designing for compulsion, that other non-game art forms could have this kind of gameplay to be killed, in the form of common mechanisms that drive engagement in a superficial manner, like a soap opera having superficial drama, or tropes that are meant to be recognizable and engaging, or even music having a common and recognizable structure with a dramatic arc, or the kinds of typical structures seen in films, where a hero has to find themselves to be able to overcome a challenge or some such... all of these are mechanisms that allow the artists to more easily capture the attention of the audience, and since the mechanism itself can capture the audience's attention, it can be used regardless of the substance of the piece, for evil, though it of course can also be used to reinforce or make more approachable a piece that has deeper substance.

The generalization of this idea though I think emphasizes that kill gameplay cannot be a general drive to kill all gameplay, but rather a specific drive to identify bad uses of it, because these kinds of mechanisms can be identified at lower and lower levels, such that you could say that even something like having simple contrast is a way to engage attention, because it is, but without it you're left with nothing, so it seems to me like art is, fundamentally, made of parts that even at their simplest level draw attention and engagement, just at different scales.

Therefore, everything is gameplay

your use of the terms "value" and "value structures" is really confusing, I can see several different meanings that you seem to be using interchangeably and I'm not sure what you mean in the end. This was a point that also came up in that last twitter conversation we had ages ago, which couldn't be concluded because twitter was devoured by hell musk. At first I thought what you meant by  "value structure" was something like the constraints put into a structure that must be followed to experience it, using the word "value" to mean that, because only some things can be done within that system, those are the things that are "valuable" within that system? but you also seem to use it as meaning the things that are implied to be valuable because of how the system frames some aspects of a system, like if a score goes up when picking a thing, doing that is implied to be valuable, or how getting to the end of a level is implied to be valuable and the goal of the game. Those two meanings come from using the word "value" as meaning "worth" right, like what's valuable, what's important. But then in that last post when you talk of the position being a value, you use the meaning of "value" to just mean like... a number? and you used the word "state" just a post earlier, which seems a far more appropriate word for that, objects of a system have states, so using "value" to also mean that... just confuses me completely about what you mean in the end by  "value structure". I think it would be good to be a lot more clear with keywords to get to a more well formed meaning of "kill gameplay". Here are some meanings I can think of for "value structures" derived from value meaning "worthy" or "valuable", including the two I mentioned before:

1 - The set of things that it's possible to do within a system, and the constraints put on them, which are "valuable" when looking at the system because they are the things that are forced to be considered in order to work within the system; this is a very broad way of using the phrase "value structure" and I'm not sure how useful it is; this is things like how the movement of a game works, the options given to a player, the way the collisions work, even things like the placement of walls and walkable surfaces, which determine where the player can move; in chess it'd be the way each piece moves, how the board divisions are used, and so on; in football, the size of the field, placement of goals, physical law...

2 - The things that are abstractly implied to be valuable because of how they're named within a system, and how the system is built around them; things like a  "score" going up with some actions, there being a explicit goal, the player being moved away from a goal when some action isn't completed accordingly (death and respawn), gating parts of the game depending on reaching goals; a bit more broadly the placement of walls and surfaces and how they interact with the movement system can also be understood to fall under this definition, only in a more specific way, because just by there being a wall somewhere, and movement only allowing to reach past through a specific set of actions, means that any level structure implicitly gates positions around it relative to how it interacts with the rest of the system.

3 - The way elements of a system can be understood to be "valuable" because of how they relate to other elements of the system, which creates different hierarchies and emphases within the system; this is even more specific, and is closer to "aesthetic value". Examples would be things like if there's a part of a level with very simple geometry that's very simple to move around, and then there's another part of the level with complex geometry that requires specific techniques, this creates a contrast in how the audience relates to these parts, it can drive attention to one part; how there can be different actions the player can use to achieve a thing in different ways, and they can be contextually relevant, or more efficient, and this creates contrast in how they relate to them and how they chose to use them; in general just how differences in the system create uneven perception and so create different kinds of impressions by virtue of their contrast.

4 - The things that are thought to be "attractive" in the system, by "someone". I take this one from your mention that "the player may value anything within the system". These are just the value judgements that are made by people, both artist and audience, when exposed to the system, and are just things like "I like this red square", or "I like the feel of the jump", or "I like beating hard bosses".

yeah in general it's probably a good idea to have clear terms, so that your thinking doesn't also get confused by unclear terms. I notice that you say "a loose definition of 'gameplay' (wtf? this was not the point of this project)" which I understand as you not being very interested in defining gameplay precisely? maybe also not interested in defining "game"? which I'm assuming maybe comes from how historically a bunch of people have tried to define game to exclude some expressions, and maybe used it as a value judgement? but regardless of that, I think in general having clear definitions is useful to help develop thought and their consequences clearly and precisely, even if the definition is not useful in general, like practically, it's useful to at least clarify what's being talked about. (although it's of course completely fair if, part of the project of kill gameplay is itself figuring out exactly what you mean by kill gameplay, given an uncertain starting discomfort with gameplay!)

I've been reading through the various things you've posted about kill gameplay in the social sites, and the kinopios, and been meaning to post about it, but for this specific question, modulo clarifications about "value structure", regarding the idea of the systems of enforcement, I don't think the idea of "giving players control over their experience", in this specific sense of having only them guide the experience and the rules they subject themselves to, is doable... like, fundamentally, at all. When anyone decides to experience a work of art, they're essentially opting into a "contract", where they accept the conditions under which the piece is to be experienced. "Contract" may sound too committal, but it's just the fact that the audience willingly subjects themselves to the conditions put forward by the artist, like you don't actually see a painting if you go to the museum and instead of standing looking at it, you stand with your back to it, or you don't actually listen a concert if you go and plug your ears and start yelling in the middle of it.

So essentially players already controlled their experience, just agreeing to the enforcement of the rules in the form that the enforcement takes in that game; this contains the assumption that this was, already, their own choice. I understand your idea that, within a work, more degrees of freedom can be given to a player to guide their experience, but that would be, by definition, also a part of the initial constraints of the work that were accepted by the players; it's not that it's assumed that the systems of enforcement are the only way to author play, it's that creating play necessitates systems of enforcement, for that play to be "something", rather than "nothing" (lol), and external systems of enforcement allow possibilities that wouldn't be achievable without them (because they can keep track of more things, and give a final say on how rules are interpreted), and those systems of enforcement may include giving more leeway to players, which is an interesting idea and probably underexplored, but not fundamentally different from giving less leeway for players, since the amount of leeway itself defines the kind of experience that will be had, and is agreed upon in advance. So I guess my main contention with kill gameplay is that the claims are too broad and not justified by reality? I get them as a preference to guide a style of design, but as claims about reality they don't seem to hold up.

I can understand the notion that the rules that are being enforced and the system of enforcement is assumed to lead to "good", and that it may not really be the case (and it's a completely fair criticism that sometimes even the results of the "superego" rules are not good in actuality, and are just assumed as such out of cultural inertia or something!), but that's a very specific claim, strictly about the goodness of the result, or process, that comes out of some rules and their enforcement, which can be treated separately from the fact of the rules and enforcement themselves, which don't have an intrinsic goodness, and if the participants of play opted into it, it seems best to assume their consent implies an expected goodness out of the process and its enforcement, rather than distrust them to engage in the "wrong things" (seems like a bit of a nanny state mentality?)

Also with regards to the idea of placing the focus outside of the system itself, such that what is important is in the realm of experience and interpretation... I kind of think that, fundamentally, that is all that can ever be done. Like when an artist puts green next to yellow, because it looks cool, the thing they're communicating isn't "green next to yellow", it's "look how cool and awesome green next to yellow looks". Similarly with some game system, the artist just thought "wow playing with this system is really fun/cool/interesting/weird/etc, I'll make a thing so other people experience it", not the plain facts of the system itself, because ultimately everything we experience we perceive internally as some kind of thing that we feel. There can be different degrees of how many levels (and nested levels) of internal abstraction are being pointed at through the piece, but I don't think there's any possibility other than the internal experience.

With all that in mind, I think the error in the conclusion is that the "value structures" of a system can never be fully "subjective" or "not affect any other part of the system", because by virtue of existing, the system has some amount of intrinsic "value structures", which are always independent of the player's subjectivity (otherwise it'd just be "nothing"), that may give different degrees of moddability allowing players to change it, but the degree of moddability is itself a part of the system, and a fully moddable system is just one that can be turned into any other? which is equivalent to just opting out of playing this particular game?

approach like a spell book, every card magic... quickly did a draw from my deck and my JUSTICE is so different from The Wandering Star's, haha

returning to a couple guidebooks in the book store —

one is "Wild Whispers", an oracle deck (i never look at oracle decks...) that describes each card under multiple headings:

whisper as calcination, introspection as dissolution, and five more like that.

the other is "The Wandering Star" because of how personal it seems? but also, how casually written? upon a second look i don't know how connected i feel to it, but i love the tiny book, and The High Priestess' page begins, "Ah, the Priestess High!" — i just like the casual excitement

X

one of the guidebooks i encountered during my research, as well as the site i use, contains many prompts per card. i think my go-to site contains more sensible categories that i have found use for over time (career, finance, love), whereas the guidebook i skimmed had more woo-woo nonsense categories.

i will probably end up writing things about my cards that belong to some real nonsense categories.

given what i wrote in the "key to the tarot" meta thread, i'm going to try to focus in somewhat on my own relationship to reading each card. it's gotten to the point where when i draw a card in most readings i immediately have a strong sense of what it means... this is good but a bit scary? if you've driven a car for a while and start to get comfortable, there's a moment when it feels like "autopilot" and you don't even know how you got there.

i want to describe how the card feels to me while also leaving space for someone to fill in the gaps. but i don't know if that will make any kind of actually useful reference book, and that really scares me!! what is this book that i'm going to write and publish?

i hope that when someone is learning tarot they use another source, and not only what they find in my silly little lookup tool and book-to-be...

but, i know what i am capable of writing, and it's not an exhaustive handbook. it's just a vibey little pamphlet. that's what i'll aim to do! what i know i can deliver well, what reminds me of things that my brain likes to forget... ah! here i am with the flavour of ambitiousness in my mouth...


i do, after all, want a book that i love to use. that's really my goal. should it be spiral-bound? argh!

Quote from: droqen on Jul 26, 2025, 06:57 PMaltho it is possible it only feels like it does not have this void because ultimately there is gameplay, haha. i wonder what to make of that.

i think trying to measure and gradate the extent to which gameplay has been killed with a given work sounds a bit like gameplay to me x_x;
to even do so would require much more straightforward goals than are actually defined to go off of
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i think to explain a bit further how i came to the conclusion i did (remembering that i did infer the intent was at least exemplifying kill game play in some way) - a lot of the utility that we have for gameplay as designers is that it is a kind of shared language. it feels like a lot of the games like starseed (that era as a whole) felt tasked with communicating solely through that language, and games have forever felt very insular in that way to me. i bring this up as an 'era' because it really did feel like for a while there was such a focus on how cleverly one utilized that language, and it seems we've continued to veer off over time that continues to value that moreso than what it is actually being used for, or to say. thats been my impression on the importance of TEOG as a 'response' to starseed specifically, which i think i have heard reference to in some of the writing/videos on this game

so what i really enjoy about 'how much can be done while avoiding consideration for it at all' is that it is like this 'ignore previous instructions' moment, and starting context-free, there is still language being employed but the motivations to do so feel entirely personal now. otherwise a lot of the 'finger wagging' i see and feel comes from that kind of malintended 'deconstruction' type works, which i assume you'd agree you have a few of? going any direction at all from the inflection point of kill gameplay is a lot more additive in nature, and hey, sometimes you do end up reinventing the same things, but the use is more dialectical. maybe this is a lens that helps with how to justify those overlapping 'gameplay elements' like in open field - because while a score does get introduced its also very clear there isnt anything evaluative in that game, hence, no 'absence' despite the use of that shared thing
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i like what you are saying about the oubliette-likes here, because i agree it is a path away from that finger wagging, but interestingly the comparison to non-digital games sounds like it is capturing a lot of the wrong references? im not sure i think the focus on 'end states' has much to do with absence/void. in fact the propensity of the oubliettes to empower a player to sort of define their own terms for an end state (and therefore decide "what they should get from it and when") i think draws a lot from folk games, which i felt were a bit absent (though the question in that thread did not mention them, to be fair). to me this is not 'void' because as an individual element it feels more intrinsic to 'game' (definitionally) then 'gameplay' (structurally). the point at which any game starts to feel satisfying has always arbitrary, death of the author stuff, like why keep codifying these end states at all?

so, i think this call to define the terms for oneself can be very implicit or explicit - Think something like the rules of Yoko Ono's 'snow piece' https://www.are.na/block/1607229 vs. the rules to a road trip game like 'slug bug'. In both its to be understood that you are in control of the end state, but only the former actually bothers to define an end state at all within the game. i do think digital games have run into this a bit as well, like https://pippinbarr.com/it-is-as-if-you-were-playing-chess/info/. whats important about being able to do this to me, is the number of games that offer that same sort of exit point 'control', but explicitly do not empower players around it, seems to be the driving design around a lot of roguelikes etc today. im thinking that the oubliettes in TEOG fall more in the implicit category than some of the earlier attempts.

wait, i'm falling into the trap of using hidden.droqen.com the same way i use newforum.droqen.com -- this is a place for CONVERSATION not for me to RECORD MY THOUGHTS. will write here once i have more of a conversation-starter.

David Giles started a conversation with me on bluesky which eventually led to the creation of the video; probably some of this conversation {inspired / made it into} the video, so it may be relevant: "
I just beat The End of Gameplay and was reading through some of your posts[ on newforum.droqen.com, I expect]. . ."