anyway the point of this post i guess is to vaguely express that analysis has taken me to a certain point, but intuition must take back over... p.s. i still have no idea what this forum is for! i guess if i post here i am feeling an interest in what someone else (you, reader!) might have to say, but it isn't explicit. i've been spending too much time on my read-only https://newforum.droqen.com/ and to me just putting something out in public is an obvious expression that i'm open to response. but i need to work on making these more explicit.

in this case, though, i don't have a question or anything. i'll... work on that, in cases when a question or prompt seems appropriate.

love, droqen

link to my responses to the first 17-ish Steam reviews: https://kinopio.club/the-end-of-gameplay---every-steam-review-znZp9UO5PoyukxAu_E8vK

other responses found linked in the reviews themselves: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3120040/The_End_of_Gameplay/#app_reviews_hash

i spent  awhile reading every review of The End of Gameplay, as well as some additional texts - notes from friends & peers & acquaintances, things they shared in private or semi-private - and when i finally returned to the game today, playing & perceiving it as the moon waxes inexorably towards full, re-reading, or i might say re-reviewing some of these reviews and notes and my reviews of these reviews... something about the reviews pales in comparison to the game, to playing the game. it should be no surprise, but the game has a much more full impact upon me. i felt disconnected from that effect, that impact.

it is also an exhausting game to play, oh my god. it's like... well, i started reading Crime and Punishment a while back because i didn't connect with Dostoevsky's White Nights (C&P has definitely helped me to understand what WN is, in terms of style), and it has this feeling of being this dense work -- which i always knew -- which is EXHAUSTING to engage with and behold. i don't know what that means. does it just mean the game isn't fun? i don't think that's what it means. but, holy hell, my brain is tired. the game is so short, but i can't take it all in one sitting.

maybe that's normal, i don't know. i know i did design the game to have these exiting points: it's a menu, so you can close the game and come back and the menu will be there, waiting. usually i can't leave a game as frequently as i can leave The End of Gameplay. i'm free to take a break. how many games let you take a break whenever you want? usually you have to "get to a save point." well... that's how i remember games, anyway. "i'll just finish this match." "after one more run."

a game that you keep playing isn't of the same kind as a book that's a page-turner. a game can hold you hostage in a way that a book materially can't.

...

hold on, where was i going with this post?

i guess i was trying to provide a little framing for how i'm feeling right now, which is, was i mistaken to read all these reviews? no, absolutely not, i tell myself now. i realize that as i played massive vessel, a message of appreciation for one of the poems made me sit and reflect more deeply on that poem on that screen, as well as everything before and after it. there is more weight to the work now that i've consumed all this material: this body of human meaning.

i'm tempted to change things that i've noticed. open field has a poem that i don't love, that clashes with the vibe. i could have made it more powerful in the places where it needed to be more powerful. crisis is a sprawling mess, and i wonder: could i have made it more tonally consistent, more navigable?

but, i think, or i know, that i'm at peace with this work as a work. it's done -- except for a few translations which will come sometime. these doubts that i have now i couldn't have had without the work's exposure to all these people, and to change it now would be to disrespect their interpretations, i think. it's okay for a work to be rough. imperfect. flawed, lacking. and... it's not as though i wasn't aware of any of these problems when i made the game. it's only my current perception that has been affected. to change in response to reviews, wouldn't that make it more of the time, more generic, more temporary?

...

i made The End of Gameplay for myself and here i am, the very self i made the game for. it gives me a feeling of sadness. it gives me a desire to do better -- not only, i think, because of my past self's mistakes that i can see now from my current perspectives, but also because of something about how it makes me feel as a player, as a player of my own game.

i made The End of Gameplay for myself. what am i going to do with the way that it makes me feel?

i grew up on forums ... it is good to be back

a secret was publicly posted
"a photo of droqen's tarot deck: secrets edition: two of wands and the packaging it came in, featuring an azure halftone vegetal card back and a two of wands card with a figure holding an orb on a promontory between two saplings. the inset of the shipping box says "love, droqen" and a short prose card reads: "two of wands - the wands across the entire deck have the most variation of all the suits: they are branches, lightning bolts, torches, harpoons, staves. i think this is true to their nature. the wands represent passion, creativity, pure possibility. of course they are always changing.""

XIV. TEMPERANCE
The negative space in the middle of the card once contained a strange abstract many-armed red creature.

(I don't remember why.)


It's much quieter now without it.

look it's kinda on the nose but consider especially the last couple episodes of the last season, when the old Korean dudes are talking about democracy.

oh I know you don't want to die but we voted, it's fair

todo / rewatch hack sign, consider my long lasting appreciation in it through the kill gameplay lens

the oubliettes linger with me most.

[oubliette] felt truly gameplay-free.

firstly, because it lacks an ideal state (the end door present in most levels), which is at least to me, like we discussed, strongly tied to the notion of game(play). [i guess to be precise, as there is a single state, whether it is ideal or not is irrelevant, because the notion of ideal is relative to the less-ideal. this is an implementation detail though, for the purposes of this train of thought]

secondly, because, as an essential counterpoint to the first, it gives you control over when to end the experience. which is perhaps thematically contrary to the idea of an oubliette, perhaps a constraint of form here (having to let you go back to the menu and experience more levels), but nevertheless unequivocally necessary if one takes away the ideal state. yet games can give you that freedom as well --it is not an anti-gameplay trait per se--, and i often wonder why they don't. one of my favorite examples is Sable, where you could decide to pick a tribe and hit credits after having met only one or few of the many options, without nearly experiencing even the majority of the content of the game. (that alone makes it one of my favorite games. i did end it early; i identified as a cartographer, so strongly that i felt no need to explore other tribes, and chose their mask as mine, ending the game only a few hours in, knowing there were dozens more i could experience, but with zero regrets -- i had been given a voluntary conclusion; closure; just like [oubliette], because it acknowledges the escape mechanism)

but what i keep thinking about, and my personal favorite level, is [another oubliette]. having a platform, 2 gaps and 2 doors marks such a stark contrast with the first. i did not even need the "try to enjoy yourself when you are trapped" prompt to start playing within it.

[another oubliette] is, to me, a playground. it also lacks an authored, game-ending ideal state, but it contains an affordance for player-defined ideal states (e.g. reaching the platform). this overlap is core to the dynamic that unfolds: it wouldn't have occured to me to define ideal states, or play undirectedly (in the caillois paidia sense) unless i was trapped. the lack of authored goals nor a (diegetic) way to leave is what enabled the birth of play in my mind (as in play with, or play within, not play it).

it reminded me of the experience of going to actual playgrounds as a child. structurally, they are similar -- a fenced perimeter (sometimes only unlockable by an adult), and undirected "platforms" within. and they had the same effect: forcibly confined within that space, kids create games/goals/stories/ideals using the toys at their disposal.

the crucial part to me is that, had i been allowed to leave the playground -- which i wasn't, as a young child, for a period of time -- then i might have left it early, never considering to imbue meaning or play in those modules, never elevating them (subliming them?). (ironically, if the comedy is not lost on you, i would definitely have left it early to go play... video games).

to be clear, the physical nature of the fencing around the playground is somewhat irrelevant. parents exiling their kids to "go play outside" for a set period of time has the exact same effect on them. and, in that case, parents often literally do this to 'forget' about their children, making this practice a literal oubliette.

more abstractly, these are the thoughts i keep coming back to:

- not all prisons are playgrounds (e.g. [oubliette])
- but maybe all playgrounds must be prisons (e.g. [another oubliette])
- because freedom to escape creates the goal to escape, and implodes the playground (e.g. [final oubliette])

surely there is a Foucauldian quip to be made here, but I haven't read him, so I'll abstain!

https://bsky.app/profile/murthynikhil.bsky.social/post/3lsqp7pg3qc24

QuoteThis Nic Reuben review illustrates the core of what I understand by
@droqen.bsky.social
's #killGameplay

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/promise-mascot-agency-review

something here is itching at me
todo: analyze the comments. what are they saying, what are they missing? the review is saying "here are the facts, here are the parts i didnt like" and the comments are saying "the facts are correct, but the parts that nic disliked are exactly the parts i liked"

i want to interrogate: is the review saying why nic doesn't like the parts? is there a deeper philosophy underpinning? are the comments failing to engage with the deeper philosophy ("kill gameplay", let's say), can we form a more meaningful conclusion about the philosophical or values-based statements being made???

i dont have time todo this right now but it seems interesting to do soon