[massive vessel]

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?

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

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