So, turns out I am in love with another game. And here I am spilling the tea, as promised.
How did this happen? I have no idea1.
But let’s see what we find out thinking about that.
I like to think I knew the game pretty well. I have been playing it for three years, I have taken its engine out and rebuilt it; I know its vibes and how it ticks. This happened even if I did not play as much of it as I wanted: it was a game that carries many assumptions around it2 that put off the people I want to play it with the most3. So proximity to the game was important but not really that important; I spent a lot more time with at least ten other games during that time period4.
So, the fundamental was there: it was a game I wanted to spend time with; it was a game that was fun and it was a game that created an interesting space even when I was not able to play it. It was on my thoughts and became an useful tool for design study and game critic analysis, and helped me reframe the components of interaction with art. This seems to fit my musings last week: to go beyond passive enjoyment, to maintain more than a fleeting, passionate interest: transformation. Experiencing this art and using it as a tool for further art had left me changed.
That seems to be a requirement5, a bed of soil for seeds to germinate after cultivation, nourishment and care. But that is not enough; many games had been that to me, and I seek art that I expect to challenge me.
The biggest praise I can do to a piece of art and/or an artistic tool is that it makes me want to make art. Art transforms me and the new me wants to create art that speaks to them; a tool is so inspired and sings with such purpose6 that it demands to be used.
Art, in this meaning, can be all things to derivative works, game sessions, game writing, game design, actual play, etc. It is easy for me to get inspired, but it is also easy for me to lose interest and move along7; games can be often so easily discarded, stagnant in a moment, there is really special about a game that is so timeless that it welcomes me even as I change and/or has new life injected on it and has changed just as I did and every re-encounter enacts repeated transformation; Sun to the crop of love.
I have, indeed, kept revisiting this game to make art. Beyond trying and running a few games, around the first public version of this game, I was inspired by its couragenous design decisions. The game had an inspired approach to representing high-powered, intense action combat all about an exchange of energy and speed: I tried to apply it to an actual fun system of mass combat in roleplaying-games, applying the same approach but with morale and momentum8. I also ran a short actual play using this tool, planned a putative full-lenght show; since I kept going back to it, I even tried my hand at designing content for the game: character options9 and even an alternative setting that put a new setting in the game10.
Plenty of passion. But there is that thing about love being hard; the thing rarely talked about.
Frustration.
Frustration. What works and how it works, and equally as positive and transformative, what it chooses to not do, and what tries to do and does not work; it can be a frustrating experience. In fact, it is pretty much assured: anything that challenges and transforms you not only is under no obligations to meet your expectations. This is probably the biggest trial to nurture love: fun and accommodating to keep you, not too comfortable to induce passivity, and keep surprising you as you surprise yourself and then be challenging and frustrating to be conductive to personal and artistic growth without being such a struggle you feel your efforts produce no fruit and you turn to other tools.
Did I grow frustrated with this familiar great game?
Oh yes. You cannot imagine how much.
Just three/four weeks ago, I got terribly frustrated with this game. I have played this game for three years. I have disassembled and put it together so many times I could do it in my sleep. And then I sit down and was completely clueless about the game. I felt like I did not know it. Like I never had played it11. I tried to get it to do something it should do easily, and I could not manage. I read straightforward instructions, flipped through seven different documents that make the game, and was just unable to See It.
It was beyond frustration. It made me feel like a complete idiot, like I could not read, that I was unable to grasp the simplest of concepts that were told to me as if it was something that everyone knows. It was so obvious it was nowhere stated; the game told me to check on support documents that I could not find and/or it was not considered something that needed to be included in the ones that existed. That was how much a failure I was. Frustration that made me cry into messy stupor.
And then it was gone. Just, one moment to another, everything clicked into place and frustration was gone.
It just made sense again. No, not again. It Made Sense. I thought I got the game before, but now it was under my skin, mixed with my tendons and nerves. I had gone through the trial and now I loved it and it loved me back.
It has happened.
I could get the game to do the art I want to do with it. The game gave me a place for me to insert myself into it.
This still being a thing that could happen to me made me fall in love with the artform again.
What we do with these tools is precious and always worth chasing after.
Let’s all find the challenging art that transforms us into makers of challenging art.