Yesterday I posted what I thought was a super clever article about showing Twilight Tower at a convention one day and then forgetting my fiancee's birthday the next. I tried to tie it all together into some insightful message about how passion for game dev makes me stupid. But when I read it the in the morning, it just came out as self-serving reductive false dichotomy nonsense with no sense of direction, so I took it down.

This is a redo without the faux-clever and just the good bits about game design! (Side note: make sure you don't forget the birthdays of your loved ones!)

The next post will be an actual update on Twilight Tower.

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What does game design mean to me?
I've managed to convince myself what I do is an homage to peace and prescribes the kind of world we all want to live in - one where we focus on enjoyment above all else. I get how that sentiment falls flat for the disadvantaged and makes me sound like some prince in a high tower. But the fact remains that I'm aiming towards a better life for all… ummm… the pursuit of the arts, and uhhhh, not war or…

You know what, I'll shut up and just quote Christopher Alexander:
"This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it."

Christopher Alexander is referring to architecture. But I'm transposing it to the worlds inside our minds.

What do I mean by the worlds inside our minds? Neil Gaiman can handle that one:
“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”

Game design has been amazing expression of other worlds. What's not to love?

Feeling Accomplished
c0hil and I's game Meta Form (https://boz-float.itch.io/meta-form) was part of a bundle to support Ukraine that earned $6.3 million. What?? Video games can do this? Is that not creation in the pursuit of peace? 

Back In December a festival in Germany asked if they could feature one of my gamejam games where you yell at cube through a microphone. I immediately said yes.

They sent me a video from the event: https://twitter.com/huminaboz/status/1473089504198148097

When I saw this, it was like a moment of revelation. YES! This is what I've been talking about. People appreciating the absurdism of the human experience, putting aside their embarrassment, and you know, having a good time. I made that!

I'm addicted to creating that sort of experience.

Not Just Video Games
I don't even see game design as 'video games' anymore, I see it as the Zen of the basics of pattern recognition. Game design is about helping others take joy in matching patterns in reality. It's a sort of simplified method of teaching that hides the act of teaching.

I decided long ago that happiness is in the accomplishment of tasks. It's not a destination, there is no end point. Video games are this ultimate experience of maximized flow state with the human experience. If you feel content while time passes, that's just about the best being human can get.

Video games are a style of novelty engine that runs on it's own. The creator drops pebbles in a pond to create ripples that mesmerize players for hours. Nothing else exists in those moments.

I sometimes joke that my goal for players of my games is to "forget that they will die one day". Dark comedy, my favorite. But I'm not sure it's just a joke. That basically sums up contentment. (Tangent: Maybe it should be simplified to "games make people forget to die")

Muditā
I learned about a term recently that I think should be the focus of civilization: Muditā.

From the internet: Muditā means joy; especially sympathetic or vicarious joy, or the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being. 

It's sort of like the opposite of schadenfreude.

Some people decide to become hedge fund managers because they believe it's the fastest way to become filthy, stinking rich.

 Well, I posit that being a game designer is the best way to get that filthy, stinky Muditā.

 I put so much of myself into Twilight Tower because I want it to be an especially powerful emotional evocation engine in the service of Muditā.

So that's what I mean when I say "Game Design". But then again, all of this is nonsense and I just want to make a living having fun.

Next up, an update on Twilight Tower!