“The End of Gameplay

matou a gameplay e foi ao objetivo

Análise”

Being that I do not read portuguese (excepting the little that i learned from Cinco Paus), this is going to be a response to an unfortunately unavoidably incorrect and inhuman machine translation of this analysis of The End of Gameplay.

rather than the original article, the translation follows:

* kill gameplay spreading

- my “keen systemic sense” produced older works around 2013

- these have given way to “recent works [that,] in contrast, demonstrate a minimalist and directly powerful approach”

- these newer works are “still directly interactive, but with their secrets hidden in the subtext between the explicit interaction and the inert text. . . . little is left for interpretation by the machine you use to play it.”

wow, this is a powerful description of my goals. ironic that so much of what i am reading here is through the interpretation of a machine. still, it’s not the same as gameplay; this machine is trying its best to achieve an impossible act (true translation), while gameplay seeks to obfuscate.

omg, this link goes to my newforum. incredible digging.

“an exchange of secrets is less a “system” and more a breakdown of systems, right?”

thinking again back to what i said to sylvie...

“I have been very much enjoying the strange power of saying something that I believe, even when I find it remarkably weird and perhaps even indefensible.

I think that I am doing the right thing by saying it, I’m not saying it for any effect other than to express this strong belief that I have, but I find it very easy to believe something very strongly and not say it and in this case I have been enjoying saying it.

static but interacting

Just saying it again and again with conviction.

‘Kill gameplay’ is a spell more than it is an argument or a claim.”

this phrase still in mind, only gaining more traction in its subtlety

Words are pretty powerful.

i’m not sure whether this is on the same wavelength as what you’re getting at, stinsoup! i wonder if the translation would clarify anything for me. what are the secret connotations of this “breakdown of systems”, if indeed there are any?

Words are magic.

a systems crash, right?

a system breakdown

a breakdown of systems

what about the “mysterious layer”? what does that mean?

“if a mysterious layer is there,”

reads the machine translation.

“If the meaning is hidden or encrypted, it invites attempts to understand or interpret.”

“This process of uncovering or reading is not the same as reading a system; it is eschewing machine systems, calling instead upon human connection beyond such systems.”

mysterious mystery eerie secretive uncanny cryptic cloak-and-dagger fey

this is not a direct translation, my takeaway surely corrupts the meaning of what stinsoup has put on the page.

ah, i think i actually do understand better. rather than a layer that is itself “mysterious”, you’re talking about the encryption that occurs, which keeps the work from being pure prose:

but, the direct translation doesn’t quite make sense -- i don’t think what stinsoup is saying is as simple “there are secrets in order to create extra work.”

is there one bunny or are there many?

a description here of the bunny’s movement, a comparison to Sylvie Lime

a slight corruption of my meaning, perhaps, but yes, i just love these jumps. all the jumps in the game are just about the pleasure of bunny

what meaning lies beneath the surface?

so, i will change my interpretation in order to make it make more sense to me, more valuable to me, as i hope others do with my work. i don’t make things in order to communicate where i’m at. no: it’s a spell. an invitation.

this “SURFACE” is that “camada misteriosa”

wait -- i’ve half-read the next sentence, and i’m afraid that stinsoup is about to identify something that i only identified myself recently:

(continue to the right)

yeah. i don’t feel like poking into a Deep Translation Hole right now but i even across the machine-language-barrier i feel that stinsoup is getting it.

i would like to say before reading further that although the player can quit the game, an ongoing struggle is that nothing the player does can “really” break the rules. nothing the bunnies do can “really” break the rules. it is not possible to make videogame rules about meaningfully breaking rules.

the game does not, itself, enable breaking rules and conventions on behalf of the player.

ok, stinsoup, go ahead:

rather it must come from the player’s genuinely breaking action. what the game does not enable or allow.

ugh, okay, i want to go into a translation hole about “Provoking the common sense of what is possible in the confines of this game”

a little commentary on the pixel art :) the sprites “have their square boundaries defined. . . trapped in a video game, all with a goal to follow.”

these words are surely imperfect translations, give me more.

“Provocar” can be “provoking”, but it can also be “Challenging”

which I think makes more sense in this context

“or the lack thereof.”

i wonder if stinsoup will go more into this -- what does it mean that sometimes when the player “challenges” the game they receive nothing new? a lack?

yes. this is true. perhaps a particularly unkind part of the game? but it isn’t as though other games don’t employ this as well, just on a different scale... even if in a game you know that passing through a door will always take you to another room, you don’t know what that room holds.

“lack of sharpness”:

almost clear. that makes more sense.

beautifully chosen phrasing, setting the oubliettes in contrast to the first level, bunnies

yes, i want to let the player go. but i am likewise aware that the player does not want to go on their terms. in a sense this is the way that a game fails, right? the player chooses to let go rather than choosing to stay.

“surpassed by the poem” is a phrase i want to understand better.

as in, something is making the metanarrative layer unimportant. the “poem” is doing this.

or is it the player who cannot forget the machine? the statement might even be ambiguous.

(the metanarrative layer being the attempt to address the player directly, i believe.)

i’m so happy for the comparison to Problem Attic. i need to return to it -- it’s a game that i had trouble engaging with back in the day. there must be more blood there for me now.

skipping around a little. i’m running out of the good analytical juice.

“a different scene”

“strands to be explored”

that’s interesting. i wonder what this is referring to. hungry to make another level? (a game’s “stage”?)

aspects to be explored.

oh, areas. perhaps that’s what is meant here!

yes -- the game does indeed have many areas, born from a desire (of mine) to explore the next one. each one, once finished, is finished.

(drinkrust is stinsoup)

omfg so “scene” WAS about e.g. the “indie scene”, or an art scene, or whatever :0

yes, i, through my video game, am so hungry for a different [artistic] scene.

you see me, stinsoup.

droqen takeaways

what’s interesting to me... i think that analysis of the game that i’ve made is possible, but does not exactly cohere into something whole. this is something i was not aware of before -- i felt it in 31 unmarked games, in that it was a pile of separate works.

so, i wanted to make something more coherent, beneath an umbrella. The End of Gameplay was created within a whole mood, but its ‘meaning’ perhaps does not have levels of scale. i can’t think of part of it, or what those parts are serving.

when reading stinsoup’s article, i felt as though this was made clear for me. at a high level, the article grapples with what the work means to me, and does it well.

Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building contains this beautiful diagram i love and often share with others:

by comparison, though the levels are in an order, The End of Gameplay has a shape that is less like the above (parts serving larger parts serving larger parts, nested beautifully) and more like this:

i still think that the individual ideas in The End of Gameplay are very good, and i congratulate myself on those.

structurally speaking, i want to do more. this isn’t a matter of connecting systems better, it is a matter of connecting ideas better. how can ideas serve other ideas?

I aspire to create a truly semilatticed structure of concepts and emotions.

and remind myself that this is NOT about avoiding, for instance, the anthologic structure, or about adding more mechanics or literal connections. this is PURELY with regard to the content, and has nothing to do with the form.

thank you sooo much for this piece of writing, stinsoup <3

i hope that my understanding of it was not too butchered by reliance upon a machine translation.

thank you for reaching out to me ofc.

thank you for caring and putting your heart into it.

i enjoyed reading and thinking about it, and it allowed me to get from where i was to where i am.

ps if you are interested in any more kill gameplay stuff, even if you aren’t the perfect gameplay-killing candidate, i have a discord server for something like that.