Thanks, this was beautiful. Do you think playing games is actually “worth it” for you, in terms of getting out enough that’s relevant to the rest of your life to make up for what a huge amount of time they can consume? I’ve been avoiding them but I’m not quite sure. Hades and Disco Elysium were certainly damn good…I guess I’m just never sure to what extent it’s basically wireheading versus truly important aesthetic experience versus training useful skills.
for me yeah; it’s particularly straightforward for me as a creative/author because basically all aesthetic experience has something for me, even the bad ones. Though that might be putting it backwards, I’ve become a creative in large part because aesthetic
experiences have always been so meaningful to me.
The important thing there though I think is to recognize that even when you’re playing a game or reading a book that you are the author of your experience, and if it’s not doing something for you it’s totally the correct move to stop. See: https://visakanv.substack.com/p/are-you-having-fun-son
Maybe this is a response to the Fed chairman above, but.... games are important. No matter how perfectly crafted a movie or book is, it will always be the protagonist's story, his friends and allies will always be his friends and allies - not yours. If art is what evokes emotion then - and maybe this makes me a philistine, fine - an artform that physically involves us, and simulates the struggles and wars and challenges that we invented those emotions to overcome, well, that is something Important.
In a game - especially one like Hades - you fight. Yeah, obviously it's not morally equivalent to doing a tour in the trenches, but in a well tuned game, you will sweat, train, practice, meet your limits, improve your skills, rise again, overcome your limits and discover new ones, meet defeat again, and one day finally gaze upon the sun shining over Mount Olympus. Yeah, it's a few pixels on the screen but you know what else it teaches you, that non-participatory art forms don't? That - for the vast majority of us who are lucky enough to no longer have an inexorable life and death struggle imposed on us - you make what is valuable to achieve.
It's the exact opposite of wireheading. Wireheading is short circuiting the mediating system and cutting right to the neural impulses of satisfaction. Some "games" - maybe there should be a different term - are this, like slot machines or any number of... less than participatory experiences. But good, tuned games - like Hades - gatekeep that. They don't give you satisfaction, they withhold it, they make you earn it, by developing actual skill at truly challenging things, and letting you feel a bit of pride at your accomplishment. In the sweep of the world, does that matter? I don't know. Does it matter to you? Then it matters.
That inner sanctum bit will sit with me - it perfectly describes w hat I'm trying to do with a close relationship I've been stuck in a rut in for a while, and ...yea. So much of my 'how to fix it' is outer sanctum thinking. And I keep rerunning in my head because I'm trying to figure out the 'perfect' outer run.
But thinking of it as 'I gotta slam the outer a bunch of times until I finally find the path to the inner'...that will sit with me, it feels.
> And was struck by how each attempt’s failure reminded me of a Hades playthrough, emotionally speaking
I felt this extremely strongly with Celeste. The feeling of playing Celeste is being faced with a challenge I am _SO SURE_ is impossible, and then doing it, one step at a time. I realized this was extremely significant emotionally because I had been stuck for months, afraid to learn to drive a car (and to learn C++ at my job). And the same "this is impossible" feeling I had with both those things was *EXACTLY* the same as the one I got in Celeste.
But Celeste taught me how to work through that. I mean, none of the skills were transferrable, but the emotional skill of feeling this and moving through it absolutely is.
> I wish I could stay longer, but it’s 1am and time for me to start wrapping up.
I love this and it makes me want to see more timestamps on people's essays. Reading this felt more like watching a livestream/hearing a talk. I tried this myself writing a letter to a friend. He noted the date on his letter to me, I noted the date & time on every page in my response.
> Why do I feel bad if I don’t finish an essay?
Part of this is it being hard to distinguish "I spent 3 hours and got nowhere" and "I spent 3 hours and figured out everything", if both cases look like an unfinished essay? I think (for me) this fear is difficult to remove because the thing I'm afraid of is a real threat (me spending hours indulging in compliments on my writing vs actually growing for example)
But also I think this is why sometimes I lose the drive to write an essay after tweeting a lot about it (I've struggled enough & finally had that breakthrough/understand the concept. And the essay is more just recapping the journey)
I’m not actually sure what my answer is. I think I’ve experienced periods of numbness. In fact, almost anytime I’m not play-working, I’m experiencing some kind of numbness. So it’s not so much that I don’t become numb, but that I keep trying to find my way back to love.
I guess you could then ask “why do you keep trying”, and I’m not sure what the answer there is either. I find myself thinking of some of the stories that have moved me deeply over the years, and my desire to contribute to that collection for the next kid like myself. To participate in that tradition. If all I do sit my life is try and fail in that endeavor, I think I would find that preferable to not having tried. And still, I do spend a lot of time not trying; basically sitting around hoping that I will find the courage to try again. But still I’m never quite sure. There’s a mystery to all of it. And I would like to attain some measure of understanding. Thanks for asking
I feel like the answer, at least for me in games like this, is...it's the journey over the destination.
Yea, I am working to get to that destination. But seeing all the failures as the journey - well, that makes it fun. I've had games where I've lost 10 hours, 20 hours, even longer because I made a stupid mistake right at the endgame and died. And on a little level, yea, that sucks.
On another? I had fun the entire time I was working my way up. And I learned something, even if that something is sometimes as simple as 'Don't kick the stairs, idiot, the dungeon can collapse on your head' (I think that one was ~30 hour of time lost).
In other things - like writing - well, I want to create that, but writing is less fun for me. I write much less because I've realized what I really like when writing is collaboration - it's not enough to grind out essays, but add one single person who is willing to sit there and watch the work, and suddenly I can do it.
So it varies person to person; in games, I can shrug off huge losses with an 'Eh, it happens' and immediately start again. But - I've been gaming my whole life. I know I'm good. Not world-class good at anything, but I've gotten to semi-pro in a few things before; I just like novelty too much to stick with any one game long enough to turn it into a career.
But you can grind writing in a way I doubt I'll ever be able to. I think that's cool that you can! Maybe someday I'll crack that puzzle for myself.
But for gaming - I'm confident the trick is learning to see losing as fun of its own kind; after all, like you said, it makes the eventual win that much more awesome, because the best wins are the ones we've had to truly struggle for.
(from some notes somewhere else) jazz bars and comedy clubs are each a kind of sacred space. libraries are mildly sacred and the extra quiet reference sections within them are doubly sacred. they all embody a certain “sanctum logic”. and I’m increasingly feeling that we have a shortage of sanctums everywhere. something similar seems true of the erotic. “Everything is beautiful and no one is horny”
Thanks, this was beautiful. Do you think playing games is actually “worth it” for you, in terms of getting out enough that’s relevant to the rest of your life to make up for what a huge amount of time they can consume? I’ve been avoiding them but I’m not quite sure. Hades and Disco Elysium were certainly damn good…I guess I’m just never sure to what extent it’s basically wireheading versus truly important aesthetic experience versus training useful skills.
for me yeah; it’s particularly straightforward for me as a creative/author because basically all aesthetic experience has something for me, even the bad ones. Though that might be putting it backwards, I’ve become a creative in large part because aesthetic
experiences have always been so meaningful to me.
The important thing there though I think is to recognize that even when you’re playing a game or reading a book that you are the author of your experience, and if it’s not doing something for you it’s totally the correct move to stop. See: https://visakanv.substack.com/p/are-you-having-fun-son
Maybe this is a response to the Fed chairman above, but.... games are important. No matter how perfectly crafted a movie or book is, it will always be the protagonist's story, his friends and allies will always be his friends and allies - not yours. If art is what evokes emotion then - and maybe this makes me a philistine, fine - an artform that physically involves us, and simulates the struggles and wars and challenges that we invented those emotions to overcome, well, that is something Important.
In a game - especially one like Hades - you fight. Yeah, obviously it's not morally equivalent to doing a tour in the trenches, but in a well tuned game, you will sweat, train, practice, meet your limits, improve your skills, rise again, overcome your limits and discover new ones, meet defeat again, and one day finally gaze upon the sun shining over Mount Olympus. Yeah, it's a few pixels on the screen but you know what else it teaches you, that non-participatory art forms don't? That - for the vast majority of us who are lucky enough to no longer have an inexorable life and death struggle imposed on us - you make what is valuable to achieve.
It's the exact opposite of wireheading. Wireheading is short circuiting the mediating system and cutting right to the neural impulses of satisfaction. Some "games" - maybe there should be a different term - are this, like slot machines or any number of... less than participatory experiences. But good, tuned games - like Hades - gatekeep that. They don't give you satisfaction, they withhold it, they make you earn it, by developing actual skill at truly challenging things, and letting you feel a bit of pride at your accomplishment. In the sweep of the world, does that matter? I don't know. Does it matter to you? Then it matters.
That inner sanctum bit will sit with me - it perfectly describes w hat I'm trying to do with a close relationship I've been stuck in a rut in for a while, and ...yea. So much of my 'how to fix it' is outer sanctum thinking. And I keep rerunning in my head because I'm trying to figure out the 'perfect' outer run.
But thinking of it as 'I gotta slam the outer a bunch of times until I finally find the path to the inner'...that will sit with me, it feels.
Thank you.
> And was struck by how each attempt’s failure reminded me of a Hades playthrough, emotionally speaking
I felt this extremely strongly with Celeste. The feeling of playing Celeste is being faced with a challenge I am _SO SURE_ is impossible, and then doing it, one step at a time. I realized this was extremely significant emotionally because I had been stuck for months, afraid to learn to drive a car (and to learn C++ at my job). And the same "this is impossible" feeling I had with both those things was *EXACTLY* the same as the one I got in Celeste.
But Celeste taught me how to work through that. I mean, none of the skills were transferrable, but the emotional skill of feeling this and moving through it absolutely is.
> I wish I could stay longer, but it’s 1am and time for me to start wrapping up.
I love this and it makes me want to see more timestamps on people's essays. Reading this felt more like watching a livestream/hearing a talk. I tried this myself writing a letter to a friend. He noted the date on his letter to me, I noted the date & time on every page in my response.
> Why do I feel bad if I don’t finish an essay?
Part of this is it being hard to distinguish "I spent 3 hours and got nowhere" and "I spent 3 hours and figured out everything", if both cases look like an unfinished essay? I think (for me) this fear is difficult to remove because the thing I'm afraid of is a real threat (me spending hours indulging in compliments on my writing vs actually growing for example)
But also I think this is why sometimes I lose the drive to write an essay after tweeting a lot about it (I've struggled enough & finally had that breakthrough/understand the concept. And the essay is more just recapping the journey)
I had to buy the game back in September because I was intrigued by this tweet about project journals that mentioned it. https://twitter.com/gene_dinkov/status/1829639843405840474
Now, you're the second that brings life lessons from Hades.
PD: I haven't defeated my father Hades yet :(
The question that was on my mind the whole time was how do you not become numb after so much disappointment?
I’m not actually sure what my answer is. I think I’ve experienced periods of numbness. In fact, almost anytime I’m not play-working, I’m experiencing some kind of numbness. So it’s not so much that I don’t become numb, but that I keep trying to find my way back to love.
I guess you could then ask “why do you keep trying”, and I’m not sure what the answer there is either. I find myself thinking of some of the stories that have moved me deeply over the years, and my desire to contribute to that collection for the next kid like myself. To participate in that tradition. If all I do sit my life is try and fail in that endeavor, I think I would find that preferable to not having tried. And still, I do spend a lot of time not trying; basically sitting around hoping that I will find the courage to try again. But still I’m never quite sure. There’s a mystery to all of it. And I would like to attain some measure of understanding. Thanks for asking
I feel like the answer, at least for me in games like this, is...it's the journey over the destination.
Yea, I am working to get to that destination. But seeing all the failures as the journey - well, that makes it fun. I've had games where I've lost 10 hours, 20 hours, even longer because I made a stupid mistake right at the endgame and died. And on a little level, yea, that sucks.
On another? I had fun the entire time I was working my way up. And I learned something, even if that something is sometimes as simple as 'Don't kick the stairs, idiot, the dungeon can collapse on your head' (I think that one was ~30 hour of time lost).
In other things - like writing - well, I want to create that, but writing is less fun for me. I write much less because I've realized what I really like when writing is collaboration - it's not enough to grind out essays, but add one single person who is willing to sit there and watch the work, and suddenly I can do it.
So it varies person to person; in games, I can shrug off huge losses with an 'Eh, it happens' and immediately start again. But - I've been gaming my whole life. I know I'm good. Not world-class good at anything, but I've gotten to semi-pro in a few things before; I just like novelty too much to stick with any one game long enough to turn it into a career.
But you can grind writing in a way I doubt I'll ever be able to. I think that's cool that you can! Maybe someday I'll crack that puzzle for myself.
But for gaming - I'm confident the trick is learning to see losing as fun of its own kind; after all, like you said, it makes the eventual win that much more awesome, because the best wins are the ones we've had to truly struggle for.
(from some notes somewhere else) jazz bars and comedy clubs are each a kind of sacred space. libraries are mildly sacred and the extra quiet reference sections within them are doubly sacred. they all embody a certain “sanctum logic”. and I’m increasingly feeling that we have a shortage of sanctums everywhere. something similar seems true of the erotic. “Everything is beautiful and no one is horny”