Tag: video-games

What If It Were Easy?

JulianLeave a comment

The goal of the game is to do. You do by removing friction. 

A few years ago, a shaman watched me explain something I was struggling with. Then he asked, “What if it were easy?”

The friend with me said, before I could answer: “Julian associates difficulty with value.” 

He wasn’t wrong. I think most people do. We assume that if something is hard, it must matter; if it’s easy, it can’t be the real thing. Cultures everywhere reinforce this: no pain, no gain; if it burns, it’s working. 

But sometimes a thing is hard because it’s valuable, and sometimes it’s hard because of friction. Both feel difficult. They’re worlds apart. 

I notice the difference most clearly with games.

When I’m playing a game I love, three things happen: 

  1. I pay attention without effort. 
  2. I want to improve. 
  3. When it ends, I want more. 

This feeling – total absorption, no friction between me and the activity – is rare and precious. Most activities require me to push myself to do them. Games don’t. They grab me by my noggin and suddenly I’m along for the ride. 

A movie buff once told me he loves movies for the immersion. I experience immersion with movies sometimes. With books and theater, sometimes. With games, almost always. That’s information about me, not about games. Games are my art form.

This week I made a list of things in my day I find unenjoyable. Except for the entries about physical pain, every entry was a type of friction: either current or future. Some friction is necessary as a means to an end (waiting on hold with a doctor’s office). But some of it is inherited assumptions about how a life is supposed to feel.

If the shaman asked me again today, I’d answer: I think more of it is supposed to be easy. Not all of it. But more than I’ve been letting it be.

I’m game. 

Wise to the Game

JulianLeave a comment

A relaunch.

I’m most alive when I’m playing games.

A few months ago, my sister asked me about an unspoken rule in her business culture – an implicit game. I told her about games where explicit acknowledgment of the rule breaks the rule, and pointing that out is also against the rule. She thanked me and said I should write about the philosophy of games.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Near the end of my senior year of college, I ushered my father into a room above the library and drew three circles on a whiteboard: writing, philosophy, and befriending eccentric people. In the middle I wrote the question that would pick my profession: “in what areas am I in the top 5% of my classmates?” 

The answer that fell out: befriend eccentric people, then write their philosophy.

Not wanting to be a starving writer, I asked one follow-up: who in that circle has money? Growing up in Silicon Valley, the answer was tech founders. I spent the next six years building that business and rose to the top of the technology ghostwriting industry. It was fun while I was growing. It’s not fun anymore. The game is too easy. 

So today I ran the exercise again, with the ikigai framework:

  • What do I love? Games. Learning new things. Befriending eccentric people.
  • What am I paid for? Writing.
  • What does the world need? Play. Whimsy. Fun.
  • What am I good at? Making complex things clear.

The answer that fell out is games, which makes sense: games are a bounded, examinable instance of the thing the world needs more of. If the world needs more play, games are where play can be examined. I learned this at clown school: the first course isn’t about humor or fun or jokes; it’s about games. 

The three pillars of this publication, going forward:

  1. Games.
  2. Eccentric people.
  3. Practical philosophy.

Writing is the medium. Speaking, eventually.

The new name is Wise to the Game. (My last name is Wise. It’s a pun. A double-pun? No: a triple-pun. Try to keep up.) 

More tomorrow.

Clown School Weekend 5.2: Good at Games, Bad at Play

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In which Our Hero muses on play

Do I like play?

For someone who has historically liked games—loved games, spent thousands of hours inside them—it’s a surprising question to ask.

There’s no question I like games. And play is what we do in games. So I suppose I like play?

This explanation feels insufficient.

I like lighthearted engagement in low-stakes, real-world-mimicking activities. In that sense, I like playing.

But often when others play with me, I generally don’t experience it as mutual play. And often when I try to play with others, they don’t experience it as playing together. (They sometimes experience it as me playing at them or against them, which has its own problems compared to us playing with each other.) It’s rare for me to find someone with whom play becomes mutually satisfying.

This isn’t necessarily about my love of play. It may be about my skill at play.

Eight or so years ago, a friend told me I didn’t know how to play. It was one of those moments you remember: if not for the bluntness of the comment, then for the proximity of his anger to a fist arriving at your face.

Learning to play requires paying attention to others. It’s a feedback loop: you stoke their fires, they stoke yours. And with rare exception, I’m not interested in stoking fires. The pool of people I like is small; my interest in socializing outside that pool is also small. So perhaps I simply have less experience in social play—either from lack of historical interest or poor methodology.

This, to be clear, is about social play.

Only two (three?) weeks ago did I first play a game to play rather than to win.

Historically, my engagement with games has been more optimization than play. Perhaps that’s why my win rate is high: if most people play, the one who optimizes will win. I analyze, comprehend, break down, and rebuild. These are fun for me, thus part of my play. But how many people do you know who approach a casual board-game night like this? And how many people want to rejoin someone who plays a board game night like this?

My clown teachers say I need sensitivity. I think they mean gentleness, and sensitivity is one route to gentleness. Sensitivity is letting experiences permeate you. Those who know me—family especially—would say I’m already very high in sensitivity (i.e. sensing the world around me, including the experiences of others). My teachers may mean a specific flavor: gentle sensitivity with lighthearted reactions. Not that I lack sensitivity, but that I lack lightness of spirit and gentleness of response. 

Yesterday at 4 a.m., a bird flew into my apartment window. I learned this at 11 a.m., when my roommate showed me the box he’d put it in. We called French animal rescues; none were helpful. I made a joke about how the French might simply eat this sort of injured bird. He said (paraphrasing), “Come on. This is an opportunity to be sensitive, man!”

As a classmate, he knows I’m working on this skill. What he might mean is that the joke felt heartless. Some people don’t like dark humor; some don’t like cultural humor. Perhaps what they really mean is: give what your audience wants.

I used this skill when running sales at my previous company: give them what they want; say less—always less—as less is more.

And perhaps my teachers are saying that almost no one wants me without gentleness.

In competitive games, my strategy is often to use my strength against the opponent’s weakness. It’s a good way to win. But it only attracts people who love competition.

So if I want cooperative relationships,
I’ll have to learn to play.

(Closing the loop on that earlier story: I have never been punched in the face. I’ve only been punched once, by someone experiencing a very different reality. I have, however, been threatened with face-punching roughly five times. I’d like to keep that streak—and ideally reduce the threats.)

—

Today I watched a clown show. Afterward, I left the theater to go home. And upon stepping outside, I realized that part of sensitivity is patience. So I went back, stood outside, and let myself be sensitive. Two people I enjoy talking with emerged, and we walked to the train together. It was lovely.

+1 for sensitivity and patience.

Clown School Day 18: You Must Play the Game

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In which Our Hero misquotes Shakespeare.

“This above all: to thine own game be true.” —Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3.

It’s very easy to forget the game.

But the game is the most important thing.

Some performance is only game. Tennis, for instance, is only game: and look how much money that earns.

The Rehearsal

My scene partner and I rehearsed today. We lacked pleasure because we had forgotten the game.

The original game was simple: I make my partner lick a thing. Like when children find a bug and dare each other to eat it.

It wasn’t fun anymore. We knew it was coming. We knew he would do it. There was no tension, no conflict.

So we changed it.

Now, we begin with a eulogy for a piece of the space: “We are gathered here today to say goodbye to the power outlet.”

Then we play rock-paper-scissors.

The loser, as a ritual of farewell, must lick it.

As the scene escalates, so do the lickables. The floor. The bottom of a shoe. The teacher.

We didn’t have a game. Now we have a game.

The game? Rock-paper-scissors.

But with stakes!

The Farce

In Improv class, I realized the rule applies to everything.

We played a farce: a train compartment. One person enters, perfectly normal except for one grotesque tic. They repeat it. Then a second person enters, takes pleasure from that game, and — after a long time enjoying their tic (longer than you think) — adds their own tic, heightening the first. Then a third person. Then a fourth.

The game is simple: take the game from the person before you, heighten it through your play, and pass it on.

Simple is nice.

Simple is hard.

You have to feel the scene. Is it falling down? Are you talking over the game with “train compartment” nonsense? Are you heightening or dominating or smothering?

When everyone played the game, the farce appeared by itself.

When someone forgot, everything froze.

The game makes the show. Always has. Always will.

The Handstand

This morning, I flipped upside-down.

My first handstand (wall-assisted), then onto a peer’s back, who rolled me forward, turning us both into a ball.

A new game: gravity as partner.

I’d forgotten the joy of inversion.

The Father

My father arrived in Étampes today. He wants more than anything to see a class.

I’d love to have him: to share my play space. The school forbids it.

No visitors, no cameras, no phones. We even sign a “no recording” oath, like monks taking vows.

Why so strict?

Because clowning is vulnerable.

I’ve seen people bare grief. I’ve seen them make absolute fools of themselves (and not the good kind).

Once, a student scraped his false teeth along the floor before popping them back in. The room gasped. Disgust and horror.

Once, I yelled at the teacher. Their instruction felt like trash; maybe provoking me was the point.

This isn’t for YouTube. This is for us.

The school protects its game.

It keeps the outside world out, so the play inside can live.

The Lesson

The game is everything: the lick, the tic, the flip, the secret room.

When you forget the game, everything dies.

When you play it, life appears.

Protect the space so you can play the game.

Then find the game.

Release all else.

Play the game.

And when you lose it, start again.

That’s what makes it a play.

Clown School Weekend 2.2: What’s in a Game?

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That which we call Our Hero, by any other game, would play as sweet.

What is a game?

A game isn’t one thing, but a cluster of traits that, in sufficient combination, make us recognize something as a game. None of these are necessary, but enough of them is sufficient to make something a game. Some of those traits are:

  • Competition and/or cooperation
  • Ability to win and/or lose
  • Use of toys, equipment, and/or pieces
  • Play
  • Fun and/or pleasure
  • Turns
  • Rules
  • A self-contained world, protected from life’s other elements
  • Practicing skills useful elsewhere

The trouble of defining game is the trouble of defining any abstract concept: when we say “X is a game,” we mean it has enough of the qualities we associate with games for our brains to light up in recognition. Hence our endless debates, like whether a hot dog is a sandwich.

Games vary across cultures because the pleasures of play vary too. At clown school, we seek a joy that’s light and friendly; in sport, the joy can be vicious, even cruel. Have you ever watched a professional tennis final? They’re clearly playing a game — but not playing games.

Defining abstractions always circles back to the Supreme Court’s test for pornography: we know it when we see it. Still, shared language demands some definitioning (now a word). And that task grows harder as meanings and technologies evolve: even “simultaneous” doesn’t mean what it once did.

I like games. Always have. And by that I mean: I like whatever fires my neurons to say that’s a game. I like them better than mere activities; give me competition or a timer, and I’m in.

So:

  1. Games are hard to define.
  2. Games share recognizable traits.
  3. I like games.

I recently stumbled upon a definition for game by the philosopher Bernard Suits: “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” Elegant, but too narrow. It fits golf or chess, not politics or dating, where the obstacles aren’t unnecessary, just chosen. I don’t think “dating is a game” is metaphorical; I think it’s a real diagnostic description of how people behave in the world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that definitional meanings work by family resemblance rather than rigid borders. I’ve always respected the man; nice company to stumble into.

Maybe that’s why I love games: they’re how we practice living within constraints — voluntary or not — and still find joy.

Life, after all, is the longest game we play.

Game on.