Teppington Design
Thoughts on life and the medium of games.

Nothing matters.  That’s what it comes down to.  I’m sure of it. Although “sure” is only a concept so who knows.  “Knows.”  I want to put every single word in quotes because they are all just concepts we created. What a bunch of crap.

Chris Bell tells me that that’s just my interpretation.  I say that all interpretation is contrivance, but he says I’m just interpreting interpretation myself. His logic makes sense. But that logic doesn’t calm the feeling that’s inside me.

I’m struggling here. I don’t know how to express the things that I’m feeling. My problem I’m finding with the world is that we base everything off human interpretation. People are so up their asses and they don’t even know it.

I started out in ego. Later on in life, I learned that the brain runs on two forces: ego and peace. We oscillate between them. I used to think that peace was the biggest concept I was missing in life.  I thought that when I found it, I would continue to explore it to be happy. Peace makes me happy when balanced with ego. And the great thing is that peace is with us all the time, unlike ego which is an endless search. We don’t even have to search for it – it’s just there.  That is its essence.

But you see, dear computer screen, now I’ve found there is something bigger.  And bigger can’t even describe it, because bigger is a concept that we made up. We’ve interpreted this whole universe so that we can understand it. Even “infinity,” a concept we don’t completely understand, is an interpretation made by us. And yes, we feel better knowing a little bit about what “going on forever” might mean, but the important thing is that even if we COULD understand infinity someday, it wouldn’t matter – because any structure we understand, even the word “structure,” is just a human interpretation.

I have this idea that the universe could be different from how it is now.  Infinitely different. We kind of have an idea of what this would mean. In one universe, it’s exactly the same as in this one except that the lamp in my college house was blue instead of tan, and so on.  So great, we kind of get it.

But then put all of those universes aside, and think of a different place in which there is no universe. What? What does that even mean? Sure, we can’t understand it. But we have this notion that there are things out there that we don’t understand. We understand that.

So there’s this place with an infinite number of universes, and also this place with no universe at all, nothing.  Those are just two different places, right?  Now, what if we didn’t have the concept of “different?” As humans, we absolutely made up the concept of “different.” There’s nothing telling us that “different” actually exists. Is everything the same? Wait, we made up the “same” too. So…so then what? If things aren’t different, and they aren’t the same, then what are they? Are they at all?

If we can’t contrast concepts, then they don’t mean anything. So everything is meaningless.  Everything is interpreted by us, so everything is contrived. Nothing has any natural meaning, because it can’t.  My friend Michael Lewis tells me this is just the beginning of the beauty of life. First we realize this blank slate concept, then we see that every interpretation builds meaning, and because of this we can create beauty.

This feels like the push and pull of ego and peace – filling space with form to create beauty.  But I think there’s something different going on here.

If ego is a connection with form on earth, and peace is a connection with space and emptiness, then what is a connection with the undoing of interpretation? It’s beyond art and beauty.

When I was born, I felt anchored to form. When I found peace, I oscillated between being anchored to form and floating in space. Now I see that even floating is not the most spacious action. Is this spacious, what I feel? If I feel that absence is the key here, referring to the thought that everything is contrived and therefore meaningless (absence of meaning), then I’d think that absence points to spaciousness. But it’s not quite that. Because even absence doesn’t exist. The previous sentence doesn’t make sense. Logic breaks. We use it to explore and interpret, except that it doesn’t work all the time. Perhaps we should forget logic?

I pause now to feel; I feel that space, time and everything we know is something to us. These are dimensions. What if there were no dimensions? Or all dimensions? It’s as if every concept lies between “nothing” and “everything.” Infinity, which can’t fit in that range, even feels like it does somehow; that maybe it loops back on itself within the range.

One thing I had thought about before is: We interpret the world into art. And then we interpret art into more art. What if the world is a piece of art? What if someone was inspired by something to create it?

I thought that was interesting, but now I see that even that is worthless to think about. Because that’s still thinking in terms of our known structures and concepts. Thinking in terms of human thought. There’s more to life. Except that there’s not, as “more” doesn’t exist. Yuck.

What if there is a concept of a “non-concept?” I’m not sure what a non-concept is, but it sure isn’t a concept (ha). A non-concept is… wait. What happens if we define that term? Does that invalidate it? Actually, I’m not sure it even needs a definition to be invalidated.

Just by thinking about it we have made it a concept, despite not knowing what it is. It’s much like the concept of “nothing.” So what’s different here?

“Non-concept” is a feeling. We can’t define it with words because that makes it automatically contrived. Or are feelings contrived too, because we interpret them to have meaning? If I feel angry, but I don’t say I’m angry, am I angry?

Anyhow, stepping back a bit, it doesn’t matter what the non-concept means. It could mean the absence of all concepts, or it could even include “concept” in its tree of things. It does. not. matter. What matters (just saying that is stupid) is that we comprehend that we created “exists” (concept) and “does not exist” (non-concept).

“Here.” A concept we created long ago. What happens when I’m not here? Does the universe stop existing? There’s no way I can be sure. But what happens when I AM here? Does the universe continue to exist? Did it ever “exist?” We just say it does.

This brings me to the concept we created called “time.” Whether we look at time as contiguous (ego) or only happening now (peace), it somehow exists to us. What is a place like without time? Is it frozen? We can’t know, but that’s not what is important. It’s important to know that that place without time can exist. Or a place without places can exist.

Yes, this doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way to know if a place without places can exist. There’s no way to know if an existence without existence can exist.

But we created “knowing” so we can’t trust that either.

Sure, we can build meaning in this world; we can discover things that intrigue us in the universe; but at the end of the day, it all revolves around us. Because anything that we feel, anything that makes us act, is just relevant to us.

I feel something. Something I can’t express.  I don’t know that words or anything else will ever do the trick, as expression is interpretation and interpretation is contrivance. Whatever we do, we’re making it up, and it doesn’t mean anything.

This is bigger than us, though. It’s so easy while writing this to stay centered on humans, since we made up our interpretations. This is bigger than humans, the world, the universe, and every dimension (ha. even “dimension” isn’t “real”).

I surrender for now.

Check out a podcast I’m doing with my designer friends from the Entertainment Technology Center: Friends on Play

We talk about a range of topics, with one of us hosting the podcast each week to give it a unique flair.  It’s pretty neat because we all have different takes on each topic.  Some of us are more mechanically oriented, while others are more about narrative.  We work at a variety of game companies throughout the industry.  It’s a lot of fun!

Raph Koster’s recent post theorizes that we play games we’ve already mastered as a form of meditation, like raking sand. Again, it’s simple kinetic activity helping our brains get to a happy place.  Flow, on the other hand, is felt when we haven’t mastered the activity yet and we are in the process of doing so.

I agree when he mentions that neither flow nor meditation is about fun.  Fun comes from what I am referring to as egotistical action – the desire to triumph, make a meaningful decision, or perform meaningful social interaction.  This makes me wonder: is it worth creating experiences that grant fun?  Peace endures as long as you participate in a certain activity that grants it, but fun wears off over time. The wearing off causes unhappiness, which is when we start searching for the next thing that makes us happy.  This is how motivation in games works – go from one challenge to the next.  However, if we never perform egotistical action, we run into production problems.  Many people require egotistical action because it enables them to get important things done, like producing food for our species, or defending against harm.

It’s possible to incorporate meditative behavior into everyday activities, and I wonder if a game could teach players to meld these two together.  Can peace and fun be simultaneously experienced?

I frequently frame the world around me according to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.  In the book, Tolle describes “ego” as the voice in our heads, an unending stream of desires that always results in suffering.  He describes inner peace as the suspension of this voice. There is a similar concept described in Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s Flow.  Flow is the infinite happiness felt while performing an activity whose difficulty matches your skill level, and they are at the maximum level possible.  (I have not read through Flow, but I am familiar with the concept.*)

Inner peace may be obtained via meditation – minimizing action to clear our minds and absorb the world, seeing it as it really is.  Buddhist monks perform simple tasks, such as raking sand, to assist in meditation.  Simple kinetic movement aids in the clearing of the mind.  On the other hand, the flow state is reached via performing a certain level of activity – the most extreme one can handle.  What does it mean that these two states, which we’ll assume to feel the same, are acquired through performing actions on opposite ends of the difficulty spectrum?  This requires future thought.

We have missed the mark on creating experiences that enable inner peace in players.  I think Flower comes closest to this goal.  However, as in meditation, it is up to the player to suspend his/her ego and absorb the world.  Flower falls short by providing goals to players, forcing ego back into their minds (sure, the player could choose not to follow them).

An alternative is to not provide goals to players, as in Minecraft.  Here, goals are self-created and intrinsically motivated.  However, self-created goals in Minecraft seem egotistical as well.  For example, digging the deepest tunnel, surviving for 30 nights, and seeking your long, lost cabin after dying are all fueled by desire.  That satisfaction eventually withers, unlike inner peace.

Are all games egotistical?  If we assume that Raph Koster is correct in that all games are about learning, does that mean all learning is egotistical?  It could imply learning through games is egotistical, but I wonder about learning as a whole.

Players should experience real pleasure they can hold on and come back to effortlessly, not pleasure that is brief and fleeting.  That is to say, pleasure experienced through peace, not ego satisfaction.  How can we create experiences that draw out inner peace?

I am reading Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun, and I liked this: “Games thus far have not really worked to extend our understanding of ourselves.” As A New Earth has helped me understand myself and the world around me, I hope to someday create experiences that encourage this understanding in others.

*Yes, I know I need to read Flow : )  I am making my way through the game design classics, and I will get there.