What's been on your mind recently?
I finished a project but I'm not happy about it.
Tell me more.
Recently, I made Riot Rock Paper Scissors. Riot RPS is a party game. Players all join an auto-advancing Rock-Paper-Scissors gauntlet, playing from their phones while monitoring their score on a big screen. Since it advances automatically you can play hard or sit back and watch the animations. I do like the animations.
But you're not happy about the game?
No. It's is a finished product but I don't cherish it. That's unusual! If I finish a project I almost always love it. I pour my soul into my projects. Some of them have more of my spirit in them than I do. This is my first published AI-coded project—ninety-five percent of the source code, including the SVG animations, has been generated—yet I still consider it my project. I've discovered that knowing my code is not as important as I thought it would be.
Hmm!
What's not generated is the copy. The text. I don't care about the machinery, but I'll die before I publish words not spoken by the mouth that screams behind my eyes. Disgusting. Unthinkable. My words are my ambassadors! I cannot brush against the heart of another through an atmosphere thick with thoughtless words. Although, come to think of it, when aliens meet those words, their pilots only hear how they read, not what I said. Oh no. Damn it!
I remember that we've discussed the precision of words before. Should we talk about that more?
Oh, no. I'd like to talk about the game project. It started as a way to honor something that I loved, Restricted Rock Paper Scissors. But no one else loved my project like I did and I threw out my original idea. I might still love it if I hadn't changed it.
What is Restricted Rock Paper Scissors?
Restricted RPS is a game from the gambling manga Kaiji. It's like regular Rock Paper Scissors played with cards and some extra rules. In Restricted RPS, you start with: three stars; four cards each of Rock, Paper, and Scissors; a stack of borrowed cash rapidly accruing interest; a few dozen enemy players; and four hours on the clock. You have to spend all the cards, use your funds, and win more stars before time runs out. If you win, you lose all your debts. And if you lose, you win a huge debt and years of hard labor.
Hmm.
For players inside the story, it's a life-and-death situation. You can't survive with trust in luck or fairness. To stay alive you've gotta be smart, and if you're smart you make big plays. Massage the game's card economy to sway the probabilities. Sucker naive players and trick them into losing. Big plays can kill other players and steal all their money. Big plays keep you alive… if you live inside the story.
What is a "big play"?
Big plays well up from the same toxic hell where "game meta" lives. Meta-gaming, devil of simulations, into whose scripture has been written every fifteen-page enumeration of banned behavior ever composed. Ugh!
You don't like "meta-gaming" or "big plays?"
They're not the same. Big plays and game meta are two different types of meta-gaming. Extrapolate all moves and strategize with heuristics, that's game meta. Big plays are more complicated to explain. Here's what I think. All games are really two games played in parallel. The game you start from is the inner game. Now, how can you affect the inner game without using its rules? That's the outer game, and any move in the outer game is a big play. Consider chess. What's game meta, what's a big play? If you memorize openings, that's game meta. Send the board to a computer? Neither, since the computer lives outside both games. Trap your opponent? Neither, that's inner-game strategy. Irritate, distract, disorient him without using any chess rules? Now you're making big plays.
I see.
Only a few rules define Kaiji's beautiful, elegant outer game: don't destroy your cards; don't attack other players; don't bring outside help. And most beautiful of all: an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent game master enforces the outer game perfectly.
What is beautiful about that to you?
The whole world, so simply defined! What a relief! I think I wanted to live out that fantasy, one where the word "life" can be followed by "is." Players would craft big plays within my simulation, which would prove the outer game exists, so there must be an omniscient omnipresent, omnipotent, game master—me! The one who literally gave them their life! I would prove the theorem in the smallest scale, and therefore prove it for the scale degree higher: where life is a game governed by god, its rules only comprehensible by genius pariahs who could rule lesser games. If I could fulfill this simulation with myself as master, then perhaps god also packed law into the spaces between atoms.
Hmm.
I am a narcissist.
Are you sure that was your goal, and you didn't simply want to have fun with your friends?
I don't know. Maybe you're right. Maybe I really wished to see salivating players devour my slices of tender oblivion. Maybe I wanted to descend from my dias and feel welcome in a plain space where I'm not overwhelmed by all the social rules I don't understand.
I'd like to understand this "plain space" better. How was your game designed? Try not to speak too abstractly.
Players could roam the room and choose match partners by exchanging player numbers. They'd ante or trade stars, cards, or cash, instigate pulse-pounding showdowns, and cry or wail or laugh. But that's where I failed in a game design sense. I forgot to trick the players into wanting to play.
What do you mean?
I assumed players already wanted to play!
Do they not want to play?
No! Of course not!
Hmm.
My original draft of Restricted RPS died when I demoed it at a party. Players didn't understand the lives or the cards, and people made suggestions instead of praising me. I changed "a digital version of a game I love" and whatever my goals were, they collapsed into "a game that others will want to play." And I got that all mixed up with all my other feelings.
I see. We've talked about external validation before.
If someone told me "I've created a digital version of Restricted RPS from Kaiji. Let's try it!" I'd be hooked instantly, but how could I pull in anyone not already on board? Today I might be brave enough to say "I love this! Check it out!" Those words radiate strength. "No" cannot destroy me when I say "I love this. Do you?" but it can if my real question is "Do you love me?" I didn't realize that at the time. So I prompted new players to upload a photo of a beloved thing. And then I betrayed them! I called their icon my hostage! With that I forced them to feel invested in my world!
Just a moment. When you say "would pull in anyone not already on board," that means someone was already "on board." Who?
Hold on a second, let me think.
Okay. When I said "Players don't want to play" earlier I really meant "Players don't want to please me." Which makes more sense. However, I assumed the presence of one person who would fight to make everyone enjoy my game, because they knew that appreciation of my project would make me happy. Then, even if my game failed to land, I would still know this person loved me, and I could safely write off the implementation as a failed attempt to charm players into noticing its creator. But that fantasy died, and with it my proxied love, Riot RPS.
How so?
I found the person upon whose shoulders I had weighed this mantle of love and they beheld my heart through eyes wishing only to see themselves reflected.
And then?
I ran. How apropos that the game I ultimately designed could be played in just the same way, to begin and then flee.