Positive Game Design Challenge follow-up (split)

[JoyWriter]

It's an old thread, but are you teaching alienated labour here?

Striving to do something new; challenge, is not only an end in itself. In the army people train to do things they wouldn't ever normally do, and it has side effects, as any veteran will say. Now obviously what people are trained to do in the army is more extreme, but I wanted to put some limits on the idea of "challenge".

So the purpose of challenge then, is it valuable? It is good to be able to create a work that is enjoyable for others in a way that doesn't fit how you play. But the core then is not the meaninglessness, it's not the macdonalds-ness of it, but the fact that you are centring your creativity on someone else's world. In other words it's good because it matters to someone very different to you, not because it doesn't matter to you!

There are people in professional music who fight every day to stop what they love having it's art removed from it, it's origin in a unique human condition. Not to put to fine a point on it, trying to remove yourself from your own art is conceptually self-destructive. Now there are good versions of this theme, a hairs-breadth away from it. It's true that you can get too attached to stuff, but the solution is surely not to create something for no-one, you make it totally for someone else!

I'm guessing this could also work coming from some Buddhist type place, with the focus on practice over end result. If so, then that provides a different structure and approach, but I can't help thinking that a process mentality requires a pre-existing path to follow, something you can just do without focusing on it constantly in the context of it's outcome, which defeats any form of end based specification!
You cannot have it both ways (as far as I can see), either the project is designed around a specific end, at which point it must be resolved, such as with 10 day designs, or designs built for someone else, or you observe the practice of the design and at every stage try to consider alternatives, so there is no fixed end, but the aim is to expand the possibilities of practice.
Either of these I reckon would be a good start, but I would not suggest the focused creation of specifically that which does not interest you!

[Ron Edwards]

The above post was split from Positive Game Design Challenge, a thread over a year old.

There's a reason that Forge posting is limited to newer threads. In this case, your concern misses the point - a specific clash of ideas between Filip and Guy, and a way to arrive at a basis for agreement and understanding one another.

You do raise some interesting points, and if either participant is interested, then I encourage discussion, but I hope you recognize that the horse is long flown from the barn. Guy did write a game and Filip did comment on it extensively.

Best, Ron