Thoughts on Journey & Way

1

I didn't get to play Journey's mutli-player aspect, and I'm not sure how much I'm missing because of that.. lots, I'm sure. I did play thatgamecompany team member Chris Bell's Way, though (play it!), which seems something like a relevant substitution. For me, much of it's meaning emerged from the two rapid shifts of possibility space at the end: the initial hop-around meetup and the map/chalkboard denouement. One after another. The first change-- the effect of being in an entirely new situation with someone (or something) we've only ever known in a particular setting but have gotten to know very well there; the languages of precision we've developed up to that point give way to a more fluid language of dance/gesture (a language developed further in Journey). Then, a repetition of the effect (of change) initiates a new state of things on a higher level, change itself as the new constant, the situation as a variable, a fundamental kind of rapid un/re-learning, a destabilization pointing toward a continual dissolve and rebirth of possibility. This affects how we play, and the played end is a very beautiful thing, indeed. The puzzles, the learning we're involved in for the bulk of the game, they're fun enough-- but it's what they're preparing us for that gets to the real heart of the matter, a shared sense of shifting possibility, our subjectivities as the only constants in an otherwise variable space. When this is felt, it's profound. From the sequence of events I played through in Journey's single player game, it seems unlikely that any similarly designed re-contextualization of relating with an other has been suggested (though, of course, so much more than what's suggested will emerge in play-- for now I can only try to imagine the dances).

2

When I started Journey, I looked around and figured it was an exploration game, and I set off in some direction other than that of the mountain which we are implicitly asked to head towards. When I found myself stuck, trying to force my way up too-steep a sand dune, I felt let down. From here on out, I redirected my energies and intentions toward achieving the goals the game had laid out for me-- my playing became instrumentalized. 

The game is a series of playgrounds stitched together, each with one entrance and one exit. Some playgrounds are more liberating than others. All of Journey's are embedded with values asking that we eventually rank our possible ways of playing by order of how well a given action will help us find the exit. We are free to stay in the spaces for as long as possible, and this is occasionally a stunning thing, but at other times they don't seem to be designed for such use-- rather more like giant versions of the aisles of Ikea, which ask us to move in one direction, to see everything along the way (and to hopefully find some beauty in these spectacles), and then to check out.

Like Super Mario Galaxy before it (one example among many, I'm sure), Journey rewards our discipline and obedience with a wealth of movement-treasures. At it's best, it opens some new directions in videogames as digital ballet. Gardens of carpets and scarves that give us the power of flight are lovingly arranged in ways that suggest particular choreographies. Upward motion, climbing the little nodes of possibility, each hop a meaningful thing. Falling, recovering. Dunes as ski slopes, etc. All of this-- rhythmic fluidity. A lot of this meaning is a kind of touched meaning. The variety of the terrain, how the game's responses to input change accordingly with our navigation of the physical environment, how possibility shifts on that level. That's the essence of Journey-- these little details, the procedural manipulation of key variables between input and output (this is what feel is, I think?). Timbre. Like a musical instrument, a system of tight feedback loops, a tool for exploring possible meanings in time. 

And yet, when we get into these intimate systems at a low level like this, and really learn to love them, to let touch teach us something-- when we've finally become comfortable collaborating with the game in the process of generating our played meanings-- it's difficult to not contrast the joys of that kind of emergent experience with the grander, yet more contrived, spatial/narrative ambitions of the game. That we're told this is a journey, a meaningful traversal of space-- we'd expect from this a generation of meaning on a higher level, too, a valuation of where we begin and where we're going to end up. But it doesn't emerge, because of the imposed top-down design. We follow the path, the string of playgrounds. Our sense of possibility is far greater than our space of possibility here. Play that emerges from the bottom up in strength/abundance naturally wants to ascend, to rise up all the way into space, to become a dancing star. The play impulse leads itself , in dialogue with the environment, but not with the environment as a static thing; rather as a musical thing, a living thing. A world more than an environment. Spaces designed from the top down impose a limit, an atmosphere. This is inevitable. Not to say that there's no place for limits imposed by top-down design. Rather, the function of these limits should be a declaration of radical values, a means of breaking the tyranny of habit, to encourage a new kind of play, more true/beautiful than we might have discovered on our own.

Journey is a spatial exploration game and yet our greatest freedoms are still constrained by the closed boundaries of a bead occupying a particular place along a string (maybe a stick is more accurate, less malleable). It's a mechanical exploration game (insofar as touch can be explored), and yet we're not given the openness that's a necessary foundation for the free association of our played impulses. Let's melt the beads, explore their topological equivalents, allow constants to give way to variables. That would be an exploration game. The string can still be used, of course, but let's use one made of rubber. Or, instead--let's tighten the string, and shave these beads down to their most essential qualities, Mario Galaxy's strategy. No time wasted, constant imposition of atmosphere from the top-down. We'll let things melt, but they'll always bring us someplace new, and quickly, too. This will be more work, but it'll also be more play.

For now, though, this is what we have, and we'll play here if we're compelled to do that. I'm torn. I want to play with the raw materials of the space and situation in whatever way seems most suited to continuing my ritual of focused presence in the moment, my flow, and this necessarily leads me in unpredictable directions-- how could it not? But then, I also recognize the power of the rewards I'm given when I follow the rules..

3

Possible directions for future research: observing the variables in a space like this which erect the boundaries of possibility, how they change over time, how they're determined by geography and player actions, etc. Even on the lowest levels, games are (unknowingly?) creating beautiful pieces of tangible music (whether audible or not, usually the latter). To dig into these changes (the source of musicality), to explore ways that change itself functions as an expressive device. Maybe we can learn some important things from Journey at this level. And beyond this, to trace the trajectories of subjective desire at a low level, and to create spaces that allow these impulses to flourish; spaces designed for the motivic development of actions, spatially/temporally augmented, the smallest seeds growing into the tallest trees. And to really understand that smallest seed, to touch its vibrational qualities, we need to design musical interactions at a low level-- these are not the modules of a composed block form, but rather the variable pressure and angle of a finger depressing a string, or mouth blowing a reed, etc. Once we can hear the seed, we'll really feel it better, it's output will touch our ears, and to start with this, we'll be hardpressed to go on designing against its own touched inclinations.

Dissolving Musical Space

(drawing in Alchemy)

In playing music that hasn't been designed, and in forms of music that have been designed to be played-- we, the subject, & our materials, our objects, begin the process of dissolving into one another.

Free improvisation, music that hasn't been designed, is an example of this dissolve. The self into the instrument, into the group, the situation. Improvisations can surf the dissolve, prolong the dynamic state.

But forms of music? can dissolving spaces be designed?

First, can musical spaces be designed?

Folk forms, musics that we play, create spaces like these. Music designed to be played.
We start from the uncountable multitude of aural traditions. Convention. The gradual systemization of loose form.
Infinite possibility giving way to shaped possibility.

Notation can help serve this function-- it communicates possibility spaces to audiences with a read/write literacy of its system. Scores in general-- visual, verbal, etc.
These are, at their best, guidelines rather than directives.

But scores aren't for everybody-- they're for musicians, for artists, and they thus ignore that important observation, that "an artist isn't a special kind of person; rather, every person is a special kind of artist."
Professionalism breeds work at the expense of play.
Start from what we have.
Now-- recordings rule over our musical landscape.
They have become the new "scores," directives, which all too many live performances seek to reproduce, and lives seek to live in harmony with-- mechanically, reproducible.

There is an intimacy with music that has been lost in our shift toward listening to recordings,

A diminished sense of possibility. Read only.
An object rather than a process.
Toward the impossibility of systemic intervention, pure spectacle.

But not quite-- we know, at the same time, that these recordings open up new possibilities.

We know we can use them.

We know that in some situations we can start & stop them, and we then begin to rediscover that current of musical play. Can we also stretch? isolate? invert? transpose? To the whole? To components? The threads making up the fabric?

Melting constants: variables.

A recording is a thread. A component-- but of something new.

The material of the recording is a substance to sculpt with.

Sampling? Yes, but only as a process-- not the object that it produces.

Synthesis, similarly. The materials of computer music, searching for a new open future where all participants are players.
Imaginary landscapes-- now melting to our touch.

Music as a Tangible Process rather than Gradual Process.

An instrument, a composition, a playspace.

Product as raw material-- the dissolving of recordings, of all things.

A new kind of open form, to discover a fluid architecture of musical space.

And to play out existing architectures, to dance to them.

From these dances-- a shifting form, born of the dissolving self.

Silent Play

4'33", John Cage's famous "silent piece", is a kind of aestheticized proof of the non-existence of silence. The performer is asked to play through three movements, each with one instruction: "tacet" (meaning "remain silent"). At this point, the sounds in the environment become the focus of our attention-- these sounds will always be present, there is no silence. More than an ordinary piece of music, it resembles a ritual, a spiritual exercise in self-restraint and openness to the external world. Cage always talked about the piece as something he played regularly, in all kinds of different situations-- in the city, on the beach, wherever. Perhaps more than a "piece," it's a whole-- a way of being. 

I've had some of my own powerful experiences with it. I remember sitting in my backyard a few summers ago, listening to all the traffic go by. I'd recently been reading a lot of Cage's writings, and I was listening to all of this as I would listen to music. I was just becoming interested in response structures, cybernetic relationships of a kind in all sorts of music-- call and response, chain reactions, loose pulse, etc. This kind of systemic thinking had a profound effect on me, and my experience of the traffic system's dense counterpoint heightened my sense of presence in the environment-- in a way, an awareness of myself as a subject in an endless participatory system, an identity with external forces that behaved the way they did precisely because of my own action (or inaction). If I'd felt the nihilistic urge, I could have gone into the middle of the street to cause an accident (/death) and all the rhythmic and textural changes in the music that would come with that. Cars crashing, bodies squishing, sirens arriving, etc. Xenakis' Formalized Music describes a similar situation..

So, in the right state of mind, the silent piece, which is really a kind of play tactic, can help us uncover new dimensions of this fundamental ludic (playful) message: non-action as action. Contemplation as play. It's a way of being that's rarely encouraged (or even allowed, thanks to time limits and other deadly forces) in videogames, games in general, and maybe this is unfortunate. Still, to be silent (still)-- it's a freedom we can never really be denied. It's an often ignored outer bound of our inner/psychological possibility space deserving of serious exploration. If a reason we play is to seek a kind of identity between ourselves and the materials we're engaged with (and this is a necessary precondition of any spiritual play process), silent play is a way of letting the space be itself on its own terms before engaging with it. Confucius said something along these lines.. "if I am going to play music with another person, first I will sit in silence, and listen to them playing by themselves. Then I will join in."

***

Now, to respond to the above video, a performance of 4'33" in Level 1-2 of Super Mario Bros. (SNES All-Star version) -- Imagine the game is now more aware of our silence. How long it's been since we last pushed a button, and what that button was. If the button was "A", the room gradually begins to grow when we release it. If it was B, the hue of everything on the screen shifts, cycles. The speeds of these processes are determined by how long the button was held. The goombas, too-- if the last button was A, they'll jump in a rhythm based on the time relation between that pressing  and the previous pressing. If the button was B, they'll turn into fish, and suffocate-- the speed of their death is determined by the size of the room.  The lights grow brighter as they die. If the last button we pressed was the down arrow, water will begin to rise (and again, its speed is variable). The color of the room determines the speed at which which we move through the water, it's resistance, or "feel". And in the water, when the feel is right, we too might become a fish.

Recorded Music as Object (and Process)

1. When I play music with another person, at my best I have only one goal-- to play with them. It's the same with an instrument, which has its own unique properties that suggest rhythms, melodies, forms, etc. It's the same with all objects in all situations-- everything essentially functions as a collaborator. Anything can always surprise us if we allow it to-- love the collaborator and whatever surprises it might bring.

2. Recordings are used as functional objects in the lives of listeners; in practice, this diminishes their intrinsic meanings and elevates the meanings of whatever it is that they're being used for. To play a recording is to play music. There are no good recordings or bad recordings, only good or bad playings-- everything is useful in some context. (Everything is useful in every context; with all objects and in all situations, anything can be listened to, reacted to, played with).

3. Brian Eno explained an idea of his somewhere-- over the course of our whole lives, we as individuals only ever listen to one piece of music, a composite of everything we've ever heard. A long time ago, the sections of an individual's "one piece" would likely have been made up of mostly "complete" pieces of music-- an entire concert, an entire recording, etc. Now, most sections of our individual pieces are made up of musical "fragements"-- surfing the internet to find something to our liking, walking in and out of environments with music playing in the background, excerpts of music used to accompany other media, samples, etc. (In practice, fragments and repetitions).

4. Recordings are used as functional objects in the lives of listeners; how we play with a recording is more important than the recording itself.

5. Music software is lowering the barrier of entry to making music. Already, applications exist that give "non-musicians" expressive control of musical materials without their needing to practice a technical craft. One particular craft is still necessary, though, as it always has been-- one of focused listening. 

6. Sampling is a process of playing with recordings as materials: one-way, asynchronous improvisation. At one point I felt that the most important use of this process would be an answer to the question "how can these I use these samples?"; now, I prefer to ask "how can these samples use me?"

7. How we play is more important than what we play and it doesn't matter how we play as long as it's play.

8. A long time ago, the sections of an individual's "one piece" would likely have been made up of mostly "complete" pieces of music-- blocks-- and most perceived meanings would have emerged from the completeness of the blocks themselves. Composers would have had a different experience, tending to listen to blocks on lower levels, the "complete" pieces as composites of smaller blocks, musical materials (instruments, compositional devices, etc.). Now that "complete" pieces have themselves become blocks, "nonmusicans" can become composers with focused listening and loving responses to the blocks at hand. The composites (pieces) which musical materials of the past have produced for us have become our own musical materials.

9. Now we can organize recorded materials, whatever they are, in such a way that both respects possible uses implied by their forms (to love our materials and the ways they surprise us), and respects our own inclinations, our own musical responses to the unique places we occupy in our "one piece".

10. (amor fati, "love of fate")

Soundtracks 1

Video/computer games (most? all?) function similarly enough in time to the way that music does (particularly improvised music) that they can themselves be considered music, or, at the very least, musically meaningful play structures. I've thought about this idea enough now that I'd consider it a truism, and that it isn't apparent to everyone seems due, in large part, to the fact that game soundtracks have so far done very little to reveal the extent of this musicality. 

To be clear here, I think there's a simple formula that can be followed, that has not yet been pursued with any seriousness (or playfulness), that will help begin to reveal the music that lies latent in games:

For every change of state in a game, there should be a corresponding change of state in its soundtrack.

As presented, this is hardly a novel idea except for the inclusion of one word: "every" (which can be substituted with "as many as possible" when dealing with technical limitations).

Recent games such as Mario Galaxy and Portal 2 (and more) have done some exceptional micro-studies in musical interactivity, with certain segments/levels mapping game events and processes to the soundtrack exactly the way that I'd like. However, they can't have mapped more than, say, 5% of game events to musical events, and as such, the musical interactivity becomes a novelty, rather than, as it ought to be, the articulation of a new expressive language.

It's as if, during a game of basketball, there was a 5 minute "experimental" interlude that accompanied all players' actions with a dynamic/improvised soundtrack by the pep band-- this would, without a doubt, be my favorite bit of the game, but it would also be a disappointment in that it didn't take that idea as far as it would stretch, to establish a new kind of basketball, an entirely new formal language, an improvised ballet of a sort. 

Or, if this example is, itself, too novel, it's also as if early humans making vocal sounds, developing a spoken language of signs, for a moment produced sustained tones in unison, singing a perfect fifth--the beginnings of harmony--and then laughed it off, surprised at the unexpected beauty of it all, yet unwilling to continue to explore for longer than 10 seconds, unwilling to discover the language of music itself. 

As pioneers of this new language-- musical gameplay-- games such as Mario Galaxy and Portal 2 ought to be celebrated; as ideals, however, they ought to be tossed aside as garbage, having done only a small fraction of the work (and play) that's necessary. 

Elements of Music as Elements of Games

1. Rhythm

2. Form

3. Timbre

4. Harmony

5. Melody

6. Dynamics

7. Texture

The goal here is to identify elements of games that function similarly, or identically, to each of these musical elements. I'm hesitant to counter the conventional wisdom that games need their own critical vocabulary in such an outright way as pushing the music-game relationship this far (melody in gameplay?), but it's not without purpose. My hope is that by studying and exploring the relationship between the two forms, game makers might be able to better learn from pieces of music the ways in which abstract meanings (which "point" at nothing, but are often the most profound) can be created and used in their designs. At the same time, I hope that players might tune into musical aspects of play that they otherwise wouldn't have. 

1. Rhythm

This is the most obvious parallel, rhythm being basically identical (I think? tell me if I'm wrong) in both games and music. Wikipedia defines rhythm as "the arrangement of sounds and silences in time", which I'll abstract further as "the arrangement of events in short stretches of time" (the arrangement of "long" stretches defining form). Mario's jumps, the spectacular 18th level of Portal (see video, starting at 8:30), Braid's time reversal, and on and on: sequences of game events regularly present us with unique, highly memorable rhythms. Player input contributes to game rhythm as does non-player object behavior and placement (the arrangement of matter in space is a powerful way of suggesting a rhythm; the relationship between architecture and music-- can we not dance about architecture?).

For more info: I write about game rhythm in my old thesis, Kirk Hamilton writes about it in his recent column, and I'm sure others have as well. Let me know if you're aware of any other good sources on this.

2. Form

The arrangement of events in long stretches of time. Obviously, there's some crossover between this and rhythm, with slow rhythms (chess) and quick forms (Warioware) moving at a similar pace, and becoming, maybe, indistinguishable (not that those two games are at all indistinguishable-- just that their pacing might be hard to categorize as either distinctly rhythmic or formal). Aside from its time sub-dividing, what seems unique to me about form, and musical form in particular, is the way it relates events (motifs) from different points in a composition to one another, creating new meanings out of the simple processes of repetition and variation. Musical form has a lot to do with narrative form, and has been used quite extensively in this guise. Ocarina of Time is a great example of a two-part form, with part 2 functioning as an extended variation of part 1. The Mario games do repetition and variation wonderfully, with old mechanics constantly being re-contextualized by a level's design.

There's so much to study here, and I hope to return to it in greater depth... maybe with a critique of Jonathan Blow's Raspberry, which I recently replayed--it's a game that does an admirable job of consciously creating its own rhythmic and formal language and developing it musically.

3. Timbre

This is the first element that seems to be pushing the relationship a bit-- in fact, quite a lot. Timbre, also known as "tone color," is defined by Wikipedia as "the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices or musical instruments." (Despite both being stringed instruments, a guitar and piano sound different-- they have different timbres). Unlike rhythm and form, which exist in games in much the same way that they do in music, timbre, as defined above, is incapable of existing in games, being a physical property of sound. Still, if we go backwards a bit, and pick apart our definition/understanding, we may find a fitting analogy/parallel.

I don't know anything about physics, but, using my fingers and common sense, it seems clear that timbre is a function of touch in sound-- certain tactile qualities manifesting themselves sonically. Pianos and guitars sound different because they use different types of string, one is hammered with felt while the other is plucked or strummed, one is much larger than the other, etc. So, while the sonic aspects of timbre may be untransferable to an understanding of games, the tactile element is certainly very relevant. Walking on different surfaces in Mario games (excuse my repeated use of these as examples), like ice, sand, and honey, there is a distinctive tactile experience that, if not a kind of timbre itself, is certainly very much like the played experience of producing different timbres. Bringing back the old analogy from my thesis, the mechanics of a game can be likened to an instrument in a piece of music; the feel of those mechanics (or how they interact with the world, i.e. honey), being the feel of instrument, is an experience which has everything to do with timbre. 

Watch this Derek Bailey clip, and go to a guitar to make all those sounds. It's fun--it feels great-- like walking through sand, ice, and honey.

4. Harmony

Harmony as defined by pitch relationships has no place in a gameplay analysis. However, there is, again, a broader definition which could theoretically be applied with success. Pitch harmony describes how fast one pitch is vibrating compared to another. A pitch an octave above another is vibrating twice as fast. A  pitch a perfect fifth (the first interval of "twinkle twinkle little star") above another is vibrating 1.5 times as fast. &c&c... So, pitched harmony can be described by simple (sometimes, though sometimes not: read up here) ratios.

The idea with applying this to games is that the speed of these "pitches" can be slowed down dramatically, with the "vibrating" units of time producing rhythms (or forms) instead of pitches. To do this, repetitions (of events) need to happen less than ~10 times per second as opposed to, say, 440 (this is how many times per second an A below middle C vibrates).

Though it's not interactive, there's interesting precedent in the visual harmony pieces of James Whitney. See the video below, and the whitney music box (this reveals the harmonic principles really nicely). He's got a good book on the subject, too, though it looks like it's sort of rare... some libraries ought to have it.

To my knowledge, no games have used this device consciously. However, it wouldn't be difficult to implement as a visual/spatial device, or one based on event timings.

5. Melody

I've got nothing to say here except that melodies in the traditional sense perform a kind of free movement within a harmonic space. So, shifting spatial/rhythmic harmonies could potentially produce a similar effect? This really is pushing this analogy further than it wants to go, I think... so, let's stop there.

6. Dynamics

How loud or quiet a sound is. Again, not applicable unless we consider the processes used by an instrumentalist to create a loud or quiet sound. This is generally controlled by the intensity of input. The speed of swinging a Wiimote, or how much finger is pressed down on a touch screen (this has been used to simulate velocity), or how quickly an analog stick is moved from point 0 to point 1 could be considered fitting comparisons. 

7. Texture

Wikipedia calls it "the way melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall quality or sound of a piece." I'd add to that list timbre and dynamics.... so, everything except form; texture describes what's happening in a given section of a form--what sounds are present? what are they doing? It often changes throughout a piece:

It's hugely relevant for games, I think, in that it synthesizes all of these musical ideas into a whole: what objects are present? what are they doing? how do their actions (including the players') relate to one another?

Game textures parallel musical textures in fairly intuitive ways. I forgot if I'd read him describe it in this way, but Steph Thirion's Eliss is a great example of counterpoint in games, insofar as it has the player controlling multiple objects, performing a variety of actions simultaneously. Pikmin sort of feels like you're directing a Big Band. Fighting games are often thought of by skilled players as resembling musical duets or conversations...

The analogies could go on and on, but the basic idea is out there: a game's texture consists of what objects are present and what they're doing. This is about as simple as it can be, but there's so much that music has and continues to do with this idea, that it would be a shame not to listen.

***

I've not been able to go into much depth with any of these elements, though I hope I've made an alright case for considering them legitimate aspects of games (except melody). Of course, lots of games have most of these elements, and many have all of them-- it's because of this that I consider them pieces of music... though I don't consider many to be great pieces of music. I'm not sure what needs to happen to change this (though I have a sense it has to do with a shifting possibility space... more on that later), but I think that studying how music does what it does and how that relates to game designs should prove helpful.

And on top of this, how the actual sounds being produced by a game contribute to the musicality of the experience is huge... so, more on that in a bit.

Musical Play

In the fall of 2009, I wrote my undergraduate senior thesis on certain aspects of the relationship between games and music; the paper can be found here, though since writing it, I've not been very happy with it, for a variety of reasons. It's poorly written. The form reflects a messy marriage of my own goals and the project's official requirements. It's fairly boring. Here's a brief summary, which may not always be clear. 

1. Games are not just similar to, but, in fact, are music: non-aural music, in the same way that film, dance, and other time-based media are. I think I made this claim having just learned about visual music and wanted to run with that idea... One of the implications of this is that, once something is music, it's irresponsible in a way to ignore that. People that don't understand the musicality of film are going be lousy film-editors, non-musical dancers are going to disappoint... same thing with games, is what I was trying to point out.

2. As pieces of music, games function as both instrument and composition. A game's mechanics are its instrumental aspect, in that they set absolute boundaries, "walls" in the possibility space which cannot be ignored. A game's rules are its compositional aspect, artificial boundaries which can be ignored, but which, hopefully, ask the player to explore interesting/meaningful ways of playing that s/he might not have otherwise. This is one of my favorite parts of the paper, though I fail to address a lot of things that I wish I had spent time with... For instance, the fact that I've developed a kind of ethic which favors instrument over composition,  the absolute over the artificial-- and, eventually, freedom over form. Or the fact that, despite what I said about my freedom ethic, these concepts don't actually break down into so clean a binary as I might like-- that the grey areas are where some of the most interesting stuff lies.

3. A value judgment: I consider musical play to be more meaningful than game play. This is because musical play has only aesthetic goals, focused in the present, while game play has competitive goals, focused in the future. I've never really liked "games" proper all that much, so this is an undeniably biased point of view... still, consider those ideas about time, and ask yourself what you value. These types of play are psychological states in the player as opposed to design decisions, though the two ought to be related, I think.

4. Finally, I conclude with a lazy taxonomy of common game rhythms which basically breaks down to a distinction between the metered and the free. My original outline had a lot more going for it here, and I hope to come back to the idea and do it better justice.

My goal with this blog is to continue to explore these and other related ideas.