I am a "gamer" of sorts seeking to dismantle the current tradition of video games.

I'm not sure I'll ever be a designer, but I definitely have a lot of ideas for creating interactive experiences beyond the Coin-Op Paradigm that pervades 90% (including indie) games. The problem is game itself. Game sets up rules for arbitrary play. A relationship between dog and human is play, but it is hardly arbitrary. It also has no rules and the experience is highly improvised and fertile in the moment of irrational (emotional) interactions. Perhaps a bizarre example, but hopefully illustrates my point of view about play and experience.

In an interactive world, there should be little amount of cognitive function to engage the experience (this allows for a higher emotional response). All "games" should have the movement and flow of grace for it to illustrate the highest level of meaning. Meaning is more important than challenge and meaning cannot exist if rule-sets are in place. Death is useless. God-mode is supreme. Moving away from punishment and token-reward systems is paramount to separating videogames from notgames.

All genre conventions so far reek of game designers not knowing what the input code really represents. I have begun to see most games as players interacting within an IDE context unconscious to the designer him/herself. This might be due to the primitive approach of using abstract code to design a 2D/3D world under the genres of FPS, TPS, RTS, TBS and RPG (even though by all definitions they are technically forms of functional states within the virtual world). All these stats, scores etc prove more to the point that these games are still incomplete due to the confusion that input code has now become symbolic objects of mundane chores (like algorithms) in a desperate attempt to scrounge for meaning within the magic circle.

The magic circle should NOT be about the space with which a player interacts, but rather, the time in which the player can interact. The magic circle is the PLAYER'S MIND. Not the virtual space that the mind of the player can play in. Time is the key. The only feedback loop that matters is real-world time (flow) with the controller (technically a kinesthetic portal-device) connecting with virtual-world time (static).

Anyways, that is my rant about the current state of the videogame industry. It is an absolute pleasure to see a forum like this around, as for a long time I thought I was the only one who began questioning such things. What a joy to find that I'm not alone.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to the future discussions of notgame phenomena!