[brundolf]

There's something intoxicating about the idea of building worlds out of systems, feeling like you've captured infinite permutations of some phenomenon in a simple set of rules. This idea of writing worlds into existence with the flick of a wrist is the thing that first got me into computers. In some sense it's the dream that still keeps me going.

My perspective has been sobered quite a bit over the years - these things are rarely as simple as we might imagine they could be - but it remains heady stuff. I can see how it might give the right kind of person delusions of grandeur.

The egoism on display here is pretty offputting, but I feel kinship with the "dreamer" mentality underneath. This guy had a vision, and he was uncompromising in his pursuit of it, and even if the end result wasn't worth much to anyone else, some part of me has to respect that.

I'm reminded of The Room (movie)'s Tommy Wiseau. Another creative who thought he was a genius and poured his blood, sweat, and tears into his life's passion project, and it turned out to be pretty objectively bad. But it was meaningful to him, and there's something to that. There were no ulterior motives; he wanted to put this piece of himself out into the world. There's a purity of spirit. I think what's missing for these individuals is the self-awareness to know that this thing is mostly just for them, and to be okay with that idea and embrace it. That way lies happiness, I think.

[monopoledance]

> The egoism on display here is pretty offputting

This is not egoism, but indeed straight narcissism. And it matches overstating a "vision". The intoxicating part may be the dream of recognition and importance. I don't think this is a good metric to assign value, at all.

[tomxor]

> My perspective has been sobered quite a bit over the years - these things are rarely as simple as we might imagine they could be - but it remains heady stuff. I can see how it might give the right kind of person delusions of grandeur.

Likewise, although i've settled on a slightly different perspective: that most systems have simple rules (if you go low enough), and that the complexity is in the emergent behavior... it's not that we cannot necessarily capture the former, but that our concept of computer is far too tiny to run those rules in enough depth or breadth. It hasn't lessened the interest for me though. The more I understand the less those childish ideas of "grandeure" make sense, to the point that my instinct is to be suspicious of ideas focused on exploitation rather than exploration, although they can be good seeds for exploration in the form of "what ifs".

[thecupisblue]

>Likewise, although i've settled on a slightly different perspective: that most systems have simple rules (if you go low enough), and that the complexity is in the emergent behavior

I concur with this. The emergent behaviour is usually the only thing we can observe, so we model our systems according to it. The most beautiful (and usually the truest) models lie in the simplicity that causes the behaviour to emerge.

I wouldn't say our computers are too tiny, just that our brains aren't used to thinking in those terms, but we discover it by deep thinking and "deep iteration" in the topic and have to approach it from multiple sides.

Imagine yourself as a kid sitting at a chess-game, playing against Magnus Carlsen. You don't know who the guy is, you were just sitting at the sundae bar when the dude at the next table said "hey", pulled out a chess et and asked "Wanna play?". So you naively say ok, you got some time to kill while waiting for mom to pick you up.

And you start playing. You kinda know the basic rules and what the figures do. So you make a move, he makes a move, you make a move...a minute later, you eat his pawn. Ha! He did not see that coming. Soon, another one. You're killing this guy. 2 moves later, you're left with nothing but the king, running around the board. What the heck even happened?

Our minds are used to the "Eat figures = Win games" outlook, where simple steps lead to simple outcomes. While for Magnus, the figure you ate was a sacrifice that opened up a spot he will move his queen through in 3 moves. He knows the common patterns, permutations, defenses and can see moves ahead.

Our minds aren't used to thinking ahead and seeing what the sideffect of a sideffect does to the result of the sideeffect of the sideffect. Maybe once we were better at it, but we have more interruptions so less time and depth to it (in general).

That is why we can't figure out the simple rules at first - we can't see the trees from the forest.

[runawaybottle]

Is it even self awareness or a lack of editing? Like okay, yours is a game that doesn’t get a lot of traction, but you know what else doesn’t? Board games in general. No one said you have to be entirely selfless, and one’s conviction would appear just as fraudulent if it came in the guise of piety.

Here’s what you could have done: Find five other great board games that everyone else overlooks and explain why they are dope. Put a small blurb about why your game falls in this class, and why you are proud to be in that group.

It checks off all the boxes - misunderstood, ahead of it’s time, probably genius conceptual ideas.

[WA]

The funny thing is that most creators experience this, if they put their work out there: What they think is their greatest piece often isn't really perceived as such and some random thing of theirs might struck a nerve in others. This applies to a lot of things: blog posts, Tweets, videos, music, paintings, and obviously games.

[TRcontrarian]

I've heard that Stephen King considers the Dark Tower series his greatest work[1][2], but almost none of his fans do[3][4]. The intent of a work can be far divorced from the public reception of it.

[1] https://darktower.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_Series [2] https://stephenking.com/darktower/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/02...? [4] https://stephenking.com/xf/index.php?threads/which-king-book...

[dash2]

Reminds me of Archy on Shakespeare [1]:

  here i am ben says bill
  nothing but a lousy playwright
  and with anything like luck
  in the breaks i might have been
  a fairly decent sonnet writer
  i might have been a poet
  if i had kept away from the theatre

  ...

  well says i pete
  bill s plays are highly
  esteemed to this day
  is that so says pete
  poor mutt little he would
  care what poor bill wanted
  was to be a poet

[1] http://ianchadwick.com/blog/three-archy-poems-by-don-marquis...

[tincholio]

Well, the first 4 books are some of his best writing, I think... The final 3 suck terribly, and were a great disappointment (to me, of course, maybe some people actually liked them)

[agentwiggles]

Overall I agree, but I actually quite like the ending of the series. I've read lots of folks online who absolutely hated what ultimately happens to Roland - I thought it was a cool ending which was very much in keeping with the sort of "cosmic cycles" theme of the books. That said, there is a _lot_ of junk in those final three books, and the seventh one in particular drops the ball in several disappointing ways before it ends.

[arkh]

It was the best ending possible. The first line of the first book was what hooked me on this universe, so I loved reading the last line years later.

[pram]

This is painfully true. I put my art on Twitter/IG and the most popular things overall are nowhere close to my favorite. I genuinely can’t even comprehend why they are. I’m not sure I could even attempt to “pander” by making more of the same subject matter, because I’m not convinced I’d replicate the correct thing lol

[WA]

Maybe ask people, but not sure if it's the same thing. Or put more stuff out there at random.

[EamonnMR]

Apex Twin (the electronic music producer) put hours and hours of unreleased work[1] out for free a few years ago. One striking thing about the release is the number of true gems in there that outshine published work.

1: https://archive.org/details/AphexTwinAllUser18081971Soundclo...

[breck]

> lack of editing?

Lack of editing I think has it's place.

When you know roughly where to go and want to make money and go to market, build a team and have the team edit each other's work.

When you want to figure something out in a totally new domain, don't waste time on editing just throw shit out there and run.

[brundolf]

(I want to clarify, in case it's unclear, that I am not the OP)

[runawaybottle]

Oh I know, I can’t write for shit, so did something rhetorically lazy.

[bredren]

The Room is not objectively bad.

[DonHopkins]

Hi doggie!

You must admit that the flower shop scene was a tad unrealistic, in that he was able to find a free illegal parking space right out in front of the store in San Francisco, and he didn't even get ticketed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkoXhgtI58

[joosters]

The flower shop staff were looking out for him, after all he is their favourite customer :-)

[tekkk]

I admire you taking a stance for The Room but when a movie is generally lauded as one of the worst movies ever made, you are kind of on the losing side. Maybe there's good parts in there and sure, what is bad depends on the viewer. Yet sometimes you just have to admit that even with all the subjective bias removed something is just bad.

[bredren]

Generally lauded as a bad movie does not make The Room bad art.

Have you seen the film at a sold out crowd at cinema 21 in Portland?

There is a culture of the film and its participating attendees Marvel movies do not match.

You can say it is a bad film or you can say you don’t like that it doesn’t fit with your idea of what makes a movie objectively good. But it is absolutely not bad art.

Bad art is all around us. But it is not The Room.

[redisman]

The Room is like outsider art. Which is a really dumb label if you think about what art is supposed to be

[jfc_taxman]

"The Matrix Was a Trans Allegory, Confirms Lilly Wachowski" https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/08/the-matrix-tran...

[NestedLoopGoBrr]

Sure, but what’s the argument here?

[me_me_me]

No it wasn't. Its whatever you feel like it is.

That's the whole point of art.

[arken]

Guernica is a painting about how great war is.

[me_me_me]

Not really into art so i googled it.

Guernica is a large 1937 oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It is one of his best known works, regarded by many art critics as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history - wikipedia

Anyhow, art is subjective. You can interpret it as you like, because its how it makes you feel. And you can argue for or against a point, but it doesn't really matter. As its almost like arguing what flavor of ice-cream is the best.

[mrtranscendence]

Art is not entirely, 100% subjective, or else there would be nothing to say about it, nothing to discuss. Authorial intent is not the last word but it can be interesting, and it can impact the interpretation we come away with.

[me_me_me]

I agree. Art is very loose term, when line between when craft becomes art is very blurry. Same with the meaning behind it.

Someone might argue that author interpretation was intentionally stated in bad faith as a artistic performance etc.

But in the end an interesting discussion is probably the thing of most value (for me at least).

[stickfigure]

Sure... but authorial intent is also sometimes completely irrelevant. Ask the creator of Pepe the Frog.

[user-the-name]

(That is not the whole point of art)