Collective Playgrounds

Coming back to this place after more than half a year is somehow reinvigorating. I instantly feel like adding features, decorations, styling and infinite other stuff. But for the sake of minimalism, I will actually just keep things as they are, just bring here some writing and a watercolor I made these past days, and once this has become easy and automatic, I will think about more things. First build the practice, then care about polish.

Andres

Slow Play (23/12/2025)

A snail advances in a deserted, dry ground, leaving a humid trail where grass starts growing. Further down the trail, the grass is joined by flowers, bushes, and trees, leading eventually to a forest. Watercolor on paper.

Not really finding the words for poetry, I have to try and warm up the writing with whatever works, perhaps will eventually find poetry in the writing.

The non-human character protagonist and/or avatar has been captivating my game fantasies lately. Embodying other physical realities seems like one of the easiest ways of creating empathy with perspectives that are far away from ours. Grasshoppers, Moss, Snails, Butterflies, but also beings of entangled life, like forests, rivers, coral reefs.

I acknowedge our common human game fantasies are infinitely varied, but can only be sadened by how it seems that the more basic human problem-solving is the most repeated and by far the more extended reality in games. Our most basic instinct, danger, and the most basic reaction to it, direct violence, could be the easiest play space we humans produce.

Now, what amount of this dynamic is just the massive pressure of an industry and a society that *loves* weapons? Would most of our play spaces be centered around armed conflict and domination if most resources that fund videogames didn't come directly or indirectly from empires?

I do think humans keep over and over prefering fantasies of *building* rather than fantasies of *destroying*, even if some of our ability to imagine will get tangled in that which we are surrounded by. My visit this past September to Lithuania and the conversations I had there with other game and non-game people at Blon festival are particularly interesting for this, as there was a general sensation of impossibility when talking about war to achieve anything through diplomatic means. Imagine 90% of the game industry was producing games about negotiation and diplomacy, would this filter down in our shared common senses and invite us to question policies like multiplying defense budgets all over Europe?

I will go back to snails. I intend to write a longer peace about games for diplomacy, war-gaming, where I throw all my questions about this, but for the moment, I will leave this as a confused episode of "what games are we promoting vs what are the play spaces we want to exist in and make". And I happen to *love* play spaces that differ from my experience of reality.

In a way, the further away something manages to bring me, the more I feel my *self grows*. Our fantasies (here I say fantasy in a specifically loose sense, meaning our imaginations, our dreams, our hallucinations, all those spaces that do not belong to our immediate reality) extend our realm of sensibility. Existing as a snail (something I have already seen a game about), I love the idea of caring about moisture. In fact, **loving moisture**. Being grateful for the moisture that allows me to live, and giving back moisture to the earth from my goey, slimy self. I recognize myself as part of the moisture realms, I am an emisary of water. Along with All that is Humid, we extend the generosity of water into the dry ground, and make life easier, we multiply homes.

* Mechanic I: Moisture trail allows plants to grow. insisting on a trail adds moisture level to the ground. Wet ground can be navigated by plant life, which sustain most other life forms. Plant life covers the map, incrementally adding layers of life based on sustenance and time. A patch of land that has stayed wet for long enough will not only be covered by lichen, moss and grasses, but also bushes, flowers and trees, consolidating forests.

* Mechanic II: Player inhabits different life-forms every time a run ends (every time their previous body ends). Different living bodies have different requirements, and they provide different ways of navigating the world.

I wish us all the patience and space to slow down. And in that slowness, to keep playing.