thread: 2005-03-16 : Solo Play and Kid Play
On 2005-03-17, Eric wrote:
Real-time quantitative testing is underway as we speak. (Grin.) Or not; you're right, I'm really not sure. Which is why it was a gedankexperiment only. Long, long periods of time was the easiest way I could think of to "split" one person into effectively two roles per the Czege pr.; I'm sure there are others, but they're probably even harder to set up. (Self-administered electroshock, heavy drug or alcohol use, or MPD are the others that come to mind. I'll wait the three years, thanks.)
Hence my comments about not being sure whether it's playable or not, as written. The non-pure version I float at the end of the post, which is basically a twisted real-time PBEM with a kind of randomized remote GM function, is honestly much more interesting as an actual game. Still probably not playable, though.
I would note, though, that the possible risk of "t'ain't no fun" due to waiting three years (or administering EST!), while totally real, is different in kind than the "t'ain't no fun" the Czege Principle was intended to address, which has to do with frustrating your own protagonism. So I think it does break the Principle itself, even if there turns out to be a different barrier-to-fun hiding beyond the break.
Blink. The mind is a strange place. I had a sudden urge to wait until xoxing becomes feasible and then play A Year And A Day with a copy of myself.
Back on-topic for this thread, though, I think there's a lot of cool ground hiding in the scattered observations that kids are having fun with this because they're omitting some kind of expectation... expectations of judgment, witnessing, meaningful adversity, and so forth. The implication being that the Czege Principle is actually something that creeps up on us and isn't present in kids. They don't mind providing mock-adversity and then resolving it themselves.
Here's a thought. I submit that kids haven't ever learned Stances a'tall. Not the theory, the actual concept. The kind of play we're talking about here is, seen in Stance terms, a neato kind of naif Actor/Author/Director meld with no distinctions... IMO, not even at any given instant. Which is something we just can't seem to manage as adults. I'll submit that the when Vincent says But how long is that fun for? Like twenty seconds?, the point where it stops being fun is the point where your mind tries to figure out which Stance, or other consistent approach, to use here.
Which may just be another way of saying that they don't analyze the fun they're having.
