these ideas got /inside me/, man!! i don't know exactly how to explain it but it really feels like engaging with this game taught me The Truth.
like, you gotta let things be how they are. sometimes that means stepping back and letting things settle into their natural shapes. sometimes it means stepping UP and putting in the hard work to get them where they're going. both are good! both are true! do you see??
and you gotta meet people where they're at. with complete respect and without hiding the truth from them! without sectioning them off into a little fuckin zone! but still you must PROVIDE.
this game has deeply important ethics lessons for you, if you listen.
(Yeah read the whole thread it's good.)
So on one level like it even seems absurd to say the game teaches ethics, on the surface there's not much that looks like that! It's not telling a story with characters and morals and quotes. You could say that the ideas that Jake's talking about aren't in the game at all, and entirely in his head - but I believe him. It's meaningfully something he got out of it, that emerged from the Jake+HACK system as he spent time with it, not just thoughts he would have had on his own without the game as an - inspiration? object of meditation? friend?
Man, this what making art is all about!
I don't know how much of these ideas I "put in there". I definitely didn't make the game as an allegory to communicate a specific message. But I tried thoughtfully to make good art.
It's this alchemy that happens when thoughtful, heartfelt work comes together with an earnest audience (cocreator?) and it unwinds in them and something new comes out. Different people will get different things out, because it's the interaction between.. some people might not get anything - or might not like what they get - but what I mean by a thing being "art" is essentially this quality of revealing new depths through engaging with it. (Does "better" art mean art that can alchemise with more different souls? Is that a thing?)
Ok that's that thought! One of the really nice things about doing this crowdfunding is seeing lots of different people saying stuff about what my work has meant to them! Thank you everyone!
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