Post by BabylonTheGreat in The Inhumanity of Hit Points comments

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This was a essay written in a brief time window for a "Manifesto Jam" in which we were asked to generate utopian/dystopian/impossible provocations for video games rather than a complete philosophical program or categorical imperative (in fact I have no idea how anybody would have come across this without that context). Treat its universalizing language/imperatives the same way you'd treat "Dada Means Nothing" or "Vow of Chastity" in the Dada/Dogme 95 manifestos, or "Skeletons Should Not Wear Armor" or "Never Apologize" amongst the other cohorts in the Manifesto Jam. It's a potential (personal) project you sign on to, not an edict from on high.

In any event, I think the Chesterton's Fence reference is not quite the right one, since I don't think either you or I are really confused about what HP is for (if anything it seems like the extent to which we think it is a load-bearing concept in video games). I would think the response to the "imagine how limiting hands are" argument would be "imagine ways of interacting with the world that are not bound by what hands alone can do" which would lead you to, you know, hammers and axes and tools and writing implements and so on. In short, thinking beyond the limits of hands here would seem to be a good thing for design (and there's probably an aside here about how many curb-cutting inventions were made by or for people with physical disabilities to exactly overcome the problem of living in a world where we design things almost exclusively assuming everybody has two equally dextrous hands).

In the same way, I think encouraging people to think of ways of rewarding or punishing players beyond incrementing or decrementing their HP (or something very obviously analogous to HP, like "affection points" in a VN, say) could result in some more interesting ways of designing and thinking about games. And yes, I am aware that there are games where HP is barely there or absent; as mentioned, I think Portal is an example of a good "HP-lite" game. It's in the engine and it gets impacted by entities, but it's more a timer to force you out of turret fire than anything. I think DF/Rimworld-esque city/colony management games also do an interesting thing with the HP-like element of the number of colonists/pawns/workers, where you lose if you run out of people, but 1) the people are more interesting than just existing as a number 2) there are infrastructure and gameplay challenges to having more people, beyond just a number to hoard.

If this doesn't give you any solace, then take comfort in the fact that I have absolutely no authority, influence, or power in the video game community and so even if you think the program laid out in the manifesto is dangerous and ignorant, nobody is likely to do anything about it.

Nitonise3 years ago(+1)

>Treat its universalizing language/imperatives the same way you'd treat "Dada Means Nothing"

In other words, it was purposedly overdramatized and made sound more radical than you really believe, right?

>In any event, I think the Chesterton's Fence reference is not quite the right one, since I don't think either you or I are really confused about what HP is for

The key part in this case is "Rather, they should be able to show how tearing things down constitutes an actual improvement." Not just "by not using X we would be forced to be more creative about how we do things". I think the person who would said that would need to show actual alternatives for X and that these alternatives are improvement over using X. Otherwise, it's like cutting budget of a film in hope that it will become better due to creators of the film being forced to become more creative with their more limited means.

Theoretically, it can indeed happen, but other outcomes are much more likely:

A) People use their limited means more creatively, but this doesn't make film better compared with alternative world where the budget wasn't cut.

B) People fail to be creative and just fallback on cheaper and more primitive techniques and make shorter, less polished, film

The problem is that HP are so universal construct, that it's very unlikely that there is possible equally universal construct that could replace HP AND be an improvement. At the very best you could show that in such and such specific scenarios a game is better without HP for such and such reasons. So you can't dismantle HP universally if you can't replace it universally.

>the response to the "imagine how limiting hands are" argument would be "imagine ways of interacting with the world that are not bound by what hands alone can do" which would lead you to, you know, hammers and axes and tools and writing implements and so on.

You provided quite ironic examples for alleged results of thinking outside "use-hands" worldview. Because they still need hands to useful, you still use your hands, just indirectly. So, say, sentient handless humanoid aliens wouldn't came up with idea of, say, hammer, at the least not in the form that humans invented, which shows that hammers created by humans weren't created outside of "use-hands" worldview.

I would rather extend "imagine ways of interacting with the world that are not bound by what hands alone can do" by adding "and if you fail to make an improvement, fall back to hands-using worldview". This way this turns into a creative procedure that won't make things worse (in the worst case) and can even make things better (in the best case). If we replace "hands" with arbitrary X, we can use this procedure in general to increase amount of originality in our projects.

BabylonTheGreat3 years ago(+3)

> In other words, it was purposedly overdramatized and made sound more radical than you really believe, right?

I mean that it is a manifesto in a very specific genre sense, written like the other manifestos, (like the other ones in the jam, or historical examples that I mentioned earlier like the Dogme 95, Futurist, or Dada, Surrealist manifestos, etc.), where provocative statements are meant as a rallying cry to reimagine an existing artistic movement or define and codify an emerging one. If you don't like the manifesto, then don't sign on to it! It's really that simple. Like, you don't go to a Dadaist and say "I want you to make two versions of your Dadaist poem: one where it's made randomly from cut out words like you suggest, and one where the words are in order they were in the newspaper you took it from, and if the second poem is objectively better, then you'll give up your art movement, right?" It just seems to be a category error to me.

But I will admit some confusion here as to what your rhetorical goals are or which specific windmill you're tilting at.

itch.io

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