The Game Creator Edition

On puzzles, design, and creativity

Stephanie Balzer (SB) is a writer, coach, and founder of Mission. She recently wrote the Art in Vegas and Lip Gloss editions. 

Stephanie here. Not long ago I had the pleasure of being the adult in charge of my nieces and nephew for a few days. One of my jobs was to pick everyone up from school, including the youngest who hopped in the car, gave me the lowdown on the playground, then told me about the book she’d checked out: Komodo Dragon vs. King Cobra: Who Would Win?

I’m happy to report that we discussed author Jerry Pallotta’s cold-blooded thriller the rest of the way home, turning our speculation into a game. She took the side of the lizard so I argued on behalf of the snake. We debated their physical advantages—legs vs. no legs, the possibilities of venom, and who was cuter.

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Then I collected the teenagers—we really leaned into our screen time—made dinner, and did homework. Finally, it was time to find out who would win.

I’m not going to spoil the ending in case you decide to read the book. But our speculation, and the process of drawing out the suspense by delaying the conclusion, reminded me of something similar that happened over the holidays. Late one night, we started watching The Glass Onion, a puzzle film, but then had to turn it off when people began to fade.

Again, not to spoil too much—and hopefully you’ve already seen the movie in advance of the Oscars—but I do have to share one of the big reveals: there’s a second murder. We paused right after that, which definitely heightened the suspense. Throughout the next day, we made a game out of guessing what was happening: Who was the killer? What was their motive? Where did Kate Hudson’s character get that metallic rainbow dress?

Why is this interesting?

People are fascinated with mysteries and solving puzzles. What’s more curious to me, though, is our ability to design them. 

The philosophy of puzzles, games, and play is truly a rabbit hole. I’ve also been asking—probably to the chagrin of those who have been studying it for years—whether artificial intelligence can play, or how people might play differently than a machine. It’s all too much to include here, and others are more qualified to write about it anyway.

But I did like this conversation between Ezra Klein and C. Thi Nguyen, who studies the philosophy of games and refers to them as an “existential balm”:

…games are these weird things where people give you artificial constraints and artificial goals. And when you take them up, what you’ve done is you’ve accepted this artist’s design and now you’re in this experience of like— OK, so I’m a rock climber. And one of the interesting things about rock climbing is the goal is in some sense stupid. You’re trying to get up a rock the hard way.

We are all inventing games all of the time. Sometimes they even transcend the boundaries of our personal lives to reach a larger audience. For example, everyone knows that a software engineer in Brooklyn created Wordle as a gift for his partner.

Pickleball was invented in 1965 by a congressman and his friend who combined ping-pong paddles with an old badminton court. The next weekend, they taught their friends, and then they wrote down the rules. Tens of millions of people play pickleball today, and I try not to hold it against them.

A friend and I made up a sport, too, when we were in college. It’s called trivetball, and it’s very similar to pickleball but played in a shitty apartment complex living room with wicker trivets for paddles. Unfortunately for us, we did not think to write down the rules.

Still, trivetball illustrates a point, and that’s probably just as cool. The best of this genre might spring from circumstance and incorporate makeshift tools and resources that are readily available. Nguyen likened game creators to artists, and I see it. Perhaps we love games more because of their quirky constraints and imperfections, the way we like to see pencil marks as a vestige of the painter’s process in their masterpiece. (SB)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Stephanie (SB)

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