79 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
79 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Distance and the degamification of play
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author: Madison Scott-Clary
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description: ""
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revisions: []
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created: 2020-12-14T13:15:43.525088537-08:00
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modified: 2020-12-14T13:15:43.525088626-08:00
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---
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# Distance and the degamification of play
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A video essay about how distance of all sorts helps separate game from play
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## Pioneer 9
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Start with some history about Pioneer 9, its genesis, and its end.
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## Lets talk about football
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Hard pivot into talking about 17776/20020 via "Lets talk about football."
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### What they are
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#### 17776
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17776 is a work of interactive fiction by Jon Bois and Secret Base hosted on the sports news website SBNation. Following the awakening of the Pioneer 9 space probe to consciousness, it explores what it means to be immortal and bored on a level that I certainly have never seen in fiction before.
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It is also about football.
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#### 20020
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20020 is a piece of interactive fiction by Jon Bois and Secret base hosted on the sports news website SBNation. Like its predecessor, it explores the meaning - or paucity thereof - of an immortal life.
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It is also about one 2217 year long game of college football.
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### Why they are
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It is difficult to explain why something exists at the best of times, but doubly so when that thing is a piece of postmodern literature taking the form solely of conversations between space probes sixteen and eighteen thousand years in the future.
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It's probably worthwhile to put the works into the context of when they came about and who it was that created them.
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## On distance
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### Spatial distance
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The three satellites and the their distance from Earth abstracting the game out of play
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### Ability distance
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The further away from being a beginner one gets, the less it seems like play and more like work (alt title: the deplayification of gaming)
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### Temporal distance
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The further one gets from the origin of a game, the less it feels like a game and the more it feels like a story.
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Football has been around a long time by 17776 and even longer by 20020 (College ball has been going for 2217 years), and it feels less like a game and more like a story at this point; the longer a gam
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e runs, the more abstract the game portion of it feels.
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## From game to story
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### Becoming immortal
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### Enby icon Pioneer 9
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### Nick and Manny
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