The videogame
industry is broken.
Players are acutely aware of how they are being exploited by developers, developers are frustrated as their games are perverted to serve lootboxes, and financiers are frustrated because Candy Crush makes them oodles more money than a retro platform – and they don’t get why they can’t just monetize the platformer as much.
The vitriol is aimed at all of them, but the truth is it is neither developer, nor player, nor financier who is to blame. It’s the things between them. The way things are done. And it’s time we destroyed the way things are, and build it. Anew.
It is time we talk about what Play really is.
ONE.
PLAY COMES FIRST
Before you can lead a soccer team to a league championship, you have to kick the ball. Play exists before anything else.
This means games start not with a world, but with a tilt of the controller. With each tilt and button press, an order emerges. This order is an understanding of the rules, the functions, and all the possibilities they bring.
TWO.
PLAY IS NOW
Play does not concern itself with the future or past. It is the movement of your body, the pounding of your heart, the words that you’re thinking as you read this sentence.
As the game grows, it is the responsibility of the developer to ensure only the now enters. It is their job to protect Play.
THREE.
PLAY IS NEW
Pete Gogolak played. Dendi Played. The Eagles played. These moments happened because of the extraordinary agency afforded the players within a very tightly controlled space. This space allows experimentation. It allows boundaries to be broken. It is the new.
Developers have a responsibility to maintain these spaces to enable the new, not crush the new.
FOUR.
PLAY IS FREE
If you monetize play, you break it. If you say otherwise, you’re wrong. FIFA doesn’t monetize vanity items for players, charge them for special bonuses, and it doesn’t slow them down if they are poor.
Being as ethical as FIFA is a very low goddamn bar.
Within NOR, Play is never monetized. Play will always be free.
FIVE.
PLAY IS NAIVE
Three Card Monty works because the players are given the experience of feeling like they are good at the game. The space the game holds is a fragile illusion, one any hustler knows players are scared to shatter.
Modern Game Development is no different.
Players all get to enjoy being empowered. Until the game turns on you, pushes you into paying to continue that enjoyment, and the scam is complete.
SIX.
PLAY IS ALIVE
Within the space of the game, Play is a living, breathing force. Eventually all games end, and this ending concludes play, setting it in stone.
Concretized endings make space for the new. This closure enables the play – now past – to become something else. They become part of the emergent Metagame.
SEVEN.
META COMES SECOND
Among the sea of concluded games, another type of player emerges. Looking over all the games, they see patterns. They recognize efficiencies. The Past and Future come together in a new game, one beyond the games.
Metagames are the result. Simply Metas for DOTA2 all the way to Fantasy Football, Sports Teams, Agents, and Sponsorships are Metagames. These are not accidents.
EIGHT.
METAGAMES ARE PLAY WITH GAMES
One Player throws his credit card at a game, and others players do not understand. “You aren’t actually increasing their skill!” they say, as the words fall on deaf ears.
This player doesn’t hear them because they aren’t playing the same game. These players are not playing with the Now, they are playing with the Meta of the game: purchases, markets, efficiencies. These players are Metagamers.
NINE.
META IS PAID
Play is free, and this applies even here – where the Metagamer is spending capital. In the Metagame the money itself is the mechanic of play, an analogue to the controller, the button press, and skilled reactions.
Like the first Magic Circle, if allowed to bleed into another, players are tricked into spending money – and Metagamers are tricked into feeling they’ve bought skill. They haven’t. 3 card Monty strikes again.
TEN.
THE WHOLE & ITS PARTS
Metagames are emergent from Games. Games are conditioned by their Metas. Players and Metagamers rely on each other. Their only relationship is their difference.
We let that fool us into thinking they were the same thing, which removed not only their agency, but put them in conflict as each fought to be the audience that game makers would care about.
Play does not need to compromise. Metagamers and Players can have their space, play their games, and thrive alongside each other.
We believe it is time to give the same freedom to all who Play. For Play and Finance to work hand in hand, not for one to dominate the other.
THIS IS PLAYFI.
THIS IS NOR.
And if you agree with us, we want you on this journey. Join us as we bring back Play.