Purposeful Work #

I want to build experiences that are (1) pleasurable to engage in and (2) lead to some concrete useful output.

I love video games, and other forms of interactive art, because they are designed to be very pleasurable to engage in. They provide a intentionally balanced difficulty curve, where the experience is hard enough to be engaging, but doesn’t stonewall the player. They also provide a sense of progression that helps keep the player feeling like they are working towards something meaningful. Many games also provide a common ground for social interaction, and even social or artistic commentary/dialogue.

Unfortunately, all the time/engagement that goes into playing a video game is somewhat “wasted”. To put it another way, if a productive activity (like growing food, manufacturing useful products, doing research, etc.) could be made as pleasurable to engage in as a video game, there would be little reason to play games at all. There should be a way to make experiences that are strictly “better” that video games in that they provide all the benefits of games, but also include some useful creation.

Example: Programming #

Editing code can put one into a similar flow state to gaming, with the added benefit of producing a (presumable useful) program. The aspect of programming that reducing the “pleasure of engagement” the most for me are the hard blockers that pop up. These include:

• Long test loops that require waiting around to get feedback on your work.
• Cryptic errors that either (1) require understanding that you don’t have and don’t know you don’t have, or (2) make tiny mistakes (e.g. typos) really hard to track down.