Drew Byrd on Randomness as Friction as Opportunity
I've been playing Blue Prince with no reprieve (in the form of its elusive Room 46) for the past two months. I've found both joy and frustration in its interminable variations and the lack of any certainty. The anticipation of drafting rooms, looking for items I need, waiting for library books to turn up, and so on, has somehow not grown stale, even when it yields nothing but a new day for me to forge into the mansion. I think I'm on Day 25?
Drew Byrd's piece on the ludic structure and the political undertones of the game (they might as well be overtones, but it seems that I've missed some of this nuance in my own playthrough) provided an interesting lens through which to make sense of my own feelings. The piece also talks about the chase for answers and solutions (in games, but also in the world) as its own end, one that brings with it tremendous uncertainty, but also growth! Certainty is not a given in this world. Trying to make things so that they seem certain is a way to close off possibilities (for our world and its future) that might otherwise emerge from actually reckoning with uncertainty. In terms of the game, I guess, I don't know when I will draft all the rooms where I can pull levers to open the Antechamber. I don't even know what they look like. But the pathway to getting there is teaching me about all the different ways to unravel the secrets of this game's world. Learning those rules and how to break them is a crucial part of inhabiting the world of the game.
From Drew's piece:
All play, by definition, is circumscribed within a series of limitations, each game an entreaty to make what we can of what we are given. Limitations create the parameters by which we must all approach a shared space. [...] [The game] does not strictly disempower the player [...] but instead weaponizes chance to remind them that power is generated within the self as a necessary response to friction. Once again, as in real life, we must identify, develop, and act upon patterns as a way of moving forward when no other way presents itself, and oftentimes in Blue Prince the limitations imposed by the aleatory structure necessitate exploration and experimentation that we might not otherwise be inclined toward.
Some frictions are good for you (and the world you inhabit and exercise choice within)!