what i love about playgrounds is that there is no winning a playground. there is right way to use a playground. and its designed to be safe.
i remember in my elementary school there were a couple things that i still have no idea what they were for. on the blacktop there were these perfect circles painted in white. and on the woodchips there were these two parallel horizontal blue metal bars. one day my friends and i stood by those bars and asked each other, what were these for? we obviously didnt know, theres no textbook, no instructional video, but yet we tried developing games for these strange toys. i dont remember what we came up with, but i love this style of discover-development. lets say everyone is safe and happy (because i know recess can be difficult, it was for me at other times), and when developing games at the playground you simply mess around and respond to how your body reacts to different sensations, and then try to create rulesets or challenges to draw out those reactions moreso. so we tried running around the bars, swooping underneath them, balancing on them, testing all kinds of different ideas and developing challenges and games based on what sensations we found fun. we did the same for the blacktop circle. we didnt know what it was for, but we had a rubber kickball, so we invented a game called "circle of death" where one person stood outside the circle with the ball and everyone inside just had to not get hit when it was thrown at them. it was so much fun because thats not really a game. there arent even rules. it was just fun to throw balls at each other, to roleplay terror, and to mess around and use each others bodies as meatshields. all of those were sensations i think we were all enjoying, and was just us using our imagination with the tools at our disposal.
in that way, my brother and i came up with this theory for game development called "playground first." in game development, you shouldnt set out to create something that already exists. you shouldnt set out to make a space rpg. you shouldnt set out to make a dating sim. you shouldnt set out to make a block puzzle game. you should mess around with the computer as if it is a toy, and see what it does and can do. eventually you will discover something that your brain enjoys: maybe its a physics engine, maybe its a type of point and click combat, maybe its a set of platforming mechanics—you should find what is fun, and then continually experiement with it as if it is a playground until you get something good.
look, for example, at competitive video games. valorant. league. fucking awful games that arent anti fun, but arent designed as playgrounds. valorant competetive wasnt organically discovered and then adjusted so the players and viewers could have as much fun as possible, it mimics a financial model. instead, look at minecraft "competitive". people found this game so much fun they wanted to invent new challenges and ways to play around with different specific aspecs of this toy, so they discovered and adjusted accordingly all these fun hypixel minigames and pvp styles and parkour strategies, and my favorite, speedrunning—something that has completely meaningless goals but people continue to do it because it is fun. or at least thats why i did it. cant speak for other people, i know.
now look at music. while yes, you should do your exercises, have discipline and good form, and listen to the greats and your teacher, you should always start with what is fun—what ideas you brain responds to and how, and then build from there. the best music is the result of years of experimentation and wonder, and represents that process in motion. what im trying to say is that everything should be seen as discovery. we are always discovering things about ourselves, the world, and the relationship between these. yknow when little babies first see something and just start to play with it? and they dont know what it really is. or what its for. but they construct a relationship between a sensation/thing/idea and themselves nonetheless. you never grow out of that.
this is a big reason i hate college so much. ill write this out bigger later but nothing in college is discovered. maybe im a cynic but it feels like everything has been prescribed. not discovered. extracurriculars? prescribed. parties? prescribed. sex? prescribed. frat row? prescribed. protests? prescribed. stress? prescribed. this is why college students are always insecure for not having a personality. but lets keep this entry positive. i think wed all appreciate that.