# game engines as free to develop games to reconsider game engines and ir interfaces as ftd ("free to develop") games **+** "better not bigger - smarter; to not rely on brute force" **+** note the software tools used to make game are often far more interesting than any one game **+** emergent fully procedural artificially alive systems - not engines spewing out dead (static) output at one end **+** more about observing than control - allowing events to happen; playing with fuzzy parameters **+** imagine removing the artificial almost entirely arbitrary line between developing and playing **+** "if i throw a ball at you i don't expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories" **+** fully collapse the interface into teh game - "like garry's mod only more so" **+** smash all windows - consider little 2d rectangular boxes with slider bars as bizarrely obsolete **+** node based yes - but nodes considered as ants; everything's already on the move **+** less about herding cats or knowing the rules but observing one's own influence in the magnetic field **+** the correct "like lego" analogy; tools as play right now - immediacy; not merely creating complex (computationally and artistically expensive) artificial places before anything _oddly interesting_ begins **+** everything on screen as simultaneously a tool an object and a toy for play and (exploring) garming **+** everything has its own set of modifable rules **+** everything as dynamic inter-dependent (intelligent) systems - "machine tools with personalities" **+** feedback looping: a game engine system producing its own output dependent on its own inputs **+** garming / play as something that happens in the interactions between tools objects and toys **+** such a game space could evolve the notion of a visual language of play **+** such a game-system would more easily allow johnathan blow's dynamical meaning / ian bogost's proceduralist rhetoric **+** (thinking) social spaces rather than dead maps **+** games as evolving services able to accommodate multiple (/simultaneous) modes of play **+** "scientists as the true engine of game development" "which engine should develop my game on?": often the entirely wrong question valve: you can't compete with your scientist base so get out of the way if unity engine / unreal engine was entirely free to develop that might be a good thing reconsider the relationship between a game engine and its developers like the relationship between minecraft and its user generated content free teh game development engines and freely (socially) advertise successful developers who feed a proportion of ir profits back into teh game engine itself: everybody wins? // republic of bob