# early feckless garmes as permanent alpha play sims to consider the notion of "early feckless garmes": like 'permanent alpha play' simulations in which players willingly and deliberately let themselves float andor be sold down the garming river on the merest of ideas; they know such garmes are never going to be finished and it simply doesn't matter to them feckless play has nothing but a sense of excitement to it: the success of and actual interest many early access garmes often lies more in the online enthusiasm for these garmes as collective idealizations of never-to-be-quite-realized projects what's important and of interest is the (/sense of) social engagement with a nebulous cloud of concepts making up teh garme - with other players who also like living in the reality of it as an idea that is the play state which arises from keeping particular dreams suspended through regular forum posts (positive or negative) screen shots smiling developer promises amusing glitch videos updates in-jokes regular irregular drip-fed content the whole ambient hype and expectation - you know the old 'getting the basic core mechanics down and then building from there' bs // video here e.f.g's share a lot with the industrial mass psychology of gambling: 'just another pull on the one-armed bandit guys' as itself the truer garme. it's all in the taking part with the other players because there's literally very little else going on // video here "feckless play" might also relate to the slightly greasy notion of minimum viable product - the product with the highest r.o.i versus risk. it's about selling the vision by delivering the minimum feature set to inherently supportive flans / visionaries not everyone - ie. directly to those starry-eyed about your garme precisely as a (social) idea space see also: [[this mod is dead]] // republic of bob