The Meaningless Game

To all the gamers on itch.io, I want to ask you a question. What brought you here?

 Well, obviously, you might be here because you are looking for some game to play, right? But why are you looking for it? If the reason is because you find playing games fun, then why do you find it fun? Do they have meaning to you? 

 What meaning are you seeking from here?

If you don't have to find something meaningful to have fun, then this game must be quite fun to you. Because this game is literally--  'The meaningless game'.

 Well... what's meaning, anyway? I mean, it doesn't mean anything to have a meaning.  Do you know what I mean?  If I tell you what I mean, will you know what I know? How do you know that you 'know'? Do you think what I know will be the same thing as what you know? 

 Don't worry. It's really nothing too deep-- it's just a short, meaningless 5 minutes that you will get to experience which you might never have before.

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 This short game is a product of one-week 'Art Jam Project' from college. I was told to create a game about some meaning I got from an art gallery visit. And I failed to discover any meaning from any of the works there. (I, of course, understood some of the intentions behind the artworks and so on, but they did not feel as real or impactful that they seemed meaningless after all. Why? I dunno. I think I'm just not very used to the abstract kind of mediums as a means of conveying messages. )

 So I have decided to make a game about the experience itself-- I could not find any meaning from the things that were meaningful to others. But because I could not see the meaning of making the game in the first place, I struggled a lot more than I thought. 'What am I even making, is there a meaning to make this... game about meaninglessness?'.

 I have never deeply delved into why, or whether there should be a reason to have a meaning in order to be an art. I was confused and perplexed, because I could not find an answer. I had to break my thoughts down multiple times and eventually reached the bottom, questioning 'What is 'meaning' anyway, what does 'meaning' even mean? How should I define it so that I can distinguish that such a thing existed in the first place? It took me a couple of meditation until I could start writing something down about it, and once I did, it was forming a continuous stream of thoughts. 

 What is meaning? Like, what meaning can I take from an apple? Our objective definition of an apple maybe that it is a fruit, and it is a red, edible, sweet and slightly sour fruit. I may add more subjective meaning to that by saying that an apple is my favourite fruit. Or by linking it to love since it reminds me of red lips, or gravity (=Newton), or poison (=Snow White), or sin (=Bible or Death Note), or smartphones (=Steve Jobs) and so on. I was able to add such meanings because I was reminded of the things I have learnt and experienced before. Therefore meaning is created from one's experience, and without experience you cannot associate anything, and if you can't associate anything you can't create meaning. So my conclusion was, don't worry even if you can't take any meaning or feeling from art. It just can't associate with your experience. Just let it go and you will eventually find something else that you cling to. Art is only art when you are inspired and motivated by it.

  This project has brought me a very important lesson, and I think I will be able to feel more comfortable viewing any sort of art from now on because I won't feel the urge to find meaning from them anymore. I'd like to thank my lecturers and peers for helping me develop such idea. Overall, this art jam was a quite fun one to me.