This morning was no different, and although I can’t remember my dream as well as the first weird dream, I was struck by the climax/end of the dream, and so I’m adding this one as #2.

I remember being chased clockwise around the perimeter of a stone tower or tall building of some sort, probably 50-80 feet tall.  I was being chased by a large monster with a long neck.  It might have been a dragon, I’m not sure.  Suddenly, the dragon turned the other way and appeared in front of me to the left of the building.  I was terrified.

At once, I was no longer myself, but instead a spectator standing just a few feet away watching a woman staring up at the monster.  The woman was in her 20s or 30s with dark hair, and she was holding a giant indigo or purple lance with both hands over her shoulder, kind of like you would hold a bazooka.  The lance was 10-15 feet long and several inches wide – about the size of a lance used in jousting – and the posture of her body indicated that it was quite heavy.  Then, right next to her appeared a young girl, holding an identical lance.  In fact, it was the same woman, but instead she was about 8-12 years old.

Within seconds there were several versions of the woman at different ages, each holding a lance.  The women were in slightly different poses, each holding the lance at a different angle and partially overlapping.  The different versions of the woman started to take the same posture, and eventually combined back into the original.  Even though there was no physical indication, I knew that somehow the woman now had more power based on the combination of different versions of herself.  She took her right hand off of the lance and aimed with her left, ready to throw it like a spear right at the monster…and I then woke up.

I was in the shower thinking about the dream, and since I tend to think really clearly in the shower, an interesting and meaningful game idea hit me.  I imagined a game where the player had to essentially play through a woman’s memories.  The game could be split up at different stages of her life, where the player experienced what it would be like to be the woman at that stage.  The woman’s strengths and weaknesses would be based on who she was at that time.  As a younger girl, she would be physically weaker and more vulnerable, yet more fearless and zealous.  As a woman, she would be stronger, yet more cynical about the world.

Then the game would culminate in a moment where different versions of herself would combine together.  This would represent various aspects of the woman’s consciousness being healed, and the woman would become fully satisfied in who she is.

An overview of meaningful play

The concept states that the amount of meaning play has is the value of the relationship between the action and outcome.  So if an interaction has value to you, it is meaningful.  And in order for it to have value, you have to both understand it (discernable) and make sense of it in its context (integrated).

If that’s the case, then meaning is quantitative.  The qualitative aspect of meaning would refer to its type:  whether it’s positive, negative, or maybe even more specific types like funny, dramatic, thrilling, etc.  For the more math-inclined, the amount of meaning refers to the length of a vector, and the positive nature of it refers to its direction.

A positive, meaningless game?

Therefore, that begs the question:  Can you have a meaningless game that results in a positive outcome?  It seems like in order for you to have a positive outcome, you’d have to have meaning.  So if a game was meaningless, the positive outcome would have to come from somewhere other than the game itself.

Still, without actual meaning in the game itself, it doesn’t seem like there would be much meaning left to get.  Maybe a game would send a message just by its very existence.  Therefore, a group of meaningless games might result in a noticable positive outcome.    Does the very existence of a game have meaning?

To find out, I would conduct the following experiment:  create a series of games that are meaningless to play, but when presented as a group, have a positive outcome.  If successful, each game would result in a positive outcome that is a fraction of the total positive outcome of the group, while still remaining meaningless itself.