The Designer of Experiences reflects on the various experiences they have designed. Each a unique narrative spun out across the screen, each a series of escalating mechanics built and referring and commenting upon the initial mechanic, a mechanic made manifest in the playing of the first level or introductory area. Each title card prefaced by The Designer Presents. The Designers Presents: A Series of Puzzles on an Island. The Designer Presents: A Disney IP Reimagined as Mega Man. The Designer Presents – A Historical RTS. The Designer Presents: A Sandbox Dressed in Steampunk. The Designer Presents: An Auto Clicker. The Designer of Experiences now old, roots gone grey, fingers riddled and arthritic, their body slumping and surrendering to outside forces. They are not considering retirement. Their world now one of slow goodbyes and winding down, a time nominally for rest and retellings.
The Designer plays their older experiences and finds each one wanting. Each one engineered for maximum naivety, each convinced of its own artistry and uncertain regarding the attitude and disposition of its players. No effort made to provide a player room for expression, each experience terrified of the voice of others. While each experience functions as a towering technical achievement, the experiences are busy hiding the Designer behind polish and performance. The Designer a perfectionist from their earliest designing days. Of course there are failures. Of course there are lesser works. Not every design articulates. The Designer’s resume peppered with failures. Designer could never design a platformer for shit.
The Designer of Experiences concerned they are running out of time, that even the triumphs now considered cannon are fractured and flawed. In their old age they grow anxious. They do their best to honor their anxieties without succumbing to them. The Designer of Experiences recognizing that they only have eyes for imperfections and doing their best to keep this awareness centered.
The Press announce from assorted bully pulpits: “The Designer of Experiences retreats to their bunker for a period of creative gestation!” Between manic periods of coding the Designer comes topside and grants interviews to select bloggers, stooges, and hangers-on wearing wide-brimmed hats. They opine on the current state of experiences, the role of creativity in the later stages of life, the nature of design in the context of Late-Stage Capitalism, the essence of work in an era where the boundaries between work and play have dissolved, various influences on their own creative process, favorite experiences from their childhood. The Designer expresses ambivalence as to how they might be remembered. Weeks later the Designer of Experiences can’t sleep, tosses and turns, the sheets damp with sweat. They are consumed by regret over their words and count down the hours in the half-light of the early AM. The Designer forever capable of lying.
The Designer of Experiences says “A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is bad forever.” They say “I think that in life, as in game design, you have to find the fun. There is joy out there waiting to be discovered, but it might not be where you expected.” The Designer says “Our job as the game creators or developers – the programmers, artists, and whatnot – is that we have to kind of put ourselves in the user’s shoes. We try to see what they’re seeing, and then make it, and support what we think they might think. Design is a sort of empathy.” They say “Needless to say, nobody is born an avid gamer.” “Time flows like a river, and history repeats itself,” the Designer of Experience says, if only to themselves.
The Designer of Experiences dreams, a dream in which they stand on a brightly-lit stage, the audience indistinguishable in a sea of black, an auditorium filled with an electric noise and dance music that winds down as the Designer begins to speak. The Designer announces their new experience while the screen behind them flashes a title then a single screen shot then a delivery date. Silence for a single second. The crowd erupts.
In the dream the new experience aspires to be nothing less than an elegant travelogue. The experience plays itself, taking the player on a trip to far vistas, revealing a tarnished land with rivers and valleys and trees dappled in sunlight. Ancient towers decomposing in the grass. An experience without regrets or repetition. Here there are no premature endings, no dashed hopes or shortcomings. Only the admission of a mutual brokenness mixed with consistent vulnerability, expressed by text and gameplay. The experience will wax nostalgic when appropriate so that the player might finally be happy. No matter the player in question. The Designer of Experiences sighs.
So that you can finally be happy.
They say “My final experience is my first apology.” They say “I am nothing if not a late bloomer.” They are deeply sorry and their sorrow is an ocean. Because of the briny salt it cannot slake the thirst for forgiveness or erase the past. The Designer of Experiences says “This is so much more than a simple apology. My experience is an attempt to make things right. A balancing of the scales. My first attempt at reparations.” That they might make amends and finally shut the door or even via amends open the door wide, letting all interested parties through to discover some shabby truth the Designer has been hiding all along. A reparation that might enrich both the giver and receiver. Due Winter, 2026.