Hey y’all! Heather Flowers here.

In lieu of social media (I finally kicked myself off Bluesky), I’ve recently fallen down a mild rabbit hole of “satisfying simulations” on YouTube.¹ A set of simple rules, set up in a particular way, and you watch them play out. Watch these marbles race. Watch these blocks break. Do they do it in the way you expected? Finish. Adjust your priors. Watch the next one and “try again.”

There’s something fascinating about it from a game design perspective, isn’t it? If a game loop is the iterative process of experimentation and evaluation, isn’t it possible to have a “loop” where the player doesn’t touch the game at all? This ball deals twice as much damage with every hit. This other ball deals damage according to the Fibonacci sequence. Which will break these blocks faster? You can guess in your own head, but it doesn’t change the outcome.

These videos have thousands of views, and hundreds of comments each discussing various “strategies” — what matchups are optimal, how close the match was, what the randomly bouncing balls could have done better to improve their performance. A game is being played here! In the same way that watching a sport is a form of play, watching random balls and numbers bounce around is a mode of engaging with a system. Just because the system is completely pre-rendered with a preordained outcome doesn’t mean it’s not a system.

As I’ve observed these “watching games,” I’ve noticed a few key features:

• The ideal “watching game” has some element of unpredictability in its result, but presents clear rules such that the ending “makes sense” in some way once over.

• To misquote Friends At The Table, the purpose of the simulation is to find out what happens. There is a narrative being crafted with every simulation, so it must be paid off.

• In “competitive” watching games: it is always easy to tell who is winning, but often hard to tell who will win.

Perhaps obvious deductions for people who e.g. watch any form of sports ever!! But what’s interesting about this minimal case is everything that’s not necessary. You don’t need strategy, or direct interaction between competing parties, or even a stated win goal (players will happily invent their own)! And, because players will invent their own win conditions, there’s even a dynamism in how these simulations play out. “Yes, the green ball bounced to the end first, but the YELLOW ball bounced in the top right corner first, so actually yellow is the true winner and everyone else in the comments can shut up.”

I’ve been chewing a lot on modes of play that require very little physical input For Some Reason², so this has been pretty present in my mind. I’ve got a few game ideas rattling around in my head right now, but the one I’m presently chewing on while writing this newsletter involves no interaction at all. You just start the game and watch it do its thing. Maybe you like the thing it does! Maybe you don’t! But it’s simply a simulation and you’re watching it go.

Question of the Week: Is this something that would interest people? Genuine question. A game that you just watch, and sometimes it does something good, and sometimes it does something bad, and you can just run it and let it do its thing.

Let me know what you think! I’m looking at a few options for future projects right now, and with energy levels in short supply I’ve been doing a lot of contemplating before putting days/weeks of work into a prototype.

But don’t worry: I’m running the simulations in my head.

Best,
Heather