Do We Really Need 'Perfect' Games? 5 Forgotten Experiments in Digital Alienation

I never set out to be a star. I just wanted to understand why we keep playing games that don’t feel like play—but like staring into a mirror no one else dares to look at.

In my studio apartment in Brooklyn, I coded my first interactive prototype using Figma and Runway AI: a game called ‘The Ethics of Play’. No neon lights. No jackpots. Just silence between spins, and the weight of missed choices.

I called it ‘Failure as Form.’

H1: The First Experiment — Single Bet on Solitude I played for twenty minutes after class, betting $1 per round. No wins. No cheers. Just the hum of my laptop fan and the glow of a single pixel on screen—like a streetlamp in an empty subway station at 2 AM.

H2: The Second Experiment — Budget as Breath I set a daily limit: $500 max, no more than one coffee. Not to escape—but to remember who I was when the code started understanding pain.

H3: The Third Experiment — Time as Ritual Each session lasted exactly 23 minutes. Not enough to win. Long enough to hear myself think: Is this what freedom looks like?

H1: The Fourth Experiment — Community Without Spectacle I joined an underground forum where players shared screenshots of their losses—not their wins. One wrote: ‘I didn’t get lucky. I got still.’ That became our anthem.

H2: The Fifth Experiment — Algorithmic Alienation Reversed They told me algorithms optimize player psychology. But what if the algorithm was designed by someone who once cried? What if ‘perfect’ is just another word for silence?

We don’t need better graphics. We need better questions. When you stop chasing the jackpot… do you finally see yourself?