Spaceships and Simulations

The Sicko Manifesto is a bad name on at least three counts. The first is that there already is a “Sicko Manifesto” website. The second is the chance that someone complains about the use of the term “sicko” as ablest or something. The third is that it is not a manifesto. To discuss each in order:

The website (oh, you can search for it if you must) seems to be that of a Czech artist. His is more of a Charles Bukowski theme. We are using the term differently. We are not connected. I wish him will. I think that we are both obscure enough that any sort of brand confusion would be a mutual surprise.

The second is unlikely, but provides me the opportunity to explain what I mean by the term “sicko.” In general it arises out of the Sickos Haha yes meme, the product of Ward Sutton in his Stan Kelly mode. Know Your Meme describes it as:

used to express excitement about events others might find distasteful or unwanted.

My use of it has its specific origin from Len Hafer‘s use of it on the Three Moves Ahead podcast. Hafer uses it to refer to a certain type of player who enjoys a perverse level of detail that can be fiddled with in a strategy game. By extension, it also refers to games that contain or enable that sort of play.

It is an inexact definition. I think that the customary thinking about it is the user-unfriendliness of a game: how much it looks like a spreadsheet, how much reading the manual is required. My intuition is that is incorrect, and it is more a factor of how outsized the level of agency is, or how much the agency is the gameplay.

The definition itself may be revisited here. But I don’t want it to be a tangent that swallows the manifesto, which is why it is a bad term.

The third is that it is not a manifesto. It is not a persuasive document. It is meant to explain and attract.

It is meant to explain in that I am looking to explain my own thoughts. It just so happens that the best way to do that is through typing, and trying to explain those thoughts to others.

It is meant to attract in the sense that these thoughts are not new. I am not even doing the Newton/Hooke thing. My only contribution, if there is one, is reconstructing or rephrasing. But, in that it is not new, it is meant to attract in the sense that I am interested in connecting to people who are interested in this style of play, or discovering the best ways to connect to those players.

I mean, I see the games that are published, so I know that I am not alone. I can see how those games either are representative or aligned with these ideas. But I, personally, have trouble finding others who are interested in this style of play. Therefore, assuming that the fault is within me as opposed to something arbitrarily like geography, I think that the best way to do that is to discuss it publicly.

The only persuasive side is that there is the possibility that someone will read it and think that it is worth trying, or otherwise that it will confirm some feeling that they have about how they want to play. But notably that could be unpersuasive as well, confirming how someone does not want to play like this because I have provided the sort of productive argument about what they do not like.

Knowing what I know of the internet, this third point is likely the most significant. We do not need to keep restating to one another that everything is okay to someone. Even if less true than described (about a seventh of all posts on all role playing game forums amount to someone asking why D&D isn’t Pathfinder), it still does not need to be gone on about.