via SPLT/SCRN (NIME ‘23)
What it says
The performer in SPLT/SCRN is caught between two goals: win the game, or make good music. Those pull apart. The paper’s move is to refuse to fix it — the decision tension is the experience. Difficulty, constraint and unfairness are not obstacles in front of the content. They are the content.
Does it hold for my work
It is the same logic as A Fair Game?, arriving from a completely different field, which is the strongest evidence I have that it is real rather than one team’s rationalisation. In A Fair Game? the unfairness is the argument; here the impossible choice is the piece. Two papers, one claim: remove the friction and there is nothing left.
Cite them together.
What it licenses me to do
It gives me permission to design something that resists the player, which every instinct from usability says not to do. If v4 is about strangers constructing meaning together, then the friction that matters is probably interpersonal — the piece cannot be played well by one person acting alone, and that limitation is what forces the meaning-making.
Unresolved
Friction and frustration are separated by an amount I cannot currently specify. A Fair Game? had interviews to establish that participants read the difficulty as unfairness-by-design rather than as a broken machine. I would need the same evidence, which makes this a question for the user study rather than for the design.