A Personal Existential Game (or “PEG” for short) is a Ludic Liberation intensive —
custom-designed for your specific life situation and lovingly supported and observed by Natalia Stroika, Ludic Liberation founder and Gamemaker.
A PEG is a custom game with a unique name and theme, specifically designed for you and played in the course of a 6-week, 1:1 collaboration between you and Natalia.
When you commission a Personal Existential Game, we figure out the goal/theme of your PEG together through an initial consultation. Usually, the goal is some kind of new experience you want to have, or a way you would like to transform your experience of the world. For example, perhaps you would like to experience a greater sense of magic, to increase your creative power, to transform a self-limiting belief or interrupt a frustrating emotional or behavioral pattern. The goals of PEGs are intentionally existential – meaning they pertain to the whole sense of being in the world, rather than focus on achieving a particular material aim (e.g., “losing 10 pounds” or “making $100,000”). However, you will certainly engage in many tangible activities throughout your gameplay, and spectacular material achievements are both possible and likely. The material transformations will result from the profound existential re-tuning that the PEG experience provides.
The game’s goal does not have to be something positive or self-improvement focused. It might be interesting to you to experience more shame or risk, to play with restriction or self-denial, or to make an existential game out of grief. Anything can be played with!
A PEG is the ultimate PLAY-CATION! You can play your personal existential game inside your everyday life, with minimal surface interruptions to your regular routine. By engaging your reality as an existential game, you will be able to completely re-envision your relationship to the world.
Process
1.
Commission
Creating and playing a Personal Existential Game is intensive and intimate experience. It begins with you honoring your desire for Personal Existential Game and filling out a PEG commission form. After reviewing your answers, I contact you for a follow up consultation to discuss your precise desires and possible game mechanics.
2.
Design
Over the course of 1-2 weeks after the initial consultation, I design your game. During this period, you are free to communicate any additional information with me that you deem relevant and I may also reach out with follow-up questions. At the end of the two weeks, you receive your detailed game instructions.
3.
Play
The following 4 weeks is play. You play, I observe. Based on my observations, I guide you and refine your game as needed. My observation is a crucial component of the experience.
4.
Bonus
You have the option to provide me with an optional bonus budget that I will use exclusively to send you tangible or experiential surprises throughout the 4 weeks of your game play. These will be carefully selected to meet the edges of your comfort zone, the limits of your havingness level, and the contours of your current curiosities. Without this additional budget, your in-game rewards will be mostly intrinsic or freely available.
Observation.
Observation is a core component of the Personal Existential Game experience and the Ludic Liberation theory in general.
You might have heard the phrase, “observation changes that which is being observed.” This idea refers to the Observer Effect in experimental physics, “Hawthorne effect” in social science research, or the observation bias in psychology. Across these fields, the shared principle being named is the idea the outcome of an experiment is affected by the act of external observation. It is impossible to know how much the observation matters in shaping the result, but we know that it does.
In Existential Gameplay, this Observation Principle also applies. To put it simply, you will play your game differently knowing that you are being observed. Most likely, you will play with a little more effort and courage and the play will feel more sensational and meaningful to you. In contrast to scientific research, where the observation effect adds “noise” to the pursuit of “objective” reality, in a Personal Existential Game, the observation is an intentional element of the experience of play. It is not a “less accurate experience” of reality to play under observation. Rather, it is an enhanced experience of reality. Your reality will be more deeply shared, mirrored, and malleable for the duration of the observation, enabling you to profoundly transform how you relate to your world.
This enhanced experience is not dissimilar to the experience of falling/being in love, which as you probably know, creates quite powerful conditions for making potentially radical personal change, or at the very least, adds intense sensitivity to your overall experience of the world.
Don’t worry, I will not be literally watching you every second for 4 weeks. You will provide me with your gameplay updates through texts, images, videos, and other forms of documentation. I will study these updates, uncover patterns, and refine the game as needed. I will also use these to select surprises to send to you from the game.
Observation remains an important element of Ludic Liberation even after the 6-week PEG experience is complete. The goal is for you yourself to experience your life as if you are observing your avatar playing a game.