reclaim the maze. reclaim "bad gameplay". thinking about living systems, slow play, and being lost as a destination. 
mazes are often relegated to the dustbin. they have no place in the modern, streamlined, AB tested lexicon. mazes are "bad design"
the modern lexicon has no word for being, no words for role play. the world is a reward economy: being dies with every transaction.
the maze is, through this lens, anathema: it is about place and being, feeling lost or aware of your surroundings, voluntarily losing agency
discard AB testing, discard point A to point B. interrogate your skinner boxes.
why does your game have an end? why does it have anything, ever, which can be completed, any way for your character to be centered or placed in a position of superiority? these are not wrong, but we should relearn that they are choices.
how does one find a language for games outside of transactional thinking? how can one see a maze clearly?
through a modern design lens, a maze is an obstruction. it is a set of dead ends, which are, in transactional terms, punishments. bad, the stick. they are spaces where one loses control over the ratio of sticks to carrots.
to unsee this one must unravel the basic assumption that travelling from point A to point B is the primary goal
the mindset of consuming a game and extracting rewards is a transactional one: an artifact of thinking of games as disposable, commercial artifacts.
but they can also be spaces as performance, spaces for performance, spaces for being.
without a profit motive, a maze is no longer an obstruction. a maze is a space. a maze is slow time, it is lingering, it is choosing to perform lostness or slowness. the walls are not barriers, they are texture and feeling.
the maze is convoluted, nonlinear terrain: its walls and dead ends are a useful compliment to open space (unobstructed, nonlinear), straight hallways (unobstructed, linear), and winding paths (convoluted, linear)
if the goal is intrinsic, an emotional state, not an extrinsic reward-baited transaction, then a maze is not an impediment: a maze is a tool.
