part 2: http://press.etc.cmu.edu/content/drop-7-john-sharp

Drop7’s core decision loop is deeply satisfying. The game thwarts the deep strategic thinking of Chess or Go, and wholesale rejects the twitchy gesture of many popular iPhone games. Drop7 is a game of methodical, calculated, movement from one math-moment to the next. The randomness of the discs to be dropped coupled with the random number values assigned to the converted gray discs thwarts extensive strategic planning. Still, there is room for thinking within the current decision and even a move or two ahead based on the probability of the next disc being a number you can use and the number of discs remaining before the next row advances. But for the most part, attention remains ever in the present— this disc, these rows and columns, these possible choices. There is a real satisfaction in disappearing inside a system that so acutely narrows my decision space. This is the heart of the practice. Drop7 is about sustaining the focus necessary to keep the advancing rows of gray discs at bay— not about power-ups, achievements and the other immaterial trappings and demands of the game- and real world alike. Like most games, there are distinct early, middle and late stages to a game of Drop7. The early game is the loosest and most open-ended. In the early game, I feel light on my feet, nimble and ready for the discs to fall. Those first couple of levels are like warming up before a game of basketball or a run— limbering up, reawakening the necessary muscle memory. The math is wide open in the early game— so much space, so many options for each dropping disc. High numbers allow me to close out rows, or work without worry on high-number columns. Low numbers close out rows and let me break through to the bottom of the screen. There is no such thing as a problem in the early game— even clusters of 1 discs cannot hurt me. ... Invariably, a time comes, usually around level four or five, when there are several rows of gray discs below a crust of numbered discs. This is the start of the middle game, the longest part of the practitioner’s experience. It can go on for five or six to several dozen levels depending on the luck of the discs and your mathematical savvy in placing them. The tone changes from the bravado and confidence of the early game to the real task of the Drop7 practitioner: contending with the ever-advancing gray unknown. The middle game is like an abstracted production of Ionesco’s Chairs, but with some means of addressing the suffocating, torrential influx. Looking for anyway to break up the gray discs becomes the imperative during the middle game. Different philosophies exist amongst Drop7 practitioners. Do you work columns of high numbers (5’s, 6’s and 7’s), or do you focus on clearing rows? Working the columns often creates trenches or cliffs, allowing for breaking up the sea of gray discs on the bottom levels, and setting up the potential for point-rich chains. Row-clearing strategies require patience and the risk that waiting will cause too many gray rows to form below if you cannot tunnel down successfully. The middle game is something akin to the manipulation of an atheist’s rosary. I become locked into the rhythm of the discs, the consideration of disc placement and watching the outcome of my choices. The middle game of Drop7 is about riding the wave of the luck and your ability to think through the possible placements of the current disc to maximize the outcome of your drop. All that matters is keeping at bay the sea of gray. The less gray there is, the less unknowns there are; to hold back the tide is to delay the inevitable. Eventually, a misplaced disc or simply the unluck of the draw jars the practitioner out of the meditative middle game and into the end game: The end game springs brutally upon you like a head-first spill off a ten speed. It is typically characterized by a shell of 1, 2 and 3 discs across the tops of most columns, with only one or two spaces left to work the gray discs. Now and then, there is a game in which the end-game tide inexplicably returns you to the middle or even the early game thanks to a fortuitous sequence of discs that sets off a lengthy chain reaction of disc breaks. What seemed like a dire state with barely a single space left along the top of the grid transforms to several open rows of space with which to work. Though not as elusive as the clear screen bonus, the end-game save is a rare experience to be shared in hushed tones with other practitioners like an inverted fisherman’s “the one that got away” tale. ... I know I will never “beat” Drop7— it isn’t one of those games. The fundamental math and the randomness of the discs don’t give you the chance. Playing Drop7 is the art of converting Sisyphian drudgery into a form of meditation. Drop7’s disc-dropping is an object lesson in the futility of resistance to life’s unpredictability and the certainty of an end— you push the discs around but you never really control them. This, I think, is what keeps me hooked on Drop7. It is a space of possibility where the consequences are never more lasting than the PLAY AGAIN button, and the soothing reminder of the random nature of life is safely ensconced in the grid and discs and the ever advancing gray unknown.