The maturity ladder
Five rungs, each with a test that moves a game up, so a label on a catalogue card is a claim rather than a mood.
Source: https://games.sgit.ai/maturity/index.html↗ · site v0.5.0 · this file is generated from the same content
as the page, so the two cannot drift. Every page on this site has a .md twin; internal links
below point at them.
Five rungs, each with a test
Games arrive half-built. A catalogue that hides that is useless, and a catalogue whose labels mean whatever the author felt on the day is worse. So every rung here has a test, and a game moves up when the test passes — not when it feels ready.
| Rung | Means | The test that moves it up |
|---|---|---|
sketch | an idea and a rules table, nothing playable | — |
playable | you can finish a run | a stranger finished it without being told how |
scored | the scoring is a stated rule, self-tested | selftest.json passes and the rule is published where a player can read it |
measured | play data exists and has changed something | a release whose notes cite play data |
answered | players argue with it and get answers back | positions published in the ideas graph↗ |
Where the games sit today
| Game | Rung | Why not the next one |
|---|---|---|
| What Can It Do?↗ | scored | It has telemetry and a reply channel, but no release note yet cites play data. v0.16.1 moved the feedback controls on a bias argument — that is reasoning, and good reasoning, but it is not data. |
| Which Agent Is It?↗ | playable | Its engine is self-tested against a reference, but it has had far less play than the scoreboard and its reveal predates the results redesign. |
| Ideas & feedback↗ | answered | Not a game, so the ladder fits it awkwardly. It is listed at the rung it enables for the others — it was seeded with the first three real pieces of feedback. |
These placements are our reading of somebody else's work, made by reading the vault rather than by asking. If a release did move because play data said so, name it and the rung moves — that is what the reply channel↗ is for.
Why the rungs are ordered this way
The order is not effort, it is how much the game can be argued with. A playable game produces an experience. A scored one produces a number you can check the rule behind. A measured one has been changed by contact with players. An answered one has a public position on the objections. Each rung is a step further from we made a thing toward we made a claim and defended it.
One consequence worth stating: measured is the hard one, and everything before it is under the author's control. A game can be built to scored in a weekend and then sit there for a year, because moving up needs other people to play it. That is the honest reason the first game has its own domain at what-can-it-do.games.sgit.ai↗ — a link you can send to somebody is the mechanism by which a rung gets earned.