The ugly farm that worked

You didn't plan the first farm. It started as four rows beside the house because you were hungry, it grew when you got more seeds, and it bent around a tree you didn't want to chop down. In the end it sat right against the kitchen, which was the convenient spot, because you walked past there anyway.

It didn't produce much. It was irregular and pretty ugly.

One day you watched a video with the optimal design: nine by nine, water in the centre, alternating crops so they grow faster, everything automated. You built it. It produces four times as much and there's nothing to fault in the numbers.

Since then you haven't felt like walking past it.

What the crooked farm knew

It's easy to dismiss this as nostalgia, and I think it's something else.

That bad farm carried information inside it. It was where it was because your house was where it was. It was that size because that was what you really needed, not the maximum possible. It curved around a tree because one day you decided that tree was staying. Every flaw it had was the record of a decision about your particular game.

The optimal farm also carries information inside it, but it isn't yours. It's that of a general problem solved very well by someone who knew nothing about your world.

And since the general problem wasn't exactly yours, the perfect answer fits worse than it seemed to.

Good places don't come from a plan

The architect Christopher Alexander devoted his career to a question that sounds like ours: why some places feel alive and others, technically better, don't.

His answer went against almost his entire profession. Places that work, he argued, don't come from an ideal plan drawn up from outside, but from a great many small adjustments made by whoever lives inside, each one in response to something specific: the light that comes in over there, the path people were already taking, the corner where you feel like sitting down.

He called what emerges when that happens a quality without a name, hard to define and easy to recognise. And he observed that design imposed from outside tends to destroy it, even when it improves every measurement: more efficient, tidier, cheaper and dead.

It isn't mysticism. It's a fairly concrete claim about where fit comes from: from the person inside correcting small things, not from whoever draws the plan.

The published method becomes the norm

There's a second effect, quieter, that almost nobody names.

As soon as the best way to do something is published and easy to find, it stops being one option among several. Nobody imposes it; it's enough that it exists. From that moment on, any other way of doing it looks like a worse version of the good one.

That's why lots of people play with a background feeling that they're doing it wrong, in a game that has no compulsory way of being played. You look up how to do something, you find the optimal answer, and with it you import, without realising, a standard you didn't have before. Your farm wasn't bad until you knew which one was the good one.

Notice how it creeps in: the information you were looking for came with a hierarchy attached.

The principle: efficiency can be copied, fit can't

Step outside the game, because you can see this everywhere.

The kitchen at home, with the pots and pans arranged in a very odd way that only makes sense if you're the one cooking. The workshop where every tool is where your hand reaches for it. The neighbourhood with the dirt path people wore in by walking, diagonally, against the pavements someone planned.

In all of them there's the same thing: fit is made of local decisions that can't be transplanted, because they don't respond to the problem in general but to this place and this person. You can copy an efficient result. You can't copy the fact that something was made to measure for you, because that only appears by making it.

From that comes a pretty useful criterion: before replacing something of yours with the perfect version, ask yourself whether what bothered you about yours was a flaw or an adaptation you hadn't recognised as such.

What does work

Take the mechanism and leave the plan. Learn why water hydrates in a cross pattern and apply it wherever suits you, at the size you need, keeping the tree if the tree matters to you. Keep the idea and not the measurements.

And, when something works worse but you like it more, have the courage to leave it. It's a perfectly rational decision in a game whose goal is to enjoy yourself.

If there were a place where nobody had to build the correct way for their work to count, I'd like it to be called KobiiCraft.

Now the honest part, because the opposite thesis is false too. Some problems really are general, and there the optimal answer is simply the answer: there's no merit in reinventing a well-solved mechanism badly. Tutorials are useful and learning from others is the normal way to learn. And a farm that doesn't feed you isn't saved by having character.

The only thing I'm arguing is where to set the bar: optimise what gets in your way, not what you like.

The tree you didn't chop down

If you ever go back to that game, check whether the tree is still standing.

It may have been the worst design decision in the whole world, and it's still the only thing there that no other player could have built.

Frequently asked questions

Why do I like my world less after optimising it? Because when you replace what you'd made with designs brought in from outside, the trace of your decisions is lost. What you built crooked carried information about your particular game: where the house was, which way you walked, what you were short of at the time. A copied optimal design solves a general problem very well and none of yours, so the world gains output and loses precisely what made it recognisable as yours.

What did Christopher Alexander say about good design? He argued that places that work don't come from an ideal plan imposed from outside, but from many small adjustments made by the people who live in them, each one a response to a specific need of that place. He called the quality that emerges when that happens a quality without a name, hard to define and easy to recognise, and warned that imposed design tends to destroy it even when it improves the objective measurements of the result.

Is it wrong to follow tutorials for building or for farms? No, and avoiding them on principle would be a waste of time. The problem isn't learning from others, but simply replacing what you already had with a general version that doesn't know your game. It usually works better to take the mechanism and adapt it to the spot where you're going to put it: keep the location that suited you, the size you really need and the details that reflect how you play, rather than reproducing the whole design exactly as it is.

Why do people get the feeling they're playing wrong? Because when the optimal method is published and easy to find, it stops being one option among several and starts working as a norm. Nobody imposes it: it's enough for it to exist and be accessible for any different approach to look like a worse version by comparison. So a game with no compulsory goals ends up with an unwritten right way to play, and anyone who doesn't follow it feels they're falling behind even if they're having a better time.