Ledgers — The Sandbox Notebook

Ledgers 2 running counts Both revised when a figure changes

The Sandbox Notebook Open-ended games, written down

Ledgers are assembled from every notebook at once. One of them has already reversed its own conclusion, which is recorded on the page rather than quietly corrected.

Both ledgers

Counts that only mean anything across many games at once

An individual entry describes one game. These two pages describe the shape of all fourteen, which is where the only genuinely useful findings in this notebook live.

An open lined notebook with handwritten session notes, timestamps down the left margin and small sketched settlement diagrams

Ledger A · 14 games

How Long Each Sandbox Takes To Make You Want Something

Time from launching a game to setting the first objective nobody asked for. The range across fourteen notebooks is twelve minutes to four hours, and the correlation with how long we played is much weaker than expected.

Median 1h 08m Fastest 12m · slowest 4h 00m Open

A hand-built settlement on a terracotta plateau at golden hour with winding paths and terraced plots

Ledger B · 14 games · 412 events

Supplied Or Invented: Who Actually Wrote The Story You Remember

Every memorable event across every notebook, sorted by origin. The ledger began by assuming a high invented figure was a compliment and no longer does, and the page explains what changed it.

412 events counted Range 26% – 84% invented Open · reversed once

Standing figures

What both ledgers currently say

Summarised here so the direction of the counts is visible without reading either page in full.

Notebook	Hours	First goal	Invented	Materials
Plateau Holding	96	0:40	62%	Resist
Moor Tower	71	3:15	56%	Resist
Quarry Gap	52	0:12	81%	Cooperate
Lowfield	44	1:05	49%	Resist
Spiral Station	38	0:55	54%	Cooperate
Birch Lake	29	2:40	26%	Cooperate
Terrace Works	34	0:50	58%	Resist
Salt Marsh	27	4:00	39%	Resist
Cog And Beam	23	0:20	77%	Cooperate
Orchard Row	19	1:30	44%	Cooperate
Drift Habitat	16	1:10	52%	Cooperate
Pine Hollow	11	3:35	31%	Cooperate
Ridge Claim	8	2:20	29%	Cooperate
Chalk Flats	4	0:15	84%	Cooperate

Read the last two columns together and the pattern both ledgers keep circling becomes visible: three of the four longest notebooks belong to games whose materials resist being used, and every notebook under twenty hours belongs to a game whose materials cooperate.

That is fourteen data points collected by one person, which is not evidence of anything general. It is, however, the reason the entries increasingly talk about friction rather than about freedom.

Events counted

412across 14 notebooks

Each one classified as supplied by the game or invented by the player, at the time it was written down.

Ledger A

Median first goal1h 08m

Under 30 minutes4

Over 3 hours3

Ledger B

Median invented52%

Highest84%

Lowest26%

On revision

Ledger B has already reversed once. It started from the assumption that a high invented figure showed a generous design and now argues the opposite. The previous position is described on the page instead of being deleted, because a ledger that only ever confirms itself is not a ledger.