Dan Shiovitz wrote:
<< It's interesting that you make that distinction -- I've always
thought of the game design as a big part of the content, since it's how
the story and writing is expressed to the player. >>
It is. But that's only one way of looking at it. And it appears to be
the predominant way of looking at it around here. What I was saying was
that you can also look at what was being addressed in the game, or what
mood was being expressed in it, and what those things did or didn't do
for the player, without focusing on the methods the designer used to
express them. It's more a matter of emphasis than a clear-cut
distinction.
<< Well, ok, but that doesn't address his point. >>
True, it only addressed part of his point. I clipped the rest out
because it sounded sarcastic, and sarcasm wasn't my intent. I was going
to say something about someone who proposes a newsletter made up of
community content, and then just writes his own content anyway.
<< I think it's pretty safe to say that the best way to get a response
in a forum like this is to express a strong opinion that people will
post to disagree with. >>
Yes. We just saw a great example of that in another thread. And, as
that thread demonstrated, provoking people doesn't appear to be very
productive.
<< Like, I don't have much to say about the humor in Underoos because I
don't have much to say about humor in general. >>
Fair enough.
<< Did you have something more in mind when you posed the questions? I
guess Underoos is a pretty light game, and I'm not sure there's a huge
amount to say about it. >>
I think you can say things about light games, but, no, I wasn't looking
for anything specific. I think there are reasons why it was amusing,
but, yes, it might not be very easy to talk about what they were.
Really, I brought up that game because it was very short and innocuous
and wanted to see if anyone would try to tackle it. It's a lot like
trying to tackle the subject matter in a Marx Brothers' movie. It's so
absurd, it doesn't seem to be about anything at all, but it is.
<< You might have better luck asking about Reliques of Tolti-Aph, since
I know a bunch of people played that recently. >>
One of the things that worried me about this community was its, almost
obsessive, concern with recency. It's nice that people look at the new
games, but when that appears to be the only things that people are
looking at, bad stuff happens.
For instance, Emily Short just wrote a game that uses a "go-to"
navigation system. I think that's great. In fact, I knew I would think
that was great a long, long time before she actually did it, because
I've played games with that feature before. A long time before, in
fact. Some of Magnetic Scrolls games had the same feature, but since we
rarely look at things that are more than six months old, we appear to
have forgotten.
A recent thread complained about player characters with no personality
and mentioned a few games, over the last few years, that had
distinctive PCs. Does anyone remember that "Plundered Hearts" also had
a PC with a personality? In some ways we're just now catching up with
things that were done decades ago, because we forgot about them. They
were old, and therefore, had no value.
People in movie or book dicussion groups won't clam up if someone
mentions "Casablanca" or even "The Abominable Dr. Phibes." And they
have a much better grasp of their topic because they don't think it's
bad to talk about old stuff in addition to the new stuff.
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