Introducing the Dinofarm Podcast!

 

Hi everyone!  Tonight, we’ve finally launched the Dinofarm Podcast.  In this very first episode, myself, team artist Blake Reynolds, and friend Benjamin Loxley talk about the need for a show like ours.  We hope you enjoy.  If you’re interested in subscribing, here’s an RSS link (which I hopefully set up right).

In this episode, we talk about:

- The current state of affairs in terms of game design discussion

- What’s important for a game?  Developing guidelines for game design

- The difference between appeal and design

- Hilariously bad voice acting is also mentioned

Enjoy!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Posted on 07/31/2012 by keithburgun. This entry was posted in Podcast. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.youtube.com/user/Imrooniel Patryk Kowalik

    Aaarrrgg…. there are so many things that you said that I just clench my teeth when I hear them, therefore post might be rather chaotic because I was adding as I hear more and more things that I disagree with your statements. Feel free to ask for further clarification

    Chess are not all that well designed. One of the sides is handicapped quite a lot, to the point that in perfectly plaid game of chess white has 100% win rate. Also you do have to play in set way and there is NO creativity in it – look at strategies books. If you will not memorize tactics and play by them, you will fail miserably.

    But on the other side, I’d say, that well designed game is that, in which even when you loose you feel good about youself. That you have this “that was a good game”" feel. After good game of tennis, even if you loose you feel good (except if you’re tryhard), same for chess.

    If you loose a game in starcraft (after learning a game and knowing basic strategies) you can still feel good about yourself – unless you screw up badly and then you blame yourself. That is rather good design, isn’t it?

    (automating unit production is like using ball shooting guns instead of rockets in tennis. People hit balls at different strengths, why do I have to train my physique in order to be better at tennis? Unit production is a part of a game, it can be adjusted to game play i.e. rushing, delaying worker for early expansion. Automating it would take the flexibility and part of personal skill from a game)

    Also the problem is that you’re comparing single player computer games to multiplayer board games. Single player is more like a movie than a board game – you don’t play against anyone, there is no human opponent to give it depth. You just play the story – much more immersive story because it is you that takes the action, therefore there is potential to receive a message on much more personal level, but still a story.

    It seems that you’re forgetting that computer games have as much in common with board games as with movies and books. It’s kinda 50/50 in that regard.

    I wouln’t agree with statement that games have to be designed in such a way that solution is not clearly visible. In your prime example of chess, ways to win are clearly visible, not obscured by game mechanics. It’s a matter of your brain capabilities whether you see the solutions or not. More of it, if you loose because of obscured game mechanics/factors you’re straight out frustrated and annoyed. If you die to zerg rush in SC, and you don’t even know about this strategy, you frustrated and you think that game is broken. If you die in LoL, because you tried to 1v1 gankplank with full crit runes on lvl2 and he just three shoots you and you don’t know about this particular mechanic (you haven’t learnt about it yet) you feel frustrated.
    In chess you clearly see every single move and can backtrack everything and see mistakes.

    Ahh… there’s much more, but I started to forget about some stuff, still its pretty long and chaotic enough post. I can easily say that every ~5 mins you came up with something that I disagreed with

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Sorry to cause you such turmoil! We will have someone who disagrees in all future episodes, promise! Now to respond to some of your thoughts…

      >Chess are not all that well designed.

      Fair enough. Compared to most video games, though, it’s like transcendent.

      > Also you do have to play in set way and there is NO creativity in it

      You might know better than me but I’d be really surprised if there were really “no” creativity in it. Perhaps I can get Ben to respond to this since he’s a much bigger chess player than myself.

      Your rocket shooting gun argument is kind of bad. I think in both cases, we have to ask the question, “what is Starcraft about?” and “what is Tennis about?” I think that indeed, the fact that you need physical prowess to play it is probably a design weakness, if we conclude that the game is actually about deciding when and where to hit the ball.

      And same with Starcraft. It’s not a game that’s supposed to be about “remembering to keep building SCVs”. That has nothing to do with the rest of the game, which is really a tactics/resource management thing. I shouldn’t lose with a better strategy because the other guy was better at remembering to keep building SCVs.

      >I wouln’t agree with statement that games have to be designed in such a way that solution is not clearly visible

      The GOAL has to be clear, but how to achieve it should be ambiguous.

      Thanks for your comment :D

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/Imrooniel Patryk Kowalik

    >Fair enough. Compared to most video games, though, it’s like transcendent.
    I would say that starcraft 1v1 is almost as well designed. Ofc there are minor tweaks here and there from time to time, but this game has few years. Chess have like… more than thousand? Agree that rest of the games are not well designed/balanced

    > the game is actually about deciding when and where to hit the ball.
    But how strong you hit it matters tremendously. Generally Stronger = better. Thus, players with less physical prowess have very low changes competitively (look at Williams sisters, they’re giants).

    >and same with Starcraft. It’s not a game that’s supposed to be about “remembering to keep building SCVs”. That has nothing to do with the rest of the game, which is really a tactics/resource management thing.
    But building SCVs is part of resource management. As I said before it is viable strategy to control your SCV production, delaying it at some points. Different races have different building methods of workers – zergs can mass produce them at cost of building units, while protoss can chrono boost it instead of tech research. There are different strategies involving that in different races. Automate it is like automating micro.
    And in the end, remembering to build workers is not hardest thing in the world. By the time I got promoted to silver I hardly missed any. Microing blink stalkers is A LOT harder. And micro menagement is as much part of starcraft as macromenagement. Sure, in the long run, on levels The GOAL has to be clear, but how to achieve it should be ambiguous
    Hmm, now I see that I misinterpreted some of what you’ve said. Guess that we can agree that goal should be visible, mechanics should be visible and understandable but the solutions should be up to player to come up with (within the boarders of the game mechanics). That’s a basic logic though. You don’t have a tooltip in starcraft – “hey, its 6:15 min mark, your protoss enemy could build a 4 gate now!”

  • pkt-zer0

    > It’s not a game that’s supposed to be about “remembering to keep building SCVs”. That has nothing to do with the rest of the game, which is really a tactics/resource management thing.

    Attention/clicks are also a resource you have to manage. So, not that unrelated to the rest of the game, actually.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Okay, so it’s not a strategy game then, it’s an attention-contest.

      • pkt-zer0

        You just went from “building SCVs has nothing to do with the rest of the game” to “building SCVs is the entirety of the game“. You’ve got a bit of explaining to do. (Including why you’d even make the first statement before the second when the two are incompatible. Some logical consistency would be nice, at the very least.)

        • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

          My question is this: What is Starcraft about? Because I think a lot of people are under the impression that it’s supposed to be a strategy game, more akin to chess and less akin to being able to rub one’s belly and pat their head at the same time.

          • pkt-zer0

            I’m fairly sure you skipped the explanation part. Do get around to that eventually.
            Also, now you’re seemingly debating what you think the game should be about, or what it is perceived to be about. Nothing to do with whether its design is coherent or not.

            Anyway, to answer your question, I don’t find anything horrendously wrong with the “real-time strategy” description. Being an omnipresent general on a tiny, fast-moving battlefield, if you will. Chess is turn-based, which accounts for many of the differences. The way Day[9] carried the concept of APM into the chess analogy is only being allowed to move one piece per turn, even if you really, really want to move two. I’m not sure how useful that is, but I suppose it’s better than naught.

          • Logo

            You’re trying to put it into too narrow of a box.

            SC has chess like positioning and tactical requirements.
            It also has an attention resource that can be exploited (this is actually the counterpart of the limitation in Chess that you can only move 1 piece in a turn).
            It also has a game of deception and inferred information that combines with an overarching strategical game plan that’s more involved than people who don’t play at a high level realize. Going ling/muta isn’t a strategy, the strategy is in the details and the transitions.

            All three combine and reinforce each other to increase the amount of creativity and all drive towards a common goal of creating a huge ambiguous gamespace that’s also non-random so is entirely skill based.

  • http://monoxyd.de Monoxyd

    Der Dinofarmers,

    interesting topics, but the audio quality ist unbearable. Not sure if you simply don’t care or don’t know how to do better. If it’s the latter, I could advise the basics, if you like to.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      I’ll make sure to up the quality for next time, apologies. Just getting warmed up.

  • McFroogle

    Der Monoxyd

    Just think your being a little unfair, they aren’t “profession podcasters” they’re game developers.
    And to be fair I’m sure they have better things to spend money on and i’m also sure some kickstarter backers would “rage” if they spent money on an expensive mic each so they can have the occasional recorded discussion. Just wear some worse headphones (so quality doesn’t matter(Like mine which recently got chewed by my cat)) and enjoy the podcast :-)

    That is all :-)
    McFroogle

    • http://monoxyd.de Monoxyd

      It was never my intention to imply there should be money spend! There are some free ways to improve the quality of a podcast, like using Audacity’s Noise Removal Plug-In or upping the sample rate to 44.1 kHz. It was just an offer of advise, nothing else. :)

  • McFroogle

    See Below (the reply button wasn’t working)

  • Bret

    Being a fan of games similar to Diablo 3 and Skyrim, I feel like I keep having to come back and think about arguments to defend these types of games. Because there are good things happening in these video games you call fantasy simulators. Now, a lot of the podcast was spent talking about not using words like ‘good’. But calling Skyrim a shitty game is sort of the same thing. So, let’s just say that I actually like fantasy simulators, and you don’t like them. I’m not sure if that is entirely accurate, but that’s what it sounds like.—————I think despite agreeing with most of what you guys are talking about, I disagree about this sentiment that a piece of software has to be boiled down to its basic elements so that you’re always making decisions that matter. It’s this idea that all these games are wasting your time. Now, sure, a lot of things waste time – and I’m sure even in Auro that some of my time is going to be ‘wasted’. I do like the fact that you guys are making Auro to be tight and waste as little of the players time as possible. But, for example, in Skyrim – I don’t feel my time was wasted merely because of the exploration element, or even the grinding element. I don’t feel like Final Fantasy games waste my time just because they have thematic elements like text and cut scenes.————First, I want to put it out there that movies have been around and accepted as far as being something that doesn’t necessarily waste our time when we are watching something of quality. And video games as a whole will always have the potential to be shitty. I think as much information on what we think makes a good movie, we still don’t know everything. Therefore, not every movie or video game will be something you like intellectually and aesthetically. I’ll move on from that point because you guys seem to understand at least this much. But, where I’m going is that you guys seem to be against these thematic elements like animations, cut scenes, graphics, exploration for exploration’s sake, and leveling. Some of these things are linear, and others fall under being ‘meaningless’. But you’re mainly basing this on the fact that no meaningful decision can be made during the cut scene or animation itself, and I can’t get behind that. There is a place for all of these thematic and aesthetically pleasing graphics in the video games that I enjoy.————Skyrim in particular is not one of the shining examples of RPG’s, but I feel that they aren’t just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I think what is really going on is that they have accepted that they are simulation based, and that if there is a game in there at all – that it is within the combat or some other thing. Skyrim and other games of its type are trying to accomplish, not just a Tolkien fantasy simulator – but all things fantasy. They have all these systems in there to simulate what it is like to live in a different world, and it is similar to the kinds of things that are happening in cinema. Like the Avengers or the Dark Knight, Skyrim may have elements of story that ‘make you think’, but the main similarity is that there aren’t a whole lot of meaningful decisions. Helping your character grow into a godly hero is much like watching a movie unfold. And yes, some of the time you’ll find yourself pressing the A button to win a small fight – but that doesn’t defeat the purpose of the whole video game genre.——-To try to put it in simple terms. There isn’t anything going on with these thematic elements in video games that isn’t expected in movies.———–They are there to sit and watch, but they are still there to be entertaining. And if you guys are going to argue that we need to get stories out of games, that’s fine for games like tetris, chess, and go. But if you guys are not okay with it, then why not? I think if you have two things, one is a puzzle game, and the other is a short movie – that they can be put together in a thoughtful way. One way for a cut scene to be valuable is to have valuable information in it that is essential for progress. Not wanting your time ‘wasted’ with a cut scene is one thing, not wanting them in games altogether is another. Tell me, what is the reason behind cutting out so many thematic elements (that could be valuable and entertaining) just because you want to get to the puzzle or interesting decision? I would argue that if you are having a bad time with the thematic elements, that it is the fault of the designer – not the fault of the concept of theme or story. I still think one of the best games is Planescape: Torment – and it doesn’t meet all of the Dinofarm rules. This game rides the line well when it comes to involving story and game elements. Shouldn’t we be trying to prop up these kinds of games, and encourage development? Shouldn’t we be encouraging the quality of both RPG’s and games like Auro instead of encouraging designers to cut out all thematic elements? I mean, I am a fan of trimming the fat down and creating a tight game. But I really don’t think it means that we get rid of the 100 hour game, the leveling systems, the exploration, or the animations and cut scenes. All of these things can be thoughtfully implemented and be a significant part of the experience.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      I’m not crazy about fantasy simulators, but I’d much prefer to play a PURE fantasy simulator that committed to that than the half-fantasysim/half-game noise that is Bethesda’s games.

      >I don’t feel my time was wasted merely because of the exploration element, or even the grinding element.

      I’d like to hear an exploration of, especially why the grinding element isn’t a ti

      > Shouldn’t we be encouraging the quality of both RPG’s and games like Auro instead of encouraging designers to cut out all thematic elements?

      Thematic elements are really important. Auro is highly thematic, actually.

      >But I really don’t think it means that we get rid of the 100 hour game

      We follow this rule: our games have to be only as long as they have to be. Currently, there’s a bizarre expectation that games will be of a certain length.

      • Bret

        About a pure fantasy simulator – I can agree with that. Especially if the games inside the sim feel tacked on somehow. However, even in a simulator there are a handful of things that can become a game. Combat tends to be one of those game-like elements. But, since combat isn’t always fair in a simulated world, there will be times when a weak enemy will certainly die. Simulations have plenty of no-brainers. But I feel a simulator shouldn’t skip these, they should be part of the design. Perhaps weaker enemies should run away? Things like that. I think you’re right though. I’m not crazy about them either currently, but I really like the potential there.————I feel like I could get myself into trouble defending ‘grinding’. Grinding is when you gain experience for experience sake. But I don’t think that the system is the culprit. I think players should have the ability to increase abilities, stats, experience, etc. in hopes that they will be more successful elsewhere in the game. Letting the players have choice and control are vital to simulated experiences. If players are bored by that, it sort of makes sense, because working out is often boring. I think where RPGs go wrong is that grinding is the only choice, creating more than just boredom – and going more into the realm of frustration. I always hated it when I ran into a boss I couldn’t beat and I knew I had to grind. I hated the linearity of it. I just wanted to progress the story! Is there really nothing else to do than kill 100 Imps? I think that linearity and lack of things to do can narrow the game down so much that grinding is the only choice – and that sucks ass when you want to progress the story or do anything else. But I ‘do’ like a game that gives me the choice to take a break from the main story arc and kill a few goblins because I want the Life3 spell. It makes it so it was my choice to do, and all I had to do was hunt around the area and do some training. That way it becomes more about what your character would do, rather than something the game is forcing upon you. For that reason I think ‘grinding’ can be done right.———–I agree, Auro is thematic. I do like what you have managed to put in despite the game’s fast pace. For example: Shadow of the Colossus had some really drawn out exploration, when the game was really about killing those bosses. But it simulated horse riding so awesomely, that I really liked the experience of it. It is something that I suspect you might trim out of the game, and I would leave in.————I agree, a game only should be as long as it has to be. My point there is that there should be room out there for 100 hour games, if in fact that is how long it should be. But yes, not all RPGs should need to be over 80 hours, and I too am tired of that bizarre expectation.

  • http://twitter.com/emgeejay Max J

    I liked the part where you made fun of Jonathan Blow for thinking people didn’t understand his game and then said it’s just “Super Mario Brothers meets Prince of Persia: Sands of Time”

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      The point is, if people don’t understand your work, it’s your fault.

      • http://www.ludamix.com James Hofmann

        We don’t understand your work.

        • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

          You don’t understand… this podcast? Or 100 Rogues? If you don’t understand either I will accept responsibility for that. Maybe you could let me know where we lost you.

          • Blake

            I think he was doin’ a thing.

  • Pingback: Superlicious | Superlevel

  • http://www.denniskogel.wordpress.com Dennis

    That was an interesting podcast and I’d love to hear more of that, audio quality notwithstanding. I didn’t listen to it over my headphones, so the quality was alright. Still, if you like, do ask monoxyd for advice. I’m doing a podcast with him and it’s not that much about spending loads of Kickstarter money on expensive audio equipment.

    On to the podcast itself!

    As a journalist who writes for general interest media as well as games magazines it kind of felt to me that your arguments against games criticism/coverage relied on a strawman argument. Certainly, sites like IGN, Gamespot, what have you, get a bad rep on reviews that barely scratch the surface of a game and it’s certainly the case that lots of “intellectual” sites like Kill Screen (for which I occasionally write as well) rely on personal essays about feelings connected to playing games or cultural studies theory, but that’s not all there is.

    Personally, whenever I have the chance I try to tell readers about the people making games. A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Keith for a longer feature in a German games magazine and basically it was about Dinofarm’s experience with Kickstarter. It certainly isn’t criticism or anything advancing the craft of making games, but still I would say that, as a journalist, covering the people making games and telling their stories has value. My favorite English language piece was actually a for Kill Screen about Jasper Byrne and how he made Lone Survivor.

    Now, your points about games media being shallow, well, I get where you’re coming from. But take a look at review by John Walker and one by Kirk Hamilton. Yes, they do talk about what they like or don’t like, but they justify that with their thoughts on design decisions in the games. Personally, this is what I’m trying to do when reviewing games. I write about a game, I comment on what it does well and what doesn’t work, not from a “has it bugs?” perspective, but more from a game design perspective. Maybe I succeed, and maybe I don’t. Most of my reviews are in German, so it doesn’t make much sense to link to them.

    So here’s challenge for you:

    I’d like to be constructive. As a writer I want to improve my craft, so please, tell me, or “us game reviewers” how. So, what I would like from you is a review of a game, some game, that would show what points a review should touch upon. Or maybe a review template, a set of questions that need to be asked or answered. Something constructive.

    In any case: this was a super interesting, so thank you for this podcast.

    • http://www.denniskogel.wordpress.com Dennis

      Oh my, I screwed up the links, sorry for that!

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      To be honest we actually have pretty nice audio equipment, it was in the mixing and editing that I somewhat lazily re-saved the mp3 several times over itself. Next time will keep it uncompressed while I’m working on it.

      Also, we didn’t mean that there are *literally zero* people doing good games journalism. You may be an exception and our argument can still hold up generally.

      Like that review you linked to? It really didn’t talk about gameplay. Like, it did, but only in a very shallow way that assumes all kinds of crap about “the modern videogame”.

      What we actually need is a from-the-ground-up assessment of this kind of play. What are the actions, and what are the decisions that you have to make during play? Is it difficult to make these decisions? My guess is, since he didn’t mention it, that this game has a lot of the typical videogame problems of being 90% no-brainer / trivial.

      In order to do this, as we talked about in the episode, people have to understand that decisions are the most important thing in a game. Instead, more than half of this RPS article you linked to was talking about shit like story and characters and presentation.

  • Baz

    That was an interesting discussion. It felt like a grumpy gamer bitch-fest at times but some good points were raised. The distinction between a game composed of rules vs fantasy simulator software was one I hadn’t thought of much and was a good listen.

    If the tone of the podcast changes from something less whiny to something more constructive I can see it happily entering my regular podcast rotation.

    On the audio quality front it gets a pass mark. Could be better, could be worse. I am sure it will grow with the show content.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      The quality will improve and we’ll work on the tone. One thing that will help us is to have other guests on who don’t necessarily agree. On this show it was me and my two best gaming buddies so we all kind of thought exactly the same stuff.

  • Daren GAY LOL

    Will Ido be appearing on the show? Are you open to suggestions for topics of the podcast?

    I believe Keith and Ido came from similar gaming backgrounds and have both come to the conclusion that the games they used to enjoy simply aren’t well designed. I’d like to hear how they ended up coming to this conclusion that many video game enthusiasts will not.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Nice darren gay joke!

      Ido: Sure, that’d be great. I think Ido and I agree on like 95% of stuff, so we’d probably hit up that last 5%.

      Suggestions: Absolutely! Suggest away!

      I think that that’s an interesting thought – why did some developers throw out their childhood loves and some not?

  • Kayin

    Oh my god I just wanted to flip a table or something during most of that, it was so awful.

    Okay lets talk about Skyrim. That’d be a great game to talk about because I ALSO hate skyrim. I also hate many of the same things! But we get to the whole thing that I’ve said before about how your whole categorization system is basically intellectual poison. So by your own definition of Game, Skyrim clearly fails. So clearly it should just be a pure fantasy simulator, right? At this point, it’s basically tautological! This coming from a group of guys with no interest or enjoyment when it comes to fantasy simulators. So what is that category even based on? Would people ACTUALLY prefer that? Now you might go “well it doesn’t matter, popularity isn’t a metric, you need standards and by this standard it would better!” and like sure, that’d be true by the standard you pulled out of your ass. That doesn’t mean much. The fact that you can use that system to make sweeping statements out of pure ignorance is a huge issue!

    So anyways, one of the amazing things about skyrim despite all it’s flaws and the save/load feature, is people DO get really into it. People get scared during combat. People run around like maniacs, screaming as they get chased by monsters. Players get invested. Like…. really? What the hell! That’s kinda counter intuitive! Sometimes they even get more into it than people playing more risky games do (though obviously it depends on the individuals). Immersion and game design often compliment each other, up to the point that Skyrim works for a lot of people DESPITE the glaring flaws like Bandits in glass armor and other silly things, which shows how powerful that direction is. It doesn’t need to remove it’s gaminess– in some ways it needs more — but it’s all about how it integrates with the immersion. Non scaled enemies divided intelligently across the landscape can give a sense of a huger world of danger which can INCREASE immersion. “Oh yeah, that’s the forest where all those horrible giants are oh fuck don’t go in there” and that in turn can be a way to handle how content is given to the player.

    Now, either Bethesda was like “this whole giant world thing is too big a problem to handle like that anymore (and we can’t do a small world because that’s not what we, or the fans of our games want), so lets do scaling” or maybe they think scaling allows more freedom or whatever or maybe they’re just dummies but whatever. Same goes with combat. The problem with combat isn’t necessarily that it’s shallow (it’d be nice if it wasn’t, but whatever), it’s that it also feels flat and goofy and the tactics you use, due to the FPS view are like, super silly looking and besides the killing blows, no part of combat “feels” great. Gamey elements can still feel great of integrated well! But nah, it probably sucks because Bethesda doesn’t know about these two positions you made up.

    I think one of the big issues you always have is you only see game design as the means to it’s traditional end — systems of decision making — when now it is used frequently to great totally different experiences. The tools are similar, but the goals are quite different. You’re basically doing what everyone else is doing — you’re crying to go back to a different time, with really focused board game style ideals, when most people don’t want or care about that (and not even out of ignorance!). People are using game design for different things — be it create immersive but still “fun” experiences, to sometimes creating horrible skinner boxes or getting kids to perform better on tests.

    You have a strong grasp on the things you should do to make the type of games you enjoy, but are horridly crippled when it comes to talking about anything outside that space and I don’t get your obsession with trying to apply your narrow focus globally.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >So clearly it should just be a pure fantasy simulator, right? At this point, it’s basically tautological! This coming from a group of guys with no interest or enjoyment when it comes to fantasy simulators. So what is that category even based on? Would people ACTUALLY prefer that?

      I think so, yes. That’s why we argued for it. I believe that “focus” is an important part of making anything, and if they “focused” on making it a fantasy simulator, it could be great.

      >So anyways, one of the amazing things about skyrim despite all it’s flaws and the save/load feature, is people DO get really into it.

      That, in and of itself, isn’t amazing. People “do really get into” just about anything. We can’t derive anything useful from this lesson.

      >Immersion and game design often compliment each other, up to the point that Skyrim works for a lot of people DESPITE the glaring flaws like Bandits in glass armor and other silly things,

      Again, there are a million reasons why this could be that have nothing to do with the game design of Skyrim. I know you’re aware of that, but just reminding you.

      >I think one of the big issues you always have is you only see game design as the means to it’s traditional end — systems of decision making — when now it is used frequently to great totally different experiences.

      That’s fine. I just think that people should focus on a particular kind of system. I don’t think “games” and “fantasy simulators” compliment each other.

      > You’re basically doing what everyone else is doing — you’re crying to go back to a different time, with really focused board game style ideals, when most people don’t want or care about that (and not even out of ignorance!).

      Not at all. I’ve written extensively about how “retro is not the answer”. I want to head forward into a time where games are unlike they have ever been before. In the past we’ve only seen faint glimpses of what they can be.

  • Kayin

    Well first, you make the assumption they did not have a focus (since it doesn’t line up with your idea of what “focus” would entail). You have very little explaination why focus on a fantasy simulator would have better results than what they’re doing. I definitely question Bethesda’s values and priorities but I think they very well know the type of game they’re making far better than you do. This doesn’t protect them from being wrong or stop you from detecting some of the surface issues, but your lack of context prevents you from offering any real solutions. Which is FINE, but you decide to not let that stop you!

    “Oh hey I don’t like these games and really don’t know what people like about them but because I have this system that’s centered around what I do like, I can make conclusions about everything else”! Wait no, that doesn’t actually work.

    As for people really getting into it? I CAN DERIVE A LOT FROM THAT. Not necessarily in a vacuum — with no other information on games ever, that’d be impossible, but with tons of context (it is one of many data points) one can predict LOTS of things. There is plenty of evidence that the psychological aversion to death is enough penalty for most players. We can even see that it’s also a matter of presentation. The last Prince of Persia game that came out has a thing where you’re saved from dying. It is, humorously, about as harsh a fail state as a lot of other modern fail states, but people, just from the fact they’re being ‘saved from death’, perceive the game as notably easier than a lot of games that are equally as easy. You complain about people being anti intellectual and anti science, but this is a SCIENTIFIC APPROACH. We’re taking data (player responses) and using that to generate hypotheses. Those get tested in games. The results are not usually obvious, but the information is there and we can try and find trends. As opposed to making arbitrary structures and trying to fit things in different boxes.

    And now you say you don’t think games and fantasy simulators compliment each other, but based on what? Where would you even come up with that conclusion? What context or expertise do you even have to be able to make that case? Why should anyone listen to you talk about a segment of games you not only dislike (which isn’t necessarily an issue for judgement, obviously), but don’t even, at any level, really understand? This leads to the whole Chesterton’s Fence thing.

    “Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >Well first, you make the assumption they did not have a focus (since it doesn’t line up with your idea of what “focus” would entail).

      We assume that they didn’t make this delineation between “game” and “fantasy sim” because most people, developers, etc don’t divide things along those lines. I think you yourself have told me that you have problems with this dividing line.

      We did go into detail about why the game-like elements detract from the fantasy simulation. However, this conversation is difficult, because we’re in a situation where there’s this kind of feedback loop that has built up over the last 10-15 years, so people have come to expect this messy marriage of game and fantasy sim. So, you might be right that in the short term, “people might want” what Bethesda made more than what I recommend. However, I’m talking about something other than that.

      >“Oh hey I don’t like these games and really don’t know what people like about them ”

      False. I was actually a big Bethesda fan until Oblivion, and I’m basically a certified expert on the genre of CRPGs. I understand what people like about them – I liked them myself until I made some connections. This isn’t, and has never been about what I like.

      > I CAN DERIVE A LOT FROM THAT.

      Nice, the caps lock definitely drove this point home here.

      >There is plenty of evidence that the psychological aversion to death is enough penalty for most players.

      What do you mean, “death”? Would it be enough if the play wasn’t interrupted at all but text came on screen and said “hey, you’ve died, just so you know”?

      >Where would you even come up with that conclusion? [that fantasy simulators and games don't compliment each other]

      They have different goals – they’re trying to accomplish very different things. Technically, a fantasy simulator has no responsibility to present the user with choices. It has no responsibility to be difficult, for instance, whereas a game does. In fact, if choices are obvious in a game, that’s good enough reason to call it a bad game, because choices are that fundamental to games.

      You’re wrong about me not understanding videogames. I understand them well. From about 1985 until just around 2008 or so, I was as serious a videogamer as you’d find anywhere. T-shirts, posters in the room, subscriptions to 3 videogame magazines, worked at Funcoland, friends who worked in the industry. Here: http://expensiveplanetarium.blogspot.com/2011/06/some-old-photos-of-me.html

      I am not some guy who just waltzed onto the scene of videogames and never understood them. I am a person who understood them his whole life until he started asking some questions.

  • Kayin

    What a shitty reply. I question why I even bother replying to you at this point. -_-

    So to start, I don’t care about your background. One can easily 180 their positions, tastes and levels of consumption. I mean fuck, I went through that too, I just didn’t try and spin that into some sort of faux-profound theory of game design. So I don’t care about what you WERE, I care about what you present your self as now. You could play video games for a thousand years and not necessarily understand them. Your desperate grab for validity have been noted though, even if it doesn’t work that way.

    ANYWAYS

    Okay so it’s easy to go look at Oblivion and Skyrim and go “these are messy” Because, well, they are… and when you’re a hammer, all your problems look like nails. While the games obviously over extend themselves and are of a scope where it becomes hard to apply polish… but no, it’s because of this magic line you made up, manufactured from the ether. I mean sure you guys took the time talking about all the stuff the games do wrong (which is true) and then you go “Well the obvious response is to just excise all that material!” while there are many real solutions. Even if you DO that, are you left with something that is a satisfying fantasy simulator? Almost certainly not. Players WANT to make choices, even if they’re shallow ones and you need that to give the player any sense of purpose. It’s all about the illusion of greater control and gravitas.

    You shrug off the whole game over thing sarcastically, BUT YES, THAT THING I SAID (omg u use cpaslock olololololoool). I KNOW how little loss is involved. That’s the POINT.It seems absurd that such a thing can have an influence on players, but it does. That was the whole purpose of the prince of persia example, yet you decided to just dance around it and misrepresent the point. Awesome. I wish you’d just call me names back rather than just being intellectually dishonest!

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      By now, it’s obvious that you enjoy asserting how stupid and bad other people are.

      It wasn’t a grab for validity. I just wanted you to know where I was coming from. Someone mentioned to me recently that it’s possible that some may think that I’m just some boardgamer or otherwise stepping into videogames, and that I just don’t understand it. The fact is I do understand it, it’s just that I think it’s got some internal inconsistencies.

      Yes, it’s easy to say that Skyrim’s a mess, because it is a mess. But what’s a bit more difficult is to figure out why it’s a mess. Your answer seems to be “because that’s what people want”, and that’s fine. I get that you don’t agree with the line I’ve drawn. Perhaps I can go into more depth about that difference in a blog post… it honestly didn’t occur to me that it might not be clear to everyone how different those two things are.

      I agree that “theming something that basically is death, not like death” can have a “making it seem easier” effect. What does that have to do with this conversation, though?

  • Kayin

    Keith Keith Keith, I don’t enjoy asserting how stupid and bad people are. That would imply that this is a general thing. Most people I disagree with, I generally have more respect for them. I can be rather colorful and hyperbolic at times and am not above bursts of frustration, but this level of sustained derision is something that you have earned. I’m clearly not alone in my complete disrespect for your work on game theory. If I kept this up with everyone I disagreed with I’d be emotionally exhausted.

    and again, you shouldn’t NEED to go “NOO I’M NOT REALLY A BOARD GUY PERSON I LOVE(d) VIDYAGAMEZ”. You can, like I said, totally 180.

    Also I did not say Skyrim is a mess because that’s what people want. I said it was a mess because it has a huge scope. That a whole polish step is missing.That there are many better solutions for many of Skyrim and Oblivion’s problems that do not necessarily push it toward “Fantasy Simulator”. You can see a lot of crude versions of this in a lot of the Oblivion mods. None of these are perfect, and none of these probably cut the mustard for you and your standards, but there is still a huge swath of quality improvement these games could get simply from added polish.

    As for the player death thing, that is relevent to the idea of loss and death in a game and how people can still play tension in these games despite the fact that little is actually at risk. Same reason people flip out while playing Amnesia too (which you’d think would invalidate the whole thing yet it surprisingly does not for most people). Like the Diablo guy says — death for most people DOES have weight. So this doesn’t mean the Save/Load system is optimal (it obviously isn’t), but real loss doesn’t have to be part of the equation.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >>I said it was a mess because it has a huge scope.

      And it has a huge scope because that’s what people want. You get my point.

      >>That there are many better solutions for many of Skyrim and Oblivion’s problems that do not necessarily push it toward “Fantasy Simulator”

      I agree. I’m not saying it definitely has to move towards being a fantasy simulator, but I think it would be better off with a focus. Right now, what is the focus of Skyrim? What is the point of it, in your opinion? No matter what you answer, there are conflicts. This is my issue.

      >>but real loss doesn’t have to be part of the equation.

      I see. Depending on what you mean by “real loss”, I agree. Basically, games (contests, or anything that’s goal-based) work on “agreements”. We agree that “if we can achieve X, then we have won”, and if we do not achieve X, then we have lost. So, my point is just that with most modern games, winning is basically guaranteed largely because of the save/load system. However, this is another case where looking at them through a different lens would be better. The reason that this is the way it is is so that players can experience the whole spectacle of all of the cutscenes, areas, and other content of the game. This is, sadly, the point of most games. So why even have them be interactive? Interaction is just this annoying thing that you just “have to do”. It’s busy-work; chores. Most videogames would be much much better off simply being a movie. This is what I mean by focus.

  • Kayin

    Okay so we can actually agree about what we’re talking about, awesome. This is good. We’re basically distilled down to two issues.

    Skyrim! I’d say the goal is to have a giant, living world where the player can feel important/have a sense of influence. So yes there is a conflict here.Gaminess and immersion can be quite at odds sometimes! But conflict doesn’t mean things are irreconcilable. You need gaminess to add weight to action and that weight ultimately helps the immersion. If you fuck up, you can cause big damage to immersion., It’s difficult, but the balancing act can have many rewards.

    Okay so interaction! Funny that Asura’s Wraith came out which is like 100% QTEs and stuff and people complained out the ass about that. People LIKE interaction. They like feeling like they have control, even if they, for the most part, have very little. If you have very little like Asura’s Wraith, then people notice and get annoyed. Obviously too, zero interaction also leads to a different experience. If people rathered games be movies, they would just watch movies. There is little lack of hollywood blockbusters. But people like games, even if the level of meaningful interaction is low. This doesn’t mean things are being done optimally now, but making games into movies is not the answer.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >But conflict doesn’t mean things are irreconcilable.

      It doesn’t mean that, but in my estimation they happen to be irreconcilable. Each new attempt that comes out every year only proves it more and more to me. They just have totally different goals, in my understanding. I know your understanding of the “game” concept is much more nebulous, and so you probably don’t see the conflict as strongly. But for me, a game has some specific needs, and so does that “immersion” you’re talking about.

      From your second paragraph, my feeling is that you’re just too “in this world”. Like, you’re accustomed to shit like QTEs to the point where you can’t see that even a single QTE in a game is a completely horrible, retarded, insulting offense to the player. It’s not 100% that’s offensive, it’s anything above 0%.

      I do think your second paragraph summarizes the confused, bewildered status of mainstream digital games right now. “We want to be, like, very movie like, but that means interactions suck”. That’s basically where they’re at, and they’re just… hovering there. I say it’s a mistake. Commit one way or the other and make a great thing.

  • Kayin

    Oh hey, more bullshit! I love you take me mentioning QTEs in negative light and spin that into me being “completely accustomed to this shit”. My opinions on QTE were not stated. All I mentioned was a data point. But you’re so wrapped up in your made up little fiction where you’re the guy who knows all the things that are wrong with gaming and where everyone is just indoctrinated fools who would totally thrive and do great things if they only knew and understood your system!

    Your untestable, unfalsifiable system. The piece of unassailable ideology you can hide behind due to it’s inherently unscientific nature — given strength through the tautologies it creates. Atop that, you just claim that certain things are true without any sort of supporting arguments. If you do have any, it’s based off your little tautology engine. Though I can’t even say you’re knowingly hiding behind it. You equally declare things like “I am concerned with truth, though, and my statements aren’t self-serving.” as if those words alone mean anything, especially in the context of your actions. It’s a disgrace to the term “Science” or “Intellectual”.

    As far as I can tell, you aren’t concerned with truth. You think you are, but you’re most probably not. You’re interested in “Truth” and in having “The Truth”. It doesn’t have to actually be the truth, it just has to give that feeling and that sense of power and purpose. It’s the same idea that drives the religious, or conspiracy theorists or whatever. Nothing feels better than thinking you have the answers! It doesn’t even need to be coupled with arrogance! “I’m just a humble person who happens to be in the know! I’m not special! Please, let me help you! All you have to do is choose to wake up, Sheeple!”

    What is sexier than the idea that some great ideas can just swoop in and change the face of gaming into some new future? Where is the sexiness of a world where Skyrim’s problems aren’t ideological, but mundane, boring things, like technical issues, a lack of polish, or the need to ship on time? Where is the sexiness where improvement isn’t revelatory, but instead incremental, hard fought improvements.. basically just baby steps? Who wants their theory to apply to a subset of games, when they can apply it to everything? Who doesn’t want their idea to be the key to making a great thing?

    It can really feel like truth (heck, it can feel better than truth!), but it’s not. It’s the same mundane psychological trick that has fooled billions of people before.

    And you might now go “Hey! Stop the personal attacks, Kayin!”, so this might need some perspective. To you, you’re arguing game design with another game designer who might not get your theories and might be won over (and who is also kinda a huge asshole) while for me, But for me, I am arguing with someone who I see is broken and in holding crazy, potentially harmful ideas. I do not respect you, but at the same time, I am filled with such sympathy pain that I am trying to slap some sense into you so you can exist in the world of reality. As I’ve said before, many of your ideas are flawed in their scope and application. If you’re only working on games*, then you’re never going to be harmed by your own ideas. Your ideas could have a lot of benefit to those trying to do the same thing, but can quite possibly be tainted or ignored by your zeal in trying to apply them to everything.

    Either way, I’m done. At this point, this is just a draining and mostly fruitless venture where we can barely have a conversation and there is only so much I can hope to accomplish by yelling at you.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      > You equally declare things like “I am concerned with truth, though, and my statements aren’t self-serving.” as if those words alone mean anything, especially in the context of your actions.

      I said that as a joke to illustrate how stupid your previous opposing statement was

      It doesn’t matter where sexiness is. Skyrim’s problems are ideological. There’s no reason to believe that by this point, they don’t have the freedom to make exactly the game they want to make.

      If you don’t respect me or my views at all, and you simply think they’re pure crazy, why would you have spent so much time talking to me about them? I find it hard to believe that it’s purely out of sympathy. As dumb or misinformed as you think I am, you’d agree that there are a lot of people who are even worst out there on the internet. Better get on saving them!

  • Kayin

    1) You’re not a lost cause.
    2) There is the potential for something decent under your horrific ideology .
    3) You are crazy in an area of my interest
    4) You’ve put your self into a spaces where I am frequently exposed to you.
    5) Just because I don’t respect you doesn’t mean you can’t hit all my pet peeves and send me into frothing rages! D:<

    • Nahil

      Dude, Kayin… why are you being an asshole? I feel like you’re kind of overreacting to something that is entirely non-threatening, and Keith has always been very logical at least. All he wants is some categorization and focus. Maybe we don’t even need to change games like Skyrim, but wouldn’t it be nice to try to figure out what makes Skyrim what it is? Keith is just trying to create this sort of (somewhat) civilized conversation on game design theory. People really don’t discuss these things nowadays, they just make games that *seem* like they’ll be fun and interesting. It would be nice for people to be able to have conversations about what makes a game fun for different types of people, without someone blowing up over a different view on things like you’re doing. Just, you know, take a deep breath and chill. Keith ain’t hurtin’ nobody.

      • Kayin

        Okay, first Nahil, just note that this has been an ongoing argument between Keith and I that has sprang up time and time again for the last 6 months. This isn’t to say that I’m not being an asshole, but if my exasperation seems a bit over the top for the scope of this conversation, just keep in mind that there is prior history.That’s not to say I’m not being an asshole, but I’m also at my wits end with this stuff. So judge me however you want, but just have some context to understand why I might sound so frustrated.

        So anyways, if you take Keith’s position and boil it down to “Have categorization and focus”, well, that’s not only inoffensive, that’s utterly mundane and not particularly interesting.But what about the rest of what he says? Being logical is only of benefit if the core assumptions are fine. “Being logicial” with bad data/assumptions can lead to situations where people have seemingly alien opinions while in full certainty of their correctness. Atop this, a number of his assumptions are insulting (“people don’t focus!” “People don’t think about these things” “No one is creating language to talk about games) and a lot of his logical conclusions do not mesh well with reality. It’s like someone saying “Well, my theory says the Sky is purple, so I guess the sky is purple!”. Even his repurposing of the term “game” is disrespectful, and puts more value on “making a statement” than clarity of communication.

        Also, you say “wouldn’t it be nice to try and figure out what makes skyrim what it is” assumes both that no one is doing it or that his contributions to the topic are even accurate or useful. Yeah, it would be nice, but Keith is not helping since his theories (or, at least, his applications of them) have ridiculously poor predictive qualities when applied to that space.

        Yes, it would be nice to talk about what makes games fun and interesting to different people, but he is not helping that conversation, he is hurting it. He’s taking what he likes (and pretends he’s not) and focuses the whole conversation on that, on rude and inflexible terms. I’m not here saying “NO! THING YOU LIKE IS DUMB!” (it is a perfectly valid and possibly under-represented design space) , I’m yelling at him for not understanding other people and what they want. He characterizes what people want as only things that they were trained to want and seems to hold a rather dim view on most players.

        • Nahil

          Okay, with that context I guess you’re not being as much of an asshole as I thought, but I still don’t think you’re doing a great job of arguing your point. From my experience, short and sweet is always better. Anyway, maybe Keith should create his own niche rather than saying everyone is doing it wrong, but I like that he at least discusses it. I honestly feel not enough people intelligently discuss games outside of the several genres that are already popular. I guess the reason I don’t find Keith’s point of view particularly offensive is because I tend to agree and I have a pretty dim view of players :P I’m just as cynical

        • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

          The message is not just “have focus”. It’s “have focus, and here’s how I suggest you divide stuff up so that focus is possible.”

  • http://platformsandpitfalls.com link6616

    I’ve read through, and here are my run of thoughts, sorry if it’s not that well thought out, just been translating some japanese from 100 years ago so I’m exhausted mentally.

    At this point I’m jaded about jadedness… It’s super easy to find people disliking everything. Providing no real solutions (saying ‘it should focus more’ isn’t actually a worthwhile piece of advice. A real solution would be to say ‘Skyrim feels to me like it’s a game ultimately about creating an interesting world to explore. It would be a much better game if it focused on that by… making NPC AI more interesting, toning down the importance of combat, making less lore but making it have more impact, perhaps utilise item descriptions to expand lore’ or something.)

    There is of course a point at which certain types of games aren’t for you. Much the same as movies… Action movies are by and large kind of bad… Like even the good ones don’t often create a deep moving experience a ‘good’ ‘classic’ movie should… The Avengers sort of lacks this depth, but it’s a great action movie, and in that genre it will be fondly remembered. The criteria you judge The Avengers by and Schindler’s list by are very different.

    I feel like I’m in a strange place because for the most part I envisage most products that could come from this would be incredibly dull to me. If games did go in this direction I would be pretty much ‘left out.’ And I know what being left out of gaming feels like as I got watch many of my most loved genres die and come back again (that’s what you get for loving 2D platformers, 2D fighters, and point and click adventure games).

    Now of course, alternate view points are always good, but I do always worry about the broadness of some people tend to use when they discuss a lot of ideas of game design. There is an awful habit people have of tending to have philosophies that tend to make the genres they don’t care for not able to compete on certain standards. My essay on the absence of Hamlet in Nineteen Eighty-four doesn’t really have a great deal of literary importance, and won’t go on to effect a great deal.

    Philosophies like this that try and speak to a much broader audience than perhaps those philosophies might be designed. People could pick up this and then dismiss their perhaps excellent ideas on what might a good character action game like Bayonetta lets say, because of that. This combined with the sense of legitimacy print media has can be bad.

    Of course, my hope is that much like any discipline this will merely be a school of thought. Much like in literary critique we can use the theories of post colonialism, feminism, marxism, to analyse a text, we will hopefully be able to use theories like these as a school of thought.

    These schools of thought though are dangerous to apply to everything though. The metric we judge content by is usually in relation to the goals it presents. For instance, does Catherine explore the idea of relationships well in the product that it is… Overall, not really thanks to the puzzles that made it difficult to actually see all that. So Catherine faltered along it’s goals, but it did explore relationships in an interesting manner.

    999 seeks to tell an interesting story about a group of people on a boat who need to solve puzzles… And it does so really well. It did exactly what it set out to do with very little fluff. Using it’s minimal interactivity well, soundtrack to create the feeling of tension when none is actually present and so on.

    From what I gather of this theory, it’s might well honestly help with a set of genres. And I’m never going to suggest focus isn’t something we should work on (the pains of the sonic series are testament to how important focus is).

    But I suspect the focus on ‘ambiguous decision making’ would just fail most Rhythm action games as games.

    In much the same way if we took the theories of David Sirlin and his thoughts on execution, most of his ideas are basically pretty good. But there is something enjoyable about having a complex system that games like UmvC3 create that do end up being execution based, and create a lot of interesting fun aspects and choices. And the feeling of pulling these things off and succeeding is interesting.

    UMvC3 has issues of course, but it’s not a bad game because it failed to meet the criteria sirlin would probably place on it. It would fail in a Sirlin-ian but it could fit in with a different philosophy.

    On the point of what people enjoy… Sure, you’ll find people who enjoy everything. That doesn’t make everything worthless, and it’s worth looking at why certain things might be popular.

    It’s very easy to go ‘aw people are stupid’… Which is true, people are stupid, even the clever ones. Look at a lot of the wonderful science finds and most people can be tricked subtly by really stupid things. The greatest one I know of are people are less likely to steal when there are eyes watching them… Not eyes that have any way to seeing, but like just cartoon eyes on a wall. Of course as you read that you know you don’t fall for it. You know you are above such a stupid thing (this is to whoever reads this, not just Keith and Kayin).

    And we can learn things from popular stuff… Like lets look at Halo. The regenerating health made it much more accessible to most people, created less lame duck situations when people were low and health and it was just one shot till death with anything. Therefore changing the overall structure of the combat to something more encounter by encounter based. Your choices mostly only effected each encounter, as opposed to the longer term. Both in a multiplayer context and a single player one.

    Since then we’ve seen games go from a more long term management to a short term one. This changed the design of those games to allow each individual situation to get players to use more of their resources.

    These kind of changes are really noticeable in RPGs actually, where once this change happened you started to see developers do more interesting things with spells, how resources were managed, weaknesses and all that jazz. (it sort of brought on the cool down system to games outside of the MMO genre ultimately). To the point where games like Xenoblade and The Last story don’t even have resources like MP.

    People tend to respond well to this overall change aswell. Look at a lot of games that have many more long term managed resources (even DQ for instance) and you will see a general dislike for that kind of thing, people don’t like those limitations as a long term thing.

    This is a really useful piece of data that from looking at a bunch of popular modern games we can learn something from.

    On people are stupid aswell…
    Kayin talked about the effect the thematic idea of death has, and it’s really worth talking about. It very much plays on a lot of very basic human ideas and instincts, the idea of death is usually more effective in a violent situation of course. The prince of persia example in particular is great. Sands of time has a reputation for being quite easy as well, but it actually overall is actually decently challenging, it’s just the lack of ‘actually’ dying.

    Excellent game design I think really requires an understanding of the players… Most players are human, so being able to abuse the nature of people to make them feel certain ways about actions is really important.

    • Nahil

      The most important thing I personally got from your post is that there should be different schools of thought because different people like different things, and we should study that to learn what kind of games we’d like to make. I totally agree. I also think setting up different schools of thought will lead to more focused games, and focus is something everyone benefits from.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Firstly – you win the longest internet comment award. Damn. Just gotta sit here and like, really appreciate its majesty, heh.

      Yeah I think that almost all of what you were talking about is based on the idea that you’re confusing “videogame” with my concept of “game”. I am not saying something has to be a contest of interesting decisions to be a good “videogame”. A videogame can be literally ANYTHING. I still think that all videogames need to have a focus, but they don’t need to be the contest of ambiguous decision-making.

      Also a lot of your argument comes down to: Yeah, you can make these theories and philosophies, but some people might like the things that go against them!

      Of course! That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t develop them, though. Some people like noise music which goes totally against music theory. Does that mean we shouldn’t have developed music theory?

      Anyway, in the latest podcast episode we answered at least one of your questions!