The Subjective & Objective in Video Games

Can we all agree that when we type things into the internet, that the purpose for doing so is that we hope that the stuff we typed is of some kind of value to others?  Slashdot has their “Insightful/Informative/Funny/Interesting”-based ratings system;  things which are none of those are buried.  One of the things that should always get “buried” is a comment that’s nothing but pure, subjective opinion.

A lot of people might find that strange coming from me, because a lot of people mistake me for “saying my opinion” a lot on the internet.  While I certainly do that from time to time, it will almost always be in passing, as a bit of an aside to a larger comment that’s actually about something of substance.  I have long understood that nobody cares what my, or anyone else’s opinion is.

The recent Diablo 3 situation is a good example.  I wrote my article on it months ago during the beta, but it recently got a lot of attention due to someone posting about it on reddit.  At about the same time I also was on a particularly critical episode of Roguelike Radio wherein Diablo 3 was thoroughly throttled.  In both cases, there was a predictable amount of backlash.  People were upset, thinking that I was saying Diablo 3 is “no good”.  Actually, I’ve never said that the program isn’t “good”.

What I have said is that it lacks ambiguous decision-making, that it lacks a loss condition, that there is far too much noise in the system for it to be balanced or meaningful.  These are not subjective statements, they are attempts at objective observations about the nature of that program.

 

Subjective Vs. Objective

I’ve encountered this situation so many times on the internet, where I will make an objective observation, and get responses like “LIKE I GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOUR STUPID OPINION!”.  For this reason, I think it might be worthwhile to review the difference between a subjective and objective statement, because it seems that people are too regularly mistaking the two.

One common mistake people make is believing that “an objective statement cannot be incorrect”.   Actually, an objective statement can absolutely be incorrect.  Science is completely based on hypothesis and the formation of scientific theories.  These theories are essentially a collection of objective statements about the nature of something.  Scientists also have the responsibility of trying to falsify their claims – trying to find out how what they said is wrong.  Sometimes, they find that indeed, they were wrong, and sometimes they find that they were right.  In both cases, however, the statement remains an objective statement. It is not as though once an objective statement is proven wrong, it becomes a subjective statement.  Objective statements are attempts at making a statement about the reality of the world (and all we can ever do is make attempts).

Subjective statements are fundamentally different.  These statements attempt to describe something about one’s own state of mind – their opinions, preferences, and proclivities.  Unless you’re in a personal relationship with someone, you probably don’t care what their subjective opinions are, because they have no direct impact on you.

 

Standards

Another common place people get messed up on this is that sometimes, a statement that sounds subjective can actually be objective, if given the right context.  For instance, most people would find this statement clearly subjective:

Wii Sports is the best game ever created.

Certainly sounds like a subjective statement.  However, if you add that the context was “in terms of most copies sold”, it is no longer subjective.  Wii Sports sold something like 46 million copies and is the “best game” based on the standard of sales.

Much of my work has been in establishing objective standards and guidelines that support a very specific kind of system which I call “a game” (Here’s my Gamasutra article laying it out).  Of course, there’s a ton of confusion sprouting from that word alone (I have another Gamasutra article coming soon on that subject), but once it’s made clear that I’m not talking about something as broad as “an amusement or pastime”, it should also be clear that I am dealing entirely with the objective, here.

 

“Everything’s Subjective In Videogames!”

I don’t think anyone is dumb enough to actually say that phrase out loud, but it certainly feels like some people believe this sometimes.  Of course, this again stems from the aforementioned problem where we don’t even know what the hell a “game” is.  When a “game” is something that can cover anything from Minecraft to D&D to Farmville to Chess, of course it is incredibly difficult to make any objective statements beyond stuff that’s not even really related to the system.  We’re basically stuck talking about technology, and whether the application has bugs or how smooth it runs, or something thematic, because those are things that we can be objective about, since we understand them.

 

 

Back to Diablo

So like I said earlier, I never said that Diablo is “bad”.  Actually, I think we can say that Diablo 3 is objectively “good” – or better yet, “effective” – at what it wants to do:  make a ton of cash and exploit human beings who aren’t able to see that it’s a glorified operant conditioning chamber.  It is extremely good at doing both of those things.

Now, I will say that I think that those things are bad things, but that’s my opinion.  If I were to say this, though, people would yell at me, saying “that’s just your opinion, who cares”, as though I have just gone on the internet and said some useless subjective statement all by itself.

This is the most frustrating part, though:  how infrequently people try to argue against my objective statements (i.e. illustrate how they are not true), and instead make one of the above errors and “argue” in the subjective realm. 80-90% of the time, it’s something like, “No way, Diablo is a ton of fun!  I like playing it co-op and it feels so good to see loot fall out of a log”.

If you ever find yourself responding to what you see as a subjective statement (“I like X”) with another subjective statement, (“No, X sucks”), you should stop yourself right there.

If you want to find out why someone likes something that you consider terrible, what you have to do is first find out what that person’s standards are.  Then, if you still disagree – meaning, if their opinion doesn’t make sense even given what they’re looking for – you can start to build a case using objective statements.

 

Conclusion

This is stuff that we all have to be wary of – I am probably guilty of having done these things in the past, but it would surprise me if I had done it in the last year or so, at least.

Probably, a lot of this article is pointless in that it’s just preaching to the choir, in a sense.  One of the big problems is that my writing is mostly for other game designers and people who are serious about understanding games in a deeper way, yet most people who read my stuff are neither of these.  This explains why I get twenty “no you’re wrong I like Diablo 3″ comments for every one insightful and usually at least partially supportive comment I get from a game designer.

I do think everyone who plays games would be better off being able to understand and defend their points of view more effectively, and by staying objective, we can do that.

Posted on 05/24/2012 by keithburgun. This entry was posted in Culture, Game Design. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.dinofarmgames.com blakereynolds

    Another common misunderstanding is that many people think that when you claim something is an objective statement that it’s “objectively true” in the way that the laws of thermodynamics are “objectively true.” I know you touched on that an objective statement can be false, but not “how” true people assume you’re claiming your statement is. Basically, I’m just reinforcing your point that not only can an objective statement be false, but it can also be arguable. It can be ambiguous. Like “Puerto Rico is balanced because x.” Someone else can build a case around “puerto Rico is imbalanced because x.” If both statements are measured around the same standard, they can’t both be true, but they might both be “sort of” right if the standard is complex enough.

    So yeah, I’ve always said “art is subjective, therefore all opinions, arguments and statements about the state of the art have equal value,” is an intellectually dishonest, vapid and cop-out sentiment.

  • http://blown-to-bits.blogspot.com/ Kdansky

    I think you are undervaluing the depth of Diablo 3′s skills. There is a lot more strategy and ambiguous decision-making than zero. To give an example: Would you prefer a hydra that does small AoE attacks, or single-target but never misses, or one that puts a pool of poison below monsters, and *if* they don’t move, they take extra damage? Depending on your other skills and the circumstances (from enemy selection to shape of the map), one or the other will be superior. Most (if not all) skills have similar choices, and I expect them to do some more balance-patching for the few that seem one-sided right now (such as Smoke Screen, which they already changed, barely a week after release).

    Is the game too easy until late Nightmare/early Hell for these differences to actually matter? Yes. The game has a tutorial that is 40 hours long.

    And as for “you can’t lose”: There is hardcore-mode.

    My point being: DIablo is both a slot-machine for the majority, and also a game for the minority.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com blakereynolds

      >Would you prefer a hydra that does small AoE attacks, or single-target but never misses, or one that puts a pool of poison below monsters, and *if* they don’t move, they take extra damage?

      doesn’t matter. In both builds, just fill your inventory with potions, and if your health is low, pound a few bottles. Rinse. Repeat. Because the abilities may be different from each other doesn’t give them endogenous meaning. Their potential ambiguity is neutered by the game around it, a “click to win” skinner box. Without a clear loss condition and consequences that actually matter, and a system of potions and death being nothing more than a minor inconvenience, they have shot themselves in the foot. It’s a mortal wound keeping it from being remotely interesting.

      >”And as for “you can’t lose”: There is hardcore-mode.”

      we here at dinofarm don’t believe in “difficulty modes.” A game is a unique set of rules. It’s a fragile, delicate machine that has one and only one balanced difficulty. Hardcore mode may jack up the HP bags, make potions more scarce or cause permadeath, but the game is built around the system in which nothing matters. Making a game “harder” doesn’t guarantee it will become more interesting. Just harder.

      Let’s put it this way. All games need to have some level of difficulty because anything with depth of play requires a skill set to be built.

      However, not all forms of difficulty are interesting.

      • http://blown-to-bits.blogspot.com/ Kdansky

        You can only drink a potion once every thirty seconds. You can’t trivialize the game with them. Yes, this is different from the early beta-versions, where people (rightfully) lamented about it.

        Hardcore mode has permadeath, but plays the same otherwise. It’s not more difficult at all, it only has a harder loss condition.

        The game only has one mode of difficulty, and not multiple. Normal – Nightmare – Hell – Inferno is not a choice, it’s how you progress through it, just like you do Act 2 after you do Act 1.

  • dogfrog

    While it’s apparent that you guys here believe you are making something really superior to Diablo in a lot of meaningful ways, I’m struggling to grasp what it is about Diablo and Auro that’s really so different as you seem to think. To sum it up, I see potential differences of quality and certainly differences of scale, but I don’t see fundamental differences. I don’t see what it is that makes Auro a real game and Diablo ‘just a skinner box’.

    Please correct me where I have erred in my following observations of the similarities between a game like Auro and Diablo.

    Difficulty modes – Well leaving aside that someone on here has more or less said that you DO have an ‘easy mode’ with the Story mode in Auro, there’s also Fire Pact. Fire pact is essentially a difficulty mode. You lose health but gain extra points for it, conditions identical to difficulty modes in countless games. The only gameplay involved centers around the decisions caused by you being less able to absorb damage. I can find no meaningful difference between this and Inferno mobs doing bigger portions of your HP pool. One might point to the ‘score system’ again, and say that Fire pact rewards you with more points in exchange for the higher difficulty. On one hand I could say that Inferno mobs reward you with better drops, but maybe you say that’s not the same as score (which I’m not entirely sure about, but it’d be a long, mostly unnecessary aside to discuss why).

    So I’ll leave that, and then ask you if it would suffice for Diablo to simply add a score system, and you got more points for killing Inferno mobs as compared to Normal? Once you beat Diablo your grand score is totaled up and you get to compare it to your previous bests. You can solve the grinding issue, where the system rewards you for simply killing more and more mobs before ‘cashing in’ at Diablo, in any number of ways – limit or eliminate the points you gain from repetitively grinding an area more than once, have point loss on death to create tension between risking grinding or hurrying up with the points you have, etc.

    Is something so easily tacked on really the big defining feature that makes Auro a ‘real game’ and Diablo ‘just a skinner box’?

    “loss condition” – In Auro, I die and I’m sent back to the start. In Diablo, I die and I’m sent back to town/last checkpoint with some gold loss. If I was fighting a boss, the boss heals up; depending on the mob I was fighting and the situation I died in, the mob could also heal up. I don’t see any essential difference here, just one of scale. You might say ‘well in Auro once you die, that score is over with and you have to start building a new score’, but again, that’s only measuring a difference in the scale of the punishment for losing. Show me a ‘game over’ screen all you want, ultimately the only difference between death in Auro and Diablo is that in Auro, it takes longer to get back to where you were. If the goal in Auro is to get the best score possible, death is just as much a temporary speedbump as death in Diablo is, just with some more lost time.

    You call the ‘loss condition’ in Diablo a ‘minor inconvenience’. Well, Auro’s loss condition just seems to be a bit bigger of an inconvenience. And beyond that, hardcore mode’s loss condition seems to be a potentially enormous inconvenience. Speaking of which, this brings me to my next point…

    Skills lose meaning because ‘consequences don’t matter’ – As far as I can tell, skills in Diablo and skills in Auro are fairly similar. They serve different purposes, affect different areas, have differing amounts of reliability, and have various amounts of synergy with each other (your Witch Doctor’s Grasp of the Dead holds them in place so you get more damage from your Acid Cloud, the Barbarian’s Ground Stomp draws in enemies so that Cleave can hit an entire group, etc.). Auro might have better designed skills with ‘more synergy’ or something, but that remains to be seen. For now, I see them as very similar systems of interacting mechanics, ones that encourage masterful decision making.

    Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that you here think that because the foundational mechanics of Diablo have a reward system built on top of them, that it somehow negates those foundational mechanics. Forgive me for not grasping the logic of that, but I don’t see how the ‘bells and whistles’ added on to Diablo, the shiny drops, the ‘skinner box’ aspect of the game, truly voids the foundational gameplay of choosing and using skills masterfully. Now I do think it detracts from it, as can be easily seen in the potential for PvP to see the more masterful player losing to the better equipped player. I definitely see that as an issue, but it doesn’t destroy the mechanics of Diablo, just de-emphasizes them in lopsided matches. Matchup two evenly geared groups of players and it will be purely a contest of skill and decision making.

    Your other complaint for why this system, of the masterful use and choice of skills, doesn’t really matter is because death ‘doesn’t matter’. But, when Hardcore mode clearly fixes that issue, you cryptically allude to Diablo being a ‘system in which nothing matters’, one where upping the loss consequences does nothing to alleviate the situation. But you just said that the reason it doesn’t matter is because the consequences for losing are trivial; hardcore mode’s loss condition is clearly much more of an inconvenience than Auro’s loss condition, but now that isn’t good enough?

    So, clearly, it has nothing to do with the consequences of losing; please elucidate what’s -really- making the skill system, the mechanics, of Diablo and Auro differ so much that one is just ‘click to win’ and the other’s a ‘real game’. You say some stuff about how all the gameplay boils down to ‘just use potions’, but as far as I can tell it’s just another skill. What about it destroys meaningful decision making in any way? Using a potion has a consequence (can’t use another one for quite a while) and a reward (you might survive this encounter with the extra health it provides).

    It’s not very interesting, I’ll give you that, as the consequence doesn’t leave nearly as much to consider as something like Floe or Set Flame. You pretty much never have a reason to not use a potion if you need to (unless you could’ve gotten away without using a potion, healed with something with a lower cooldown, and saved it for when it’s really necessary), and it acts as just an extension to your HP pool gated by the cooldown. But is this really so dismal of a mechanic, the fact that they wrapped up some of your HP behind a cooldown, enough to bring the whole rest of the system crashing down? And this brings me back to an earlier point; perhaps Auro is a better designed system of skill usage, but is it -really- a completely different sort of thing? Or just a better version with less bells and whistles and more emphasis on the skill usage alone?

    Now writing this has taken some time, and already I’m seeing some of the ways you might answer my questions or counter my points. But I’d rather let you (or anyone interested, for that matter) speak for yourself.

    P.s. Wanna make it clear that I’m really looking forward to Auro! Good luck in the development process!

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >I’m struggling to grasp what it is about Diablo and Auro that’s really so different as you seem to think.

      Really? Well, the most fundamental difference is that Auro is a contest and Diablo is not. You can’t lose or win in Diablo. I know about hardcore mode; firstly, that’s really a variant of Diablo and not the normal game.

      Secondly, in Diablo, your character gets better every level, stronger, and the nature of abilities are almost all “improvement” abilities. Abilities that increase your damage output, basically. Only a few of the Diablo abilities are tactical. All of the abilities in Auro are tactical – there’s no +10 to armor (there isn’t even an armor system) or +3 dps (there’s not even really a damage system). Also, Auro is turn based and hex-based, meaning that it plays out like an abstractish strategy game. It plays more like ADVANCE WARS than it does Diablo. Also, Auro doesn’t have loot AT ALL. That’s a pretty big thing to take away from Diablo, being a game almost entirely about loot. Also, Auro doesn’t have experience points or any RPG elements at all really. The games are COMPLETELY different. All they have in common is random maps and they’re top down in viewpoint.

      Auro is about player skill. Diablo is about simply putting in the clicks.

      Adding a score would not be enough. You’d have to change all of the abilities to be tactical instead of +1ish. You’d also have to remove all of the “character improvement” crap, since now the game is going to be about player skill.

      >“loss condition” – In Auro, I die and I’m sent back to the start.

      This isn’t quite right. Auro doesn’t have persistent characters. The match of Auro ends when your character runs out of HP – he’s not “sent back”; the game is over.

      Diablo, though, is persistent. Dying is nothing but an annoyance in Diablo as it basically just makes you lose about 5 minutes of your time. Again, Diablo is not a contest.

      >Well, Auro’s loss condition just seems to be a bit bigger of an inconvenience.

      No, it’s not an inconvenience at all. It is a loss. Calling death in Auro an inconvenience is like saying it’s “inconvenient” to lose a soccer or chess match. Wrong word. It’s over, and you lost. This is the nature of a contest.

      Skinner box isn’t a “bell and whistle” of Diablo, it’s the core purpose of it. Everything else is a bell or a whistle.

      On Hardcore mode: Sure, Hardcore mode becomes a contest. I will give it that. It’s just not a very good contest because it allows grinding and because the game simply wasn’t designed for it!

      >You say some stuff about how all the gameplay boils down to ‘just use potions’, but as far as I can tell it’s just another skill. What about it destroys meaningful decision making in any way?

      The problem with the decisions in Diablo is that they are all – or like 90% of them – are trivial. It is trivial to know when to drink potions, for instance. Or when to kite. Or when to use almost all of your abilities.

      Auro, on the other hand, is designed around making decisions ambiguous and interesting – not at all trivial.

      Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

      • http://blown-to-bits.blogspot.com/ Kdansky

        >Secondly, in Diablo, your character gets better every level, stronger, and the nature of abilities are almost all “improvement” abilities. Abilities that increase your damage output, basically. Only a few of the Diablo abilities are tactical. All of the abilities in Auro are tactical – there’s no +10 to armor (there isn’t even an armor system) or +3 dps (there’s not even really a damage system).

        You’ve written this a few times now, and it’s still completely wrong. You can look at every single skill in the game, and see that there are advantages and limitations to it compared to every other skill and every rune variant. Enforcing a hard cap of nine abilities (6 active, 3 passive) at a time means that you have to make some choices. The only blatant upgrades are “no rune” into “that one rune that is a blatant upgrade”. As discussed at length on the fantasystrike-forums (Sirlin.net), having a tutorial version of a skill is less annoying than the alternatives.

        • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

          Some of the abilities have SUBTLE “tactical” effects coupled with mostly damage dealing. There are plenty of abilities that are nothing BUT “+200% damage!!!”, like Rend.

          I’m reading the abilities from this site, I assume they are accurate? http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian

          • dogfrog

            The site’s accurate, but your analysis of even a relatively ‘boring’ skill like Rend is laughable in its oversimplification.

            Rend costs fury, affects a small aoe around you, and takes up a skill slot. All these things make the choice of taking Rend and using the skill have more considerations than simply “I get more damage so why not!”. To give a brief summary, choosing to take Rend means you think you’re going to have the fury to spare, that you’ll be in close range surrounded by multiple enemies while having that fury to spare (a big assumption in higher difficulties), and that you won’t need the slot for something with utility beyond just allowing you to clear a crowd faster. And I could get even more in-depth with specific considerations that go into choosing and using Rend, but my point’s made.

            Honestly, you just sound like someone who played a bit of the beta and made up your entire mind about the game based off that. Normal mode truly is a mode where you just click on things and they die and it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing. You could clear it with any joke build you could think up, more or less. It’s a lengthy tutorial/intro mode, really.

            Harder difficulties have some problems of their own, for completely different reasons, but they’re working on them. And of course, PvP is gonna be the real test of a person’s mastery of D3 skill usage and decision making. It’s just too bad the loot system muddies it all up.

            • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

              I can see that there is some strategy in setting up your character: choosing what skills and what weapons and such to equip. However, because of the sheer NUMBER of the skills, as well as the nature of these skills (more damage, more defense, more this or that), you’re going to see the same thing with Diablo 3 as you saw with 2. There will be about a dozen “correct” builds, and that’s it.

              I was referring to how one uses those abilities. Basically, whenever you have the resources (cooldown/mana/”rage” or whatever), use the abilities. Mash ‘em in there with your attacks, kite+potion when you’re in trouble.

              By the way, being “in trouble” in Diablo directly corresponds to basically your DPS and health not being high enough. Someone didn’t grind enough! We haven’t even touched on the infinite capability for grinding. This goes for any skill level (actually MORE so for harder skill levels).

  • dogfrog

    Good lord that’s an ugly wall of text. It looked prettier in my comment box. Any way for me to fix the formatting?

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      It’s funny you ask, I’m working on figuring out how to do the same thing with my posts themselves.

  • dogfrog

    Well first I guess I should clarify that I meant for my post to be a response to blakereynolds, in case you were wondering where I was coming up with some of this. Should also clarify that I’m talking about D3 when I say Diablo; I have very limited experience with the other titles, but have played quite a bit of every class in D3 so far.

    Now, I see Auro and Diablo as fundamentally similar because they are both about using tactical skills to defeat monsters. Again, both are about skills with different effects, different areas of effect, different amounts of reliability, and different synergies, and how and when you use those skills, both individually and in concert.

    You say that there’s ‘more’ tactical skills in Auro. Maybe that’s the case, but from what little I know of Auro, it seems more that there’s simply very few skills that aren’t tactical (if any?). Diablo seems to have a lot more skills in general, and there are a few that are simple things like DPS steroids, but a lot of them really are tactical. I think you really underrate the skills in D3. For the most part, they’re not as simple as you imply. They grant you movement, or crowd control, or help you utilize other skills more efficiently, etc. So maybe Auro does more of this and avoids the ‘dps check’ elements, but it doesn’t negate that, at its core, D3 is about tactical skill use.

    Now here’s what I don’t like about D3. I don’t like that it IS an interesting system, that it does have a lot of interesting skills and different ways those skills play to each other’s strengths allowing for wildly different builds and playstyles for different situations. I don’t like that it’s a good foundation for a game, but then it’s jarringly mashed up with this carrot-on-a-stick loot system that, unfortunately, a lot of people seem to really dig. I’d be pretty excited for D3′s pvp if it wasn’t for the loot system unnecessarily marring it too (afaik).

    So I’d say that Auro is simply a ‘purer’ version of what D3 is fundamentally about, without the distraction of the skinner box. They’re very similar systems at their core, one’s just garish. But I’d never say that it isn’t even a game, just an… inelegant one. And I could say more about win/loss conditions but really, the point I came to make has been made.

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  • Miroslav

    To say something is objective is to say that something exists independently of human mind (which is, just to make sure we don’t get into unecessary argument, not necessarily to say that it can’t be percepted wrongly).

    Therefore, an objective statement is a statement which tries to explain the true nature of a given phenomenon.

    Video games, just like any other artform, are, thank god, highly dependent on human mind.

    But it is possible to treat video games as objects. A DVD containing video game is, in fact, an object. Similarly, a source code is an object. A set of rules can be considered an object as well.

    But when we talk about art what we’re really talking about is the enjoyment we derive from it, not the nature of the object itself. And enjoyment, as we all know, is produced by our minds. This is not to say that our minds can release all those feel good neurotransmitters on their own, completely isolated from the environment. Not at all. Our minds need a stimulation, and for this, we need a stimulating object.

    This is why we tend to attribute all our enjoyment to objects themselves. This is why we forget to think about all the possible confounding factors that are deeply hidden in our minds. This is why when we realize that our enjoyment cannot be so easily replicated by other people we are tempted to make up shitty theories to explain the dissonance. It’s not rare to call other people “dumb” or “too casual” or “young” or whatever simply because they don’t like what we like.

    That’s not bad. Really. We want to share our fun with other people.
    But when there are none we feel sad! We make an attempt, but damn, it never works. And so, we get mad and start theorizing.

    And then confuse ourselves over the meaning of “subjective” and “objective”.

    When you talk about your vision you’re being subjective AND THAT IS GOOD BECAUSE PEOPLE DO REALLY CARE ABOUT OPINIONS. We do because we want to relate and perhaps try to learn something new.

    So your opinion is highly subjective and there is nothing bad about that.

    And people who are dismissing it as “that’s just your opinion” are merely defending themselves against your vision, to which they cannot relate. They are defending perhaps because they perceive your posts as some sort of nasty attack on the pleasure they derive from games and consequently on who they are.

    I do really think you’re confusing yourself over the meaning of subjective/objective.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >When you talk about your vision you’re being subjective AND THAT IS GOOD BECAUSE PEOPLE DO REALLY CARE ABOUT OPINIONS.

      Not entirely. There is a craft – a science – to making games, as well as it being an art, of course. Just as music has OBJECTIVE “music theory”, I am working to create a functional, objective theory of game design. This is based around coming up with a useful, solid and consistent definition for what a “game” is. Nothing subjective about it.

      • Miroslav

        Ah, I see. I stand corrected.

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