Notgames Forum

I think they are.

Well at least after response to some of my posts on gamasutra. I have posted two kinda notgamish post on gamastura and the response on them compared to our own blog is quite different. Sure, people who read our blog are usually fans our games, but I still believe we have a quite diverse group of followers. Also the Gamasutra are not all professionals, but all are involved in gamedeving in some way (hobby, pro, etc)

Anyway, here are two posts to compare:

Post 1 (on meaning in games):
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ThomasGrip/20100215/4417/Exploring_Deeper_Meaning_In_Games.php
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/02/exploring-deeper-meaning-in-games.html

Post 2 (on trial and error):
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ThomasGrip/20100412/4905/Why_Trial_and_Error_will_Doom_Games.php
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-trial-and-error-will-doom-games.html


What does everybody else make of this?

I think that most game developers love games, so they've played alot of games, so they've gotten good at playing games, so they're considered hardcore gamers. *shrug*

That's just a response to the thread title, though. I'll do a thorough reading of those posts and their comparative responses when I have time, hopefully later today.

I think you're right. Chris Bateman has identified this as the primary reason why videogames are not more diverse. He proposes that developers should stop making games for themselves. But another, and better solution, in my opinion, is that other people than hardcore gamers are enabled and encouraged to make games.

It's understandable that some people who like videogames want to create them. But it's ultimately very stupid. Because you have not much to offer if you already like the field you're entering. All you can contribute is derivative work or at best work that makes minute improvements. which is sort of ridiculous in a medium with some blatant problems.
I propose that only people who hate videogames should make them. That's the surest way to see some radical changes in the medium. Gamers should just remain gamers. And more non-gamers should become developers.

Perhaps I should had suspected it, but I never knew that the concept of trial and error was held to dearly by developers. I honestly thought that people would all agree that it is not very good for immersive games, but instead I have gotten the opposite response at Gamasutra. Granted that I was a bit over-dramatic and introduction, but still.

The thread can be found here and is also linked to in the first post.

Some quotes:




Making people that hate games make them is not such a bad idea after all

Game developers, and gamers alike, have no imagination. And they are very protective of the thing they love so dearly. All nerds are. It's best to ignore them. And prove them wrong by means of our work.

Also, I think that most game developers' talents are limited to the creation of the games that we are familiar with. Maybe making a case for something else to them sounds like telling them they will be out of a job soon.

. . .You really shouldn't be so willing to adopt this kind of view.

I argue with myself about this all the time.  One potential conclusion: Become familiar with fewer videogames, i.e. stop playing videogames.  I try to be pretty careful in selecting what videogames I play for the very reason you mention.

I suppose this is based on the assumption that as you become more familiar with a set of rules, you become less willing to break them?

I'd question that. In my experience, the best thing to do is to get familiar with a broad variety of rulesets and mechanisms- ones in different genres, different mediums, different experiences altogether.

That way you learn to draw on the full spectrum of your experiences for inspiration, and your ability to craft the mechanics is no longer reliant on the "training wheels" approach of imitating other works and making small tweaks. In other words, you have to go beyond a familiarity with the rules, and achieve an actual understanding. Do that and you'll find that those rules aren't as restricting as you might think; and when they do need to be broken, you can dismantle them in a much more thorough and precise manner (all the bathwater, with none of the baby).

Yeah that's the other side, and you have presented it really well!  Nice job

I don't think there's any rules in conventional game design that are even worth breaking.
Unless you want to make a game.
Otherwise, start from your content. And work with the raw materials of the technology. The only real lesson to learn from game design is that if you are serious about your content, you should avoid game design like the plague, because it tends to destroy story, immersion, meaning.

Game elements do that if they're not handled properly. It's a question of implementation, similar to how the use of curry can make a dish great or ruin it.

I disagree. Games can only tell stories about very specific topics and in very simplistic ways. This why most game stories are about war and why Rod Humble's The Marriage lacks subtlety and personality.

Anything that surpasses this comes out of aspects that are not related to the actual game design and could be divorced from it. The game design always diminishes the things that are good and interesting about a game (in fact, the better the game design is, the more extreme its negative impact on content, often). There are no exceptions, even, for once. Any videogame that has some interesting content would have been more interesting if it had not been a game.

I do realize that "interesting" is subjective. But so is anything.

This is not an argument against games. It's an argument against using the game format as a basis for human expression. (though using game elements on top of some other form of human expression, can be very effective)

Games can be fun, games can be fascinating, games can be beautiful. But only as systems for players to manipulate. Not as artistic media. As artistic media, games are useless.

I think that there is a lot be learned from many games and it is well worth studying them.

The most important thing is interface and not only are many people accustomed to these, they have also evolved over a long period. For example, if one wants to make something where several agents are move around at the same time, then one can learn a lot from RTS:s.

In other cases, it might be best to not be too influenced by games (with views such as "the must be a challenge",etc). But I think it is wrong to not see what people have come up with and learn from.

Of course. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant that we should avoid game-as-game design, if we want our work to be immersive and artistically expressive. But there's definitely a lot of other things in videogames that are very interesting and that we can learn a lot from. I'd even say just about everything that is not the pure game-as-game is interesting.

ಠ_ಠ
So your argument is that game elements always diminish the good and interesting aspects of an experience, except when they don't.

Has anyone ever pointed out that you use the term "game" in a really ambiguous manner?