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A Theory of Fun for Game Design
Mr. Koster kindly agreed to answer questions when I was preparing this review. When asked about the audience of the book, he said "The book was intended in large part as something I could give to my parents, or to other relatives, or to non-industry friends, as a way to explain what it is that my profession is all about." As such, the comics and plain-spoken writing bring design concepts into focus for readers who may not want to spend the rest of their lives on these topics.
The chapters of Theory of Fun are not organized formally, but the book seems to fall into three sections. The first section sets the stage by discussing what exactly a game is. "Games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life." Koster's thesis is, essentially, that games are learning puzzles. In his experience, simple games are created by children to teach themselves useful skills. More formal games have similar goals, but modern games exist almost entirely to provide the elusive substance of fun to the player. This assertion resulted in a brisk discussion on the site Terra Nova. Exactly what people want when they pick up a joystick is very much in debate even by industry professionals.
The central portion of Koster's theory ruminates on the roles games play, why games are designed the way they are, and what matters in a game. The meat of the book is here, in discussions about why gamers cast aside the ethical quandaries brought up by games like Grand Theft Auto (they're playing the game mechanics, not the fiction surrounding the mechanics) and in the observation that the destiny of all games is to become boring. An amusingly astute statement about cheaters caps off a discussion of the tendencies players have to finding the optimal solution to a game: "When a player cheats in a game, they are choosing a battlefield that is broader in context than the game itself."
At the end of the midsection, the eternal discussion of games as art makes an appearance. Instead of equivocating, Mr. Koster makes his opinion very clear. "Art, to me, is just taking craft seriously. It's about communication (as I have said many times, in the book and elsewhere). Taking what we do seriously, *even if for frivolous ends,* just leads to better work. Considering what you are doing to be art tends to emphasize high standards, experimentation, expression, thoughtfulness, and discipline -- even if your goal is to make a gag-a-day newspaper strip or macrame hangings for your window."
To close his discussion on games and to provide a larger context against which to examine them, Mr. Koster steps outside the bounds of game design and makes some fairly dramatic statements about what games should be. While other media portrays the human condition almost as a matter of course, he argues, games rarely connect with the most basic aspects of our lives. To his mind, in order to truly achieve respect alongside the novel or the musical composition, games should "illuminate aspects of ourselves that we did not fully understand."
In his epilogue, Koster goes even further, arguing that -- as authors of art -- game designers should take responsibility for their creations. "I have little patience for those who hide behind the statement that 'it's just entertainment.' To deny our influence while simultaneously crowing about our financial success is at best naïve, and at worst irresponsible."
The book itself is well laid out, with the thoughtfully edited and often humorous text set amid plenty of whitespace on the right and the usually well-drawn comics on the left. The comics set the tone for the whole book, which in format resembles more of a collection of Far Side strips than it does a technical guide. The back of the book contains an extensive commentary section where offhand references and asides are explained in depth.
If you're planning on entering the field of game design, A Theory of Fun won't help you to storyboard a plot, model a texture, or develop a code base: if you're looking for the technical aspects of game design or deep academic consideration of the field, other titles will hold more for you. The intended audience of this book is quite wide, and Koster does an excellent job of making everyone feel included in the conversation that occurs between the pages. While game players and professionals new to the field alike can get a lot from what he discusses, the reader who may benefit the most from Theory of Fun is the seasoned game industry worker.
With the endless rehashing of game and design concepts currently in circulation and parent groups growing ever more shrill at the release of morally ambiguous titles, Raph Koster's book is a refreshing read. The book is an unpretentious examination of what it is that makes a game a game. He steps beyond the dehumanizing aspects of game mechanics to look at games and their designers in a broader societal context. If for no other reason that that, Theory of Fun is worth a look to read the opinion of someone who gives a damn.
You can purchase A Theory of Fun for Game Design from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
If Raph Koster is an expert on anything, as many Star Wars Galaxies players can attest to, it's making a game NOT fun.
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All staff working on a game product should have training like this book gives; a designer's perspective should pervade the entire project, and the concept and goal of "fun" needs to be in every part of the product. Often, the goal of 1/2 the team is making the interface or some part of the game compatible with how the game engine does rendering to ensure we get an extra 5 fps here and there.
"When a player cheats in a game, they are choosing a battlefield that is broader in context than the game itself."
I believe the proper terms are 'hacker' or 'n0ob'.
Plug your game into this equation:
...
#(complex game equation) game.c
Your game sucks, please try again.
#(complex game equation) game2.c
Your game sucks, please try again
#(complex game equation) game4465.c
This game might sell 10,000 copies. Might.
I know game playing is surely fun. You don't need a book to tell you so.
As a novice game creator I must say that I have yet to read a book and feel I am doing fine thus far. I created http://ruaware.org/ AWARE and even had an article published in the NY Times (nothing on /. I am afraid) as a review in theory. The game I created was successful enough to even warrant a sequel.
I specialize in Alternate Reality Gaming and the games are much more cerebral than most, so when Dave Szulborski wrote "This Is Not A Game" (seen at http://www.immersivegaming.com/) not many had anything to complain about. Our players tend to like an intellectual challenge.
Yet, I can imagine that many 13-15 year old DOOM players may have their head spin when discussing game theory.
Fun is when I win!
aren't written for gamers. They are for gamne designers. Just because you like driving, that doesn't mean you can design a car, does it?
word.
--Bwaaaahaha*cough, splutter*, oh, God. No more. *wheeze* Make it stop. You're killin' me. Can't read another line.
Raph Koster, the man most directly associated with shitting out Star Wars Galaxies from between his Goatse-like buttcheeks, is lecturing us on what makes a fun game.
And for our next articles, an interview with the guy who invented the Edsel on his new book about his theory of automotive design, to be followed up by the guy who invented the :Cue:Cat about his theory of digital convergence, Jack Valenti's Theory of Digital Rights, George W. Bush's theory of fiscal conservatism, and a book on portfolio management theory co-authored by FDR and Charles Ponzi.
Sheesh.
Well the answer is here: http://mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/develope rId=19434/
Nethack is no longer the king
No one, regardless of their enthusiam for games, can just sit down and start writing games after reading a single book. While this one may enlighten readers about general game design, it certainly will not provide them with all the knowledge they'll need to create the kind of games that Average Joe will want. To be a successful game programmer, to have to feel passionate about what you are doing. If you can read some books on C/C++, and then work your way up to becoming familiar with the Windows API set and then eventually on to DirectDraw or OpenGL, then perhaps you will be able to write a mediocre game. But it takes patience, and certainly a great deal of interest in the field itself.
The review is nearly as long as the book.
No data, no cry
This is the man who many would argue ruined Ultima Online and then went on to helm the disaster that is Star Wars Galaxies. The same man who, on his personal website, proclaimed that when it comes to design, the player (customer) is wrong and should be ignored. Now he's releasing a book? I'll pass.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
If a game's pop culture importance is graphed on the horizontal axis and the artfulness of its execution is plotted on the vertical axis, then the total area shows how fun the game is.
For instance, a Star Wars MMORPG may score average on the horizontal but poorly on the vertical due to lack of combat. A Family Guy game on the other hand, may score very high on the horizontal as well as high on the vertical due to a collector's edition version that comes with some of the same stuff the show's writers are on while writing, thereby revealing the game to be truly fun.
Back when Raph Koster was the lead of the UO live team he published an infamous list of rules for all MMORPG's. Koster is probably the smartest guy in the MMORPG world, so it's great that he finally wrote a book. My only gripe is that I feel like everyone has a book these days, and that you have to read their book first before you talk to them. Does anyone else feel this way?
I have come up with plenty of fun game ideas based on existing engines. What do I do with these ideas? Will they be impossible to sell?
Bueller?
"When a player cheats in a game, they are choosing a battlefield that is broader in context than the game itself."
This is totally false. The context of the game is the restrictions that make the game challenging. How hard you have to work to acquire a certain weapon, how careful you have to be to conserve ammo... how many enemies you have to kill to get to level 20.
Those challenges are really the only things separating 'playing a video game' from 'pressing buttons on a controller'. That's probably why whenever I've cheated in a game in the past, it's gotten really boring really fast. The value of the goal becomes diminished along with the challenge.
I don't think is necessarily limited to gaming, either. I think it's built into human nature.
I've done much thinking on the subject, and I contend that there are 4 main elements that lead to a game being fun:
#1) Storyline. This is the most basic element; a computer game can be looked at as a form of interactive movie. However, storyline is not essential since games have elements that movies cannot provide. An example of a game the excels at storyline without the other elements is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It basically immerses the player in the Star Wars universe without requiring too much in the way of critical thought or reflexes.
#2) Hand-eye coordination. At it's most basic level, a game requires the player to learn how to interact with the environment via some input device, whether it's a mouse, keyboard, joystick, or what have you. An example of a game that does this without the other elements is the original Space Invaders. Not much thought is needed to perform in that game, but learning how to press the fire button and move quickly is important.
#3) Tactics. Forcing the player to make a decision that has both benefits and weaknesses. Forcing players to make real-time decisions in a fantasy world leads to a sense of immersion. It's hard to think of a game that is purely tactical-based, but for an example of what I'm talking about, let's look at Contra. The game takes the basic shooter hand-eye coordination premise that a game like Space Invaders has, and adds the requirement that the user be smart enough to figure out what weapon to use for a given scenario. There are of course better examples, but this particular example gives you the basics of how tactics can be used to enhance a game.
#4) Strategy. Forcing the user to come up with an overall plan for how to do things. An example of a game that excels in this area is Civilization. Provoking critical thought from the user in order to solve a detailed problem (albeit a fictional one) involves the user on a higher level that can be appreciated. I find that the games with the most longevity tend to feature a lot of strategy.
The most successful of games will combine all 4 of these elements. My favorite game is Starcraft, and it is clear to see how all of these elements are used. The storyline is okay, the hand-eye coordination required is immense, the tactics involved are complex, and the strategy level is great. Other games can be broken down similarly. For example, Counter-Strike has no storyline, but there's hand-eye coordination required for aiming the weapon, tactics for deciding what equipment to use, and strategy for deciding how to approach the level with your team.
Think about it, and I bet you'll be hard-pressed to find another way to evaluate gameplay. I only wish there was a game review magazine that took these factors into account!
Disregard the subject header, I'm letting my inner news columnist get the better of me.
Many people play violent video games so that they can have fun and do things outside their normal realm of controlled behavior. This is fun for us because it is new and diferent than what we are used to doing as we go about our daily lives as citizens. For example, many respectable, middle aged men play GTA3 and love it, yet those same nice guys would never run over innocent bystanders like that in real life. Granted, the men in question probably wouldn't ever get the chance to drive something like the Rhyno tank anyway, but still...
Besides, people are always easily entertained by novel and exciting games/inventions/concepts/OS's/pieces of hardware that are easily mistaken for a stick of gum (USB memory sticks and the iPod shuffle). Obvious excpetions include the Dreamcast, N-Gage, NeoGeo, and Virtual Boy.
The meat of the book is here, in discussions about why gamers cast aside the ethical quandaries brought up by games like Grand Theft Auto (they're playing the game mechanics, not the fiction surrounding the mechanics)
...
With parent groups growing ever more shrill at the release of morally ambiguous titles, Raph Koster's book is a refreshing read.
Good. The more that respected people emphasise this, the better. There has been a frenzy going on in the last few years in the American media (and other countries, to an extent) about violence incited by games, films, and gangsta rap. If we make an effort to find out what really happens when we play games, we have a much better argument to show them they are wrong.
One good turn - gets all the covers.
From the overly serious cruft the reviewer describes in the intro? The review makes this book sound just like every other piece of junk about game design I've ever seen.
Nothing about game design, too many stories without morals, and far far too many gimmicks rather than providing actual information/instruction.
> Plug your game into this equation:
f=ck
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I recently blogged a short review of this book from the perspective of somebody in the online learning business. What's interesting to me is that Koster believes "fun" is an evolutionary adaptation to reward learning. Fun comes with mastery of skills, he suggests. So when you hear somebody say that a game is "better than sex," it's possible that there's more to it than a game geek whose memory of sex is somewhat...hazy.
Also interesting is Koster's comparison of what games can teach versus what stories can teach. He believes that games teach abstract pattern recognition. You beat the game by grokking the pattern. The fact that the obstacles you have to eliminate happen to be human beings...well, games aren't so good at getting you to empathize. Stories do that much better (he claims).
For a contrasting view, you might want to check out "Is Instructional Video Game an Oxymoron?" in this week's New York Times (registration required).
*Ask wife for sex
The wife glares at you, and refuses sex.
*take out garbage
*ask wife for sex
The wife glares at you, and refuses sex.
*wash car
*take out garbage
*ask wife for sex
The wife glares at you, and refuses sex.
*buy flowers
*give flowers to wife
*take out garbage
*wash car
*give money to wife
*ask wife for sex
The wife glares at you, and refuses sex.
*kill wife with sword; have sex with corpse...
Puzzles eh? I feel sorry for that guy...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A Theory of Fun
you can't use these words together
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
Art, to me, is just taking craft seriously.
There is art, and there is enterntainment. One who does not see difference is neither capable of making art, nor capable of appreciating art made by others.
See the Dead Poet's Society.
Thanks for the review, Zonk!
:) I'm far from being perfect, but some of the comments credit me with stuff I didn't do, blame me for stuff I didn't do, don't credit me for stuff I did do, and don't blame me for some things that probably should be considered my fault. That's life, I suppose, but if anyone has questions on those fronts, I'd be happy to clarify them here.
I wanted to point out that the book has a website, with a blog with extended commentary and the PDF presentation that originally led to the book. It can be found at http://www.theoryoffun.com.
As regards some of the critiques about myself or my work posted... I've said before that I wrote this book as an effort to get back to basics.
FWIW, though, a lot of people have incorrect impressions about what I did on what titles, and when I was on them and when not.
As someone who spends a great deal of his time in the scholarly study of videogames, i take an admittedly high-falootin' stance on all this.
I have the same first impression of this book that i would of a book called "A Theory of Prettiness for Painting." Which is not to say that i think fun isn't important or desirable in games (i love Tetris, for instance), but i think the medium has potential for greater things, too. It doesn't help that i see this man's work as being very incremental. The same problems that he was working on in UO and SWG have been dealt with for years in MUDs.
On the other hand, i think that this seems like a fairly accurate description of what actually goes on, and what he's working on. When Raph Koster describes the book as something he could give to non-industry types to describe what he does, i think that he probably hit the nail on the head. I just wish that people would see this more as the way it is, not the way it should be.
I also see posting this on slashdot as similar to posting a review about "A Theory of Prettiness for Painting" on a message board for paint makers, but i know there are a lot of open minded, smart people on here, so hopefully we'll get some interesting discourse out of it.
b.c
There's a bad habit among some game designers. They use friends and "nice" people to playtest their games.
You have to include idiots and assholes in your test sequence. You need to have That Guy - the rules lawyer, the "I didn't mean to do that" fellow, the "I don't understand this" twit. And you need to build your system to shut them out when it's done. For MMORPGs, you need the sort who will get a medium-powered character and hunt down the newbies. You need a complete lunatic for driving games ("why can't I drive across the river here?"). You need a tactical asshole, who will camp on a resurrection point in a shootemup.
(The idea of "idiot testing" was laid out quite nicely by Steve Jackson about 25 years ago, in "Game Design: Theory and Practice"). It was about board games, but the concept holds even more for online games.
For those interested, I also wrote a review for Amazon that was accepted recently. It's mostly positive, but includes criticisms as well.
/ 1932111972?_encoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort_by =-SubmissionDate&n=283155
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews
Bruce
It sounds like he's having fun with his pubes, fun being the very topic of this article.
I would say WWIIOL has a completely different model-
* Play up to get rank (and maintain account so you keep access to all your toys),
* Work within a large uberteam (Axis or Allies), each of which may have it's own tribes or clans (squads in WWIIOLspeak),
* Beat the snot out of the other uberteam,
* Players provide content as the 'puzzles' constantly change due to new equipment or new towns being included into the map, and different attack approaches mean even the same old towns are attacked in new ways from differing directions,
* And if the game gets boring, you can switch to air, ground or sea equipment of another nation and work your way up there.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
You forgot "Don't post while you're on...whatever it is you're on." Oh, and maybe "Try and stay on topic and make some sort of point."
Yet another article about taking fun seriously, and trying to devise a grand unified theory of fun. I should start a pool on when someone conducts a game desgin study using a game with a single button that says "You Win" when clicked on as a control.
/. on how awesome sequals are, because they add bigger explosions and more outrageous design built upon the backs of predecessors and competitors. And there's plenty more out there telling us how awful commercial games from the standard venues lack innovation.
Games are difficult to quantify, especially as they're being pulled in so many different directions. Some Professors of Fun want to laud the advent of interactive storytelling and such nonsense (glorified choose your own adventures at best). Just a few days ago we a different opinion on
If you can't figure it out, games are built on competition. All games have a kernel of this, whether overtly present or a computer simulation of such. Street Fighter was one of those early games that brought gaming to the masses. This was a game so popular it found its way into Burger King's in my neighborhood, a feat probably not achieved since Pong itself (another fine multiplayer game). The best games quickly recognize this, and abuse this property in Pavlovian fashion. Goldeneye probably pioneered the incredibly popular method of motivating players to complete and excel at single player campaigns with multiplayer unlockables. Before you consider how many great games have come and gone without a (good) multiplayer aspect, consider how much better they would have been if there HAD been one. Mario 64 is considered one of the best games ever on many metrics, yet even Nintendo was quick to add a multiplayer scenario that's main criticism is not being true to the rest of the game.
Making games fun then boils down to making games fair. Balanced, if you will. It doesn't matter how well scripted the cutscenes are, or how deep the plot is. What matters is that the game is fair. This is difficult to discover without extensive testing. This is a great argument for open source games, which often are available to players long before the game reaches some sort of final version and undergo a significant number of tweaks and revisions to find a perfect balance.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
risk/reward system was not in place for adventuring types. If the best stuff was made by players what was the use of taking risks adventuring.
What's the risk/reward ratio for adventuring in real life?
Getting higher skills in some respects would give you access to technology that you wouldn't use because there were better lower level alternatives
In real life as well, you use what works. Not every situation calls for bleeding edge technology.
Entertainers - once again interesting, but not engaging in terms of gameplay.
You try being a professional entertainer in real life. It's not as glamorous as Viacom makes it out to be on MTV.
In each of these cases, the plausibility of the scenario increases the immersion factor. If you want a game heavy on adventuring, go play a smaller-scale multiplayer RPG such as NWN.
Here's another, slightly more criticial review from a blog specializing in game and narrative theories:r y-of-fun-reviewed/
http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2005/01/25/a-theo
Tetris breaks at least a couple of your rules. Universally, it's regarded as mucho fun. Tetris has some of the best longevity can imagine. People will be turning to Tetris in 10 years, I'm sure. Maybe more. Want fun? Play Tetris.
Hand-eye? Yup.
Tactics? Yup.
Storyline? Nope.
Strategy? Nope. Pure tactics and hand-eye, in my opinion. Levels blow by too fast to call it strategic.
Tancred: I don't hear enough rips.
CmdrTaco: Tancred.
Tancred: CmdrTaco.
CmdrTaco: I'm sorry, I- I didn't know you were here.
Tancred: I am.
CmdrTaco: Ahh, so you are. Excuse me.
(CmdrTaco slowly logs off of Slashdot.)
Tancred: Keep ripping Slashdotters. This is a battle, a war. And the casualties could be your moderation points.
Above all the important thing in a game is to make the player feel good about himself, give him or her rewards. It's easy to make a game challenging, but much harder to make it seem challenging but in fact be easy so the player gets that warm fuzzy feeling when he beats it.
I'll tell you a little story to give an example: While I was working on a boat racing game, me and the other main programmer studied a lot of racing games. I had a major realization when first I played V-Rally where a lot of the time your car ends up on the roof and has to be repositioned back on the track, or you end up turned around in the wrong direction. Sure it's not a bad game, it's challenging and it fulfils most of your criteria - but it's not really fun. Then we played Sega's Daytona in the arcade. It's a very fun game! After a while we started to realize why it was so much more fun than V-Rally. When you had a big crash the car was thrown spectacularly into the air. Just when you thought you were completely out of the race, somehow magically the car would _always_ land on the wheels with the nose pointing in the right direction along the track.
The game designer and the programmers of Daytona had found a way to make the game cheat in the players favour without the player even noticing. This lead directly to a feeling that 'yes, I can drive a car at 200 Mph around a twisty race track, no problem' and if you had an accident you were feeling 'wow, I'm lucky - still in the race', not looking for the Pause->Restart Race menu...
This is but one example, but you'll find that most games that are truly fun actually help the player a lot. Say in Zelda, when you're low on energy, the likelyhood that the enemy you beat will drop a heart increases. Little things like that.
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
Bending the rules is one of the things I enjoy the most in games, but nowdays everything is too controlled in favour of storylines.
It also seems to me that back in the day people/geeks made games because they wanted to and they had an idea, and nowdays it has to be 'safe' and they want to make money, so they make another WW2 shooter with some sneaker elements cuz that seem to be popular too.
Here's some games I'm still wating for:
Oh well, maybe I'm just old and nostalgic, but so are many others my age, so it should be a market, no?
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
Every time someone comes in with a formula about how to make something better, some one with no actual expertise but a lot of power buys into it and from then on, you'd better follow the formula, even if your idea is unique enough to fall outside the boundary the formula takes into account.
Everyone bitches about how much pop music sucks, but it sure sells well. Why? Because someone came up with a formula for predicting chart-toppers, and now you have to be really good to even be considered if your song scores poorly on the formula scale.
Yes, a lot of video games suck, but at least there is no psuedo-objective "formula" for deciding a priori that a game will not sell well that publishers can use to reject games that may have otherwise been released even in small numbers. Self publishing is hard, even with the advantages of the internet. Imagine if the formula had predicted that "Yohoho Puzzle Pirates" would not sell. No publisher would have taken the risk on picking it up, even after the developers spent all that time popularizing it themselves.
It has happened before, it will happen again.
"Greed is for amateurs. Disorder, chaos, anarchy: now that's fun!"
~Top Dollar~
You don't wanna save up 100k to buy a Porsche and find out it runs like a Gremlin.
There are bad buys in the real world too. That's why you check with your guild and on web boards to see if someone else made a bad buy before you go and buy the same stuff, just like people who hang out on real-life epinions.com.
not many entertainers can go /AFK and macro their way to stardom.
Recorded music is a macro. A movie is a macro.
This is why I would call SWG more of an online social experiment than a game.
So there.
You have QUITE OBVIOUSLY missed the point and will never make anything fun.
Case in point: Raph Koster, creator of LegendMUD (snore), Everquest (repetition-induced hypnotic addiction != fun) and SWG (the anti-fun).
"It's realistic" is not a defense for a poor game mechanic
I didn't say it was. Simulation breeds familiarity. Not all pastimes involve adventuring. If you want adventuring, find a world with more existing chaos that demands more adventuring.
unless the intent of your game is a simulation of an actual real life situation.
The cornerstone of entertainment in many MMORPGs is simulation of a fictional world, such as one said to have existed a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. To many non-munchkins, MMORPGs aren't "games" in the classic sense as much as they are glorified chat rooms. People can go there and have a second life.
I agree with you in that a player with perseverance should head towards the op of the ladder. But why take skill out of the perseverance equation? For instance, why not make each skill build up, so that it takes perseverance to acquire the skill fully, yet make it easy to start the skill so that it's not out of the range of normal people to obtain. Also, why should skills be tied into levels? Most people look at levels as a gauge of player experience. Your not going to mess with a guy who's level 50 if you're level 3. But that shouldn't mean you have to be level 50 to learn how to ride a horse for instance; not in real life at least. I'd like to see a bit more realism in the interaction part seep into games, while making it seamless for the clients. What are your opinions on this?
My sig is as boring as you...
Spend more time not creating "games" and less time creating them? Maybe try to convince the rest of the tards making these things to cut it out too?
If you like games from the good old days (Lemmings is my favourite, but Star Control etc is in there somewhere also), Game Boy Advance is worth a look. You can get plenty of old games (Phantasy Star 1-3, Lost Vikings, Worms, original Zelda & Mario Bros), plus lots of pixel art strategy and shooter games (even Metal Slug).
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
First, I never really attacked the author, actually as outlined in the review I agree with some of his points. I don't think that he applied them well, though, and this might not be completely his fault, all I know is that if Sw:G is his attempt to impliment his strategy, then it is for the most part a borderline failure, as can be seen by the general concensus.
I'm sorry, if it is arrogance, it is grounded arrogance. The public hasn't been schooled on what makes a good interface, and most of them have never put much thought into it, besides giving good ones the nod, and rejecting bad ones. This is visceral, and is quite different than trying to design a new one from the ground up. Notice the stagnant nature of this, if developers decide to make what consumers like, what they have been exposed to in games already. To inovate (as the foil to stagnation) the developer must break popular concensus, and makes something new, what is currently the hot style may not be applicable, or may rub against the developers creative ideals.
I never claimed to know what is good for the public. Not my job, I just claimed a negation in that fact that they DON'T, I never advanced an ideal, nor am I qualified to do so. But then again, just because I'm not qualified, does not mean that someone else isn't. Perhaps if I went to school for years, and had years of experience, and put time into thinking of the ideal game interface, I might be slightly more qualified than Joe Public, don't you think?
Also we have to add to this, that the public does not have concensus, and if they do, it is VERY rare. As a developer listening to the streets, you would have a different conception of the ideal game interface from almost every person you asked. There is too much noise to even try to listen to the public. If THEY as a whole knew what was good for them at least a decent majority would agree to one format.
Truth is; egalitarianism is bunk. We have experts for a reason. The average person MIGHT know something about their own area of interest, but jack about most others. And in games, the public knows a lot about playing them, but not much about making them. You can add your own examples to my side, at will (autos, computers, literature, art). Name one thing that the public knows best about, and I mean the public as a whole.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
What? I don't get it? Bastedo http://bastedo.urbanup.com/1048859