Flatfingers wrote:The funny thing about cliches is that an idea only becomes cliche once most people agree it's obviously true.
That's the same thing that saying that if you believe very strongly in something it becomes true. No, it doesn't. At least not because of that.
Flatfingers wrote:And nowhere is that more true than with computer games. The very thing that makes computer games unique and special is the power of the computer to simulate a world that can react in unexpected but plausible ways to player choices.
I'm pretty sure that that makes perfect sense to you, but it certainly doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not particularly interesting in simulating a world at least is useful for something else. And there are other things you can simulate through videogames that are much more interesting for me that worlds. We should not confuse our personal preferences with an universal fact, it doesn't matter how many sophisticated justifications we may find that make us believe that our particular interests are a big part of the true.
Again, as interesting as simulating things may be, I find it a temporary distraction, hardly the strongest part of this medium.
Flatfingers wrote:The greater the range of a game's possible reactions to player input, and the more different forms of meaningful player input that are possible, the more that game realizes the amazing potential of this medium.
As a medium, yes, but talking about any particular game individually then no, we can't agree with that. Videogames are an amalgam of things, and interaction is just one of its many elements. (An interesting one, yes, and a very distinctive one.) But focusing in only that element doesn't give me anything meaningful. It only makes the experience more limited and smaller.
I play because I want to "feel", and I couldn't care less about which methods a game uses for giving me the best experience possible. In any case, it would be a matter of the quality of the interaction and not the quantity.
Flatfingers wrote:In practice, especially today, those who want to use games as their channel for making an artistic statement usually replace player agency with developer control. The whole point of such games is to communicate an important message to those who (the developer believes) need to receive it.
But if you let players do more of what they want, they might miss the message that the artist wants to deliver. So, for their own good (because the message is so important), the agency of players must be curtailed.
I don't know where this conclusion is coming from. It's the opposite of my experience. Maybe you could play better games, or those games you are referring are aimed to a different audience.
Flatfingers wrote:That leads to creating things that are more about the developer than the player, and that as a result are less game-like than things that support and encourage opportunies for players to make meaningful choices.
There is not such thing as "game-like", and if there is maybe is a bad thing. Who say that games should be more "game-like"? No one should say what a game should be, so taking appropriation of the word game is bad form. ("I used the word game first. You find another word for whatever you do.")
The fact that videogames use the word "game" (whatever that means) in the name doesn't mean anything. It's an old and obsolete name, but games have continued evolving since the old times. I would even add that the more a videogame is "game-like" the less a videogame is, because is going backwards, but I couldn't care less for that either.
Flatfingers wrote:I support artistic freedom. If a developer wants to make a game that walks players step by linear step through a dramatic representation of some belief, and that doesn't let those players make real and meaningful choices that produce distinctive outcomes in the game world, I think the developer (up to a reasonable point) should be able to do so -- as long as sitting through that experience is voluntary.
I can use my artistic freedom to give you complete freedom, and express my message through your freedom of choice, if that's what I want. For some reason, you seem to believe that artistic freedom, whatever that is, is in opposition to the player agenda, so a game, to be able of caring about the player, needs to be less about the developer and more about the player, when actually the job of the developer and the job of the player are completely different, so there should never be a clash between the two.
Flatfingers wrote:I also support the freedom of people to conclude that sitting passively through someone's message is not playful fun, it's not sufficiently game-like (because it does not respect player agency), and it's not worth their time or money.
I don't even know what that means.
Flatfingers wrote:I'm glad to see we agree on that, at least.
I'm pretty sure that we agree in much more than that. This kind of discussions are more about interpretation of what the other person is trying to say that what the other person is actually saying. I think there is a lot of association related to this, like for example what the word "game" means for different people. I know that everyone would try to argue that their definition of the word is the real one, but there is not such thing if everyone is actually using that word to express completely different and unrelated things, the same thing that happens with "fun" and "immersion". In the same way that some of those words were banned for some role-players communities, it should be avoided here, because as I said before the more a game is like a "game" the less a videogame is for me, and I'm pretty sure that will make no sense to certain people that still believe in the old days.
"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima