'Everyone should make everyone else have fun. Otherwise what is the point?'

Spoiler for the first game of thrones book - what's the point of Ned dying? Isn't reading books about having fun? Shouldn't he break out of prison and right wrongs? That's fun, right? What's the point of not having that fun?

It's because no, it's not about having fun. Stories started so as to give us warnings abount the real world. Story tellers added fun to the warnings so as to make people listen who might not otherwise.

If you only want to have fun, it's actually you stepping away from what stories are about, not the OP.

The whole "It's all about being entertained/having fun" thing going through gamer culture at the moment is poisonous. Don't get me wrong, I remember the era when it was all about self centered DM's doing things their way and only their way. That was poisonous - and the over reaction to that of making it 'all about the fun' is simply poison from the other end of the spectrum.

Originally posted by me, here

More than one type of fun

There's more than one type of fun.

Essentially the benefit of rules is that they stop certain types of fun from happening - so as to enable another type of fun to happen! Maybe not everyone likes that kind of fun (Eg, I'm not a big fan of monopoly, but lots of people have fun with it). But if they stop other types of fun to enable fun type X to happen...and you don't like fun type X at all...then you should probably stop playing that RPG (and look for another RPG that more suits you).

Just giving up on rules arbitrarily (instead of adhering to all/some consistantly) means the book neither delivers it's type of fun, but at the same time you are all putting in effort to follow its rules - for no real reason since it wont deliver it's fun. That's why a lot of people start looking for rules lite games - because they ignored so many rules they find rules useless to follow, so they think the solution is to play an RPG with less of them.

Granted, sometimes the designer just designed the rules badly - the designer maybe had fun X playing, but following his rules doesn't lead to the fun he had because he designed them badly. But again, this is really a sign to move on from the game (though hell, I GM Rifts - and I haven't moved on from it's hodgepodge of thrown together rules, so can I talk about moving on?).

Anyway, essentially the benefit of rules is that they are a buzz kill - of a certain type of buzz. And that enables other buzzes to be experienced instead.

First posted by me, here

Taking the idea of 'extending' to table top

A problem I have in a classic dungeon exercise is that really the players could simply back off and heal often at any time (generally nothing in the game world (atleast as I envision it) naturally stops this - only if I force an event to stop it from occuring, can it be stopped)

However after playing dragons crown, they have a mechanic where every dungeon you do after the first has an increase in gold and XP gained. If you were to go back, this resets back to the default.

I'm really liking this. In the past I've considered having enemies remove treasure from the dungeon if the players withdraw. But that's kind of missing out on something - don't gain for being bold, you just miss out if you are not bold. Of course the opposite is quite simple - have it possible to gain more treasure. Of course a bit of a simulationist attitude blocks this idea from being cognised. Because why would more money appear? But having played it, I know it's fun! So the reason more money would appear is that its fun (it's a particular type of fun and delivers it nicely).

Accumulation Games: The Self Inflicted Harm Model

I dunno, I think most readers would agree that if you keep eating a meal you like, for example, you'll get sick to death of it. Or if you keep wearing the same T-shirt, you'll get sick to death of it (thus the advice go on holiday with a T-shirt you don't mind throwing away latter).

So, what of the traditional online accumulation style game?

Well, lets say you even like killing the monsters. What happens when you kill them over and over and over again? Do you still actually like doing it?

I would actually pose that the regular gamer actually inflicts self harm on what they like, in order to kill 200 Dohikies so they can get a purple Wakamole. I mean, what's a more integral part of yourself - your skin or what you enjoy? I'd say the latter, yet we call someone cutting their skin with a box cutter self harm, don't we. What about when it's something even more personal?

Worse, this self harm -becomes- the game. It IS game play, to them. They will say that if people didn't need to do raid X to get purple item Y, then the vast majority of people wouldn't keep doing that raid. As if that's a bad thing. People playing things that they find fun has ceased to be the point, anymore. Only the expunging of enjoyable play remains. A flagellant.

"But we love accumulation!"

I think there are ways around it, design wise.

Here's an example - lets say the activity is killing a Dohiky. Okay, the structure is that if you kill one once, sure, it racks up one kill, but each day after, you automatically rack up another kill.

If you actually play and kill Dohikies, then very slowly the amount of automatic kills you get each day goes up to two. Then three, etc to some sort of cap.

This way, you can STOP before you get sick of it, and yet know that you haven't wasted your time playing so far. Because if you wait long enough, the automatic kills will add up to the total.

Massive Suck : Social gameplay leads to grind?

Quick thought for the day - do MMORPGs actually need to be unfun to play?

More specifically, do socialised MMORPGS (which perhaps some would say they all are) need to actually be unfun to play and...essentially suck?

The thing is, the whole emphasis on social means player skill can't get you out of suck ville.

No, for a social game, the way out has to be social. That you have more friends, or have a big guild, grants you resources that get you out of suck ville.

So the game has to suck. Not at the most shallow level (thus explaining why gamers seem to fetish graphics), but the heart of the game has to suck. And not suck in a 'your the last starfighter and only pure skill will get you out from the aliens evil grasp, even though it sucks to be put in such a position', because as said, it can't be player skill.

So it just has to be plain, out and out suck. Just in a way that you don't have X and...that's it, you don't have it. No zing, no surprise twist on aquiring it. It takes ages. It's grind. It sucks. Unless you got other players on your side to give resources or make it go faster.

Having socialising first and foremost as a priority of the game necessitates having grinding, sucky gameplay.

Do you think if you dislike something in a game, it's a mistake?

Once again my 'What the firetruck?' responce to someone elses blog becomes a post here...I'll paraphrase my responce here

If something is an unintended side effect and the developers did not intend it to happen, fair enough to argue against it.

But if they did intend it to be part of the difficulty of the game, even if only tanks have to face it...well, what? Do you think difficulty in any particular game has to revolve around what you personally dislike?

Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it's a bug.

I mean, where does it end? If you think your in a position to argue away intended challenges, where do you stop? Which ones are acceptable to your sensitive palette?

And what of the thousands of others - what if they think they can argue this way, and what challenge you think is okay, they think is a big bad spoils their fun bug? Someone, somewhere might have their fun spoiled by what you think is okay - and as much as you think you get to determine what is a bug rather than an intended challenge, so do they. So it must be removed!

Eventually all challenge gets removed as there's always someone who's fun is spoilt by practically any challenge and you end up with...a themepark.

Oh yeah. Right.

Evangelicized design and waiting for snood...

There's an interesting article over on 'Play this thing' about a game called Snood. It's a shareware title that tenaciously spread and apparently sold in the millions.

This ties into my previous post because this does not appear to be a game that has a 'journey' or a 'sense of menace'. I'll grant it probably has far more playability than invaders from space, but the point is these other qualities are make believe requirements for playability.

In the play this thing article author Costik* says game developers can't take it seriously, since they themselves devote their lives to complicated 3D worlds and huge budgets. And that's the thing - once someone devotes their life to something, they have a hard time thinking it's wrong. Indeed, they start evangelicising it and teaching it to others as if it's perfectly right. And so you get a culture who is basically out of touch with what human needs really are but couldn't consider being wrong at all, for how it would invalidate their lives (or so I'd hypothesize). A bit like the church (ooh, a sideswipe there, but also a genuine parallel).

So if your starting out as an indie game developer yourself now days, I think your probably facing up to abuse by your essentially brainwashed peers. If you want encouragement from them, you'll have to do things their way. Or you'll have to go it alone. Which isn't impossible, if snood is any indicator!

* Should I list his full name? I'd have to look it up for proper spelling, and this is the name he works under there. Hmmm.