Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Taking the wrench that is game and using it as a hammer...and still calling it a game

Starting from here

I think there's this trend to use a wrench as a hammer/game to create something creative, then people continue using the word 'game' even though they are not using it as a game. That's why you get 'games' like the graveyard - because the designers have not only strayed from 'game', they've strayed so far it can't even be considered a game in a secondary sense.

Instead they are using the rules and constructs much like the rules and constructs of musical instruments. Here the rules create something which is like music in how expression and form intermingle, but from a new vector other than sound.

And yet the people who do this will wrestle and fight for the use of 'game' and hold onto it desperately, pitching a symantic definition war which I don't think they deserve to win. Yet they think they must in order to preserve that new vector of creativity. Which I don't think they have to at all - you could call that vector 'pomigranites' and it'd work. Their problem is that the vast majority of people, when presented with something that reminds them of gamism, go all gamist. And that includes including the people who want to participate in this new vector!!! They write up stats, they have to hit rolls, they have skill checks...and the only thing they try and do to get to that vector is symantic warfare about 'what a game is'.

Slowly, and still rarely, now indie games are coming out with 'stats' like 'Hates his country: 4D6' or suchlike. Rules that really start to intertwine issues and mechanics together, instead of doing the same old BS stats like INT and CHR and then retardedly browbeating people for 'not playing to their stats'. News update, there is nothing to play in an INT score! And by nothing I mean like when I've finished a bottle of beer and say nothings left in it, even if there is a thin smear of beer left inside, there's nothing there. But some guys keep with the old thin smear stats. And getting symantic about changing on that, because in an anal technical sense, a thin smear isn't nothing.

2 comments:

  1. Well i never said wrenches are only tools . :)) apparently they can be quite effective weapons to . :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Presuming your talking with me rather than at me, I don't understand your point yet?

    ReplyDelete