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Copyright © 2003-2007 Alternate Worlds Publishing, Boston MA USA
Wenhua dageming de zhongyao jiaoxun shi bixu fandui geren mixin
If I have been able to see further, it is because I am surrounded by midgets.
Never ascribe to stupidity that which can adequately be explained by malice.
"Your argument's repugnant and intriguing." "That's kinda my thing."
Danny's Weblog
2004 Feb 10 [ Tue ]Fundamentals of game design
I've been interested for a long time in why games work – in the sense of being fun to play – at all.
For instance, why do I enjoy crossword puzzles? I've certainly noticed that I enjoy the puzzles in certain newspapers more than others. What seems to be unrewarding is puzzles where you can guess all but two or three clues immediately, but the remainder are impossible. What seems to be "fun" is when I only get 5 or 10 clues quickly, but can slowly figure out the remaining answers at a relatively constant rate. Ie, I don't enjoy *either* just looking up answers, or beating my head against a brick wall: it's the process of converting what looks like a very difficult task into a series of steps of definable progress which seems to be the pleasurable part. (Incidentally the very best – most enjoyable – clue is hard to guess but as soon as you think of the answer you know it's right. I hate the kind which is "14th C. Persian unguent hamper – var.")
Here's a Slashdot discussion of the necessity/merit of *logic* in the universe of a computer game: [http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/0634256]
It includes one particularly relevant posting:
[http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95168&cid=8159214]
That thing about "verifiable progress" reminds me of how surprised I was that the Rainbow Six games don't allow you to save a game in the middle of a level. At first I thought this made them almost unplayable, but when I continued playing (irritated with my expensive purchase) I found the lack made it a *different kind of game* and not necessarily worse.
Debug: hittotal: 9 startban: 0 dancookie: endbandate: 2008-12-03 banned: 0 tempdate: 2008-12-03 tert: jse: jsno jsh: 9