Subject: Re: Mystical or Methodical? Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 22:40:43 GMT From: "Brandon J. Van Every" Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Newsgroups: comp.games.development.design "Sean Howard" wrote in message news:a29rli$4nv$1@news.fsu.edu... > > It seems to me, the basic conflict comes from whether game design is > mystical or methodical. > > If it is mystical, then it is something that can't, or shouldn't, be > explained. It is artistic expression, plain and simple. > > If it is methodical, it is a process that is followed. It can be studied, > explained, recreated, and understood. It is engineering, plain and simple. Well, any real world act of art is somewhere on the spectrum between mystical and methodical. I find that in general, people argue endlessly about the exact point that something falls within a parametric range 0.0 .. 1.0. Some people want it to move one way, others to another, people gripe about terms and make assumptions about how much delta the other guy is talking about, etc. Worse, they do it with paragraphs and paragraphs of slow human communication. Think how much more efficiently computers could argue about things! > So, the question I pose to you all, do you think game design is mystical, > and should just be accepted in all of its present glory, or do you think > game design is methodical, and can be improved through understanding and > study? Why pose a dysfunctional question? How about instead we try to agree upon the elements that a game must contain? My list of ingredients: - rules - goals - psychology - fun They aren't mutually exclusive sets, they overlap. But all of these ingredients must be present in something for it to be a game. I'd particularly emphasize psychology, because most of our arguments are implicitly about this, without explicitly naming psychology as a core ingredient. The game occurs within the player's *mind*, not just on boards or computer screens independent of the player. In fact, if you can cause a game to occur within the *mind* of the player, you do not necessarily need a lot of external moving parts. A lot of paintings function this way, they engage the mind of the viewer. Movies engage the mind of the viewer, and the viewer doesn't do anything physical, he just sits there and receives the images in his mind. BTW, devising mutually exclusive sets will probably also be prone to argumentative dysfunction, same as arguing a parametric range 0.0 .. 1.0. -- Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA 20% of the world is real. 80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.