Intentional Dissonance -
A story about an addiction to Sadness. From the author of the popular blog, `I Wrote This For You.`
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Wednesday, 18 December 2019
quote [ How strategy games have held on to one of colonialism's most toxic narratives, and how they might finally be letting it go. ]
The world needs more Hex games
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5th Earth said @ 10:21pm GMT on 18th December
Well, it comes down to what your definition of "game" is. According to many definitions, a game has to have a defined "win" condition, which many arcade games don't obviously have, in isolation. But if you think about it, they can have one: scoring more points than anyone else in a defined context (i.e. a high score board) can count as "winning", just like in most sports. The fact that the competition takes place asynchronously is a little unusual, but it's easy to measure success (earning points) and compare that to other people.
Now, whether that counts is a philosophical question. Personally I think it does. And the whole question is not meant to imply that "games" like Sim City don't gave value, because SC is awesome. But when you are talking about games from a design and theory standpoint, concepts like what it means to "win" are useful things to think about. It's a fundamental design parameter for any game, and failure to think about it critically can lead to problems like what this article points out: many 4X games assume that the only meaningful way to win is to eliminate all your opponents, and the design of the games forces you to execute that goal.
5th Earth said @ 10:22pm GMT on 18th December
Well, it comes down to what your definition of "game" is. According to many definitions, a game has to have a defined "win" condition, which many arcade games don't obviously have, in isolation. But if you think about it, they can have one: scoring more points than anyone else in a defined context (i.e. a high score board) can count as "winning", just like in most sports. The fact that the competition takes place asynchronously is a little unusual, but it's easy to measure success (earning points) and compare that to other people.
Now, whether that counts is a philosophical question. Personally I think it does. And the whole question is not meant to imply that "games" like Sim City don't have value, because SC is awesome. But when you are talking about games from a design and theory standpoint, concepts like what it means to "win" are useful things to think about. It's a fundamental design parameter for any game, and failure to think about it critically can lead to problems like what this article points out: many 4X games assume that the only meaningful way to win is to eliminate all your opponents, and the design of the games forces you to execute that goal.
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5th Earth said @ 10:21pm GMT on 18th December [Score:1 Underrated]
Well, it comes down to what your definition of "game" is. According to many definitions, a game has to have a defined "win" condition, which many arcade games don't obviously have, in isolation. But if you think about it, they can have one: scoring more points than anyone else in a defined context (i.e. a high score board) can count as "winning", just like in most sports. The fact that the competition takes place asynchronously is a little unusual, but it's easy to measure success (earning points) and compare that to other people.
Now, whether that counts is a philosophical question. Personally I think it does. And the whole question is not meant to imply that "games" like Sim City don't have value, because SC is awesome. But when you are talking about games from a design and theory standpoint, concepts like what it means to "win" are useful things to think about. It's a fundamental design parameter for any game, and failure to think about it critically can lead to problems like what this article points out: many 4X games assume that the only meaningful way to win is to eliminate all your opponents, and the design of the games forces you to execute that goal.
