External Context Problems
Answers questions regarding why someone plays games. Examples:
- "I play this game when I'm bored, until I get tired of it"
- "I play this game during my lunch break"
- "I play this game during my spare time before bed, until I've finished it"
- "I coordinate a time to play this game with a large group of friends, then we all get together and play it"

These are all different contexts and require different high-level context design patterns to serve them.
(Note that these are not patterns, they are just descriptions of a way someone would play a game... patterns would be designed to solve these 'problems'. These are more like fake case studies. Seeds.)

Game Structure Pattern
How is the content of the game laid out?
- There are 16 randomly-generated levels. If you run out of HP, you restart at the beginning. If you quit, you restart at the beginning.
- There are 8 dungeons connected by an overworld. (At any given point in the game, how many places can you go next? How many dead ends are there?) (Do you know where you have to go next? Do you have a choice?)

This is hard to describe, in part because it has so many subpatterns. Also, using exact numbers is not really pattern-y ("8 dungeons"), but these are not patterns, they are again... just seeds.

"several dungeons connected by an overworld" could be a pattern. maybe it could solve the context/problem "i want a game to play during my spare time before bed over the course of a month or two, to chip away at until it's finished, and to come away with a sense of mastery and satisfaction."

I'm going to be going over all the little things I made over the past year or two... they're prototypes, I guess? I don't want to call them prototypes rather than games or toys, but through the lens of the commercial games pitch, they're prototypes.

Hi, droqen here!
Today we're going to be designing a videogame pitch to a videogame company!
But first, don't forget to like and subscribe! And hit that notification bell!

Actually first, what's important is for me to figure out some big thematic inspirations- like, am I interested in a game set in space, on Earth, or in your mind? I should probably figure out some motifs that I find myself returning to again and again...

If I'm going to promise to make something, I had really better be sure I can uphold my end of the bargain.

At the bottom end of working for myself, every action became laced with a fear that it's not enough. While I think this was driven by not having enough money, it was very much a mindset thing. If you're rolling dice are you excited about the high end, worried about the low end, or just expecting the average? The mindset I want to get back into is to think about money in this middle space, where I have moderate expectations that I fully expect to meet.

I've experienced this high end -- Starseed Pilgrim -- and now I've experienced the low end. Failing and losing a bunch of money sucks. It happened over the course of a literal decade, though, and I didn't really even notice it happening.

Maybe I should have listened to my mom and gone to business school.

Maybe not, though ;) I'll just work with or for someone else who knows how to deal with this stuff. Save myself for game design.

At the heart of all this: worrying about money is poison. The flipside is that I've finally come to value financial stability over spiky "wow what if this blows up" gambling-on-experimental-game-design dreams. Now that I value it, I just have to learn how to find it :')

not exploitative (indifferent to harm, intentionally beneficial to oneself),
but malicious (intentionally harmful, indifferent to self-benefit).

I want games with impossibly beautiful form and content:

Game design finely crafted, comfortable, elegant.

Don't tell me one concrete thing; fill my head up with a whole formless orchestra of the whole idea you want to convey.

The Chorus of Imagination, A Pattern

The pattern captures all solutions to a problem; I want art that evokes the space of all relevant ideas to what is being expressed.

The best example that I can come up with right now is that if I am writing a story about love, to specify the hair colour of one of the lovers detracts from the choral fullness... it is a fundamentally unnecessary detail that makes the work more concrete, but less whole.

Isabella's Mochi Donuts charges $20 for six donuts. They are pretty unique donuts (mochi?!), nicely decorated, and they have great flavours constantly rotating in and out.

On Christmas, they increased the price to $25 / six without a reason or warning (as far as i could tell!) and it really turned us off of buying more donuts there.

2022 Jan 3
Played the first official game of Oath with the crew.
The turn order was D, me, R, M, and J.

It was a bit rough going to start out with - the game is hard to explain! But as the afternoon progressed into evening, everyone started to get the mechanics and warm up to the whole thing. I think the last rule we explained was the rule that prevented M from taking the Darkest Secret from me... but he took it some other way.

The rule makes such beautiful thematic sense. It doesn't explain itself but I feel the need to explain for it. Fascinating stuff. I don't know how lucky we got with this game or whether the game itself is just incredible, but there were moments throughout when someone seemed to be getting the upper hand, and was a real contender for winning. Truly incredible.

Anyway, it helped that most of the time nobody was terribly concerned about winning or losing. Of course we tried to win, but the attitude around the table was jovial. We all were telling our little stories about the world, not just playing extreme tactics.

the slowest, subtlest vampire film i can imagine

about love, i guess, but

[spoilers, of course]

at the end of the day i feel like what it's doing

is portraying love between very old people

who are also, still, monsters

so old and experienced and yet still living and breathing and carrying on. sustaining. pursuing passions, but in an ancient, patient way.

the film itself is just as ancient and patient.

i can't tell if that's a good thing.

I don't wear a white shirt under my jacket because it gives me -1 to Suggestion, and I want to be able to Suggest well. But I don't really feel in tune with the world, making this decision
 It's a stretch.

Procedurally generated content in a replayable game seeks to offset this, but so does a massive amount of content - see Hades or Wildermyth. Poetic empty space can only go so far, but anything can only go so far.

As I get older and see more patterns emerge, will life seem less & less real as I see things repeated more & more?

It's not the fact that life never repeats, but it's true that a video will repeat in a more perfect/unnatural way as compared to things I would observe in reality...

WHEN SOMETHING REPEATS EXACTLY, THE HUMAN BRAIN REACTS DIFFERENTLY.

What implications does this have for deja vu and also the fictional ideas of time travel and precognition? If you see something exactly the same way twice, the brain has a deep reaction. How many times does it take for this repeated thing to lose all sense of reality, and is that the fundamental/deep change or is there a different, more higher-order effect?

Not so great with 2 players - primarily the rounds are too short and involve shuffling small, awkward cards between them.

I'll write about the game later too. Cute, but nothing to gush about? I like the bell.

PATTERN: Only Define the Undefined

PROBLEM: A concept that is too abstract invites definition but has no connection to the world ("The circle moves 2 spaces forward"), while a concept that is too familiar cannot be easily redefined ("The high school moves 2 spaces forward").

SOLUTION: When defining rules, fill out the Undefined Space of a concept, and only define any particular space once. How does a dog move? Answer that question once. If the dog needs to move in multiple different ways, contain them all as subsystems within one system.

--

I don't have any good examples for this

PATTERN: Rules Express Lore

PROBLEM: Games that describe what is happening in great detail, or describe things that are not happening, do not have a certain feeling. (clarify if possible?)

SOLUTION: The text, sound, visuals, and other media should communicate a less complete picture, and the rules and play should clarify that picture -- rather than the other way around. The mechanics and dynamics of the game should give the most important look at the lore.

LARGER PATTERN: To draw attention to any sort of 'form,' it should be central. I suppose in an ideal world we might say that all art 'forms' should be equal in a given work. In this case, the larger pattern could be called "Specialty Expresses Lore": whichever art form you are most confident in and most interested in should communicate the most important concepts.

The spells and skills are all parameterized. This means... they can be modified. Spatial mechanics are also a sort of 'parameter' (this is not quite right) which increase the interaction- and modification-space. The mathematical complexity. What is the pleasure of interacting with a system like this? I think Jack called it a certain type of play, that of predicting/calculating the outcome.

SNKRX
Nuclear Throne
Probability 0
Rift Wizard
SERPENTES
31 unmarked games - Dec. 9
Cinco Paus

How can I even describe this?

re: sylvie's
- Circle of the Moon
- and part two


I can relate strongly to the above response after attempting to deeply examine a game's design.

QuoteI couldn't get into Hollow Knight. How much of these feelings come from the map design and combat design and degree of non-linearity and level of guidance?  Probably not a lot. It's all about how your mood intersects with the game's vibes.

It can feel futile to study game design when so much of it only comes alive in its intersection with a player's person-state, something which is impossible to pin down. But there is so much in Sylvie's examination of Circle of the Moon (and Castlevanias at large) which can be distilled into patterns or seeds for patterns, which I have written about before on this forum. I think they're very valuable as ways of looking at problems.

I'll sum up here what a 'pattern' is as "a precisely-defined problem & a precisely-defined description which captures all viable answers to the problem". I guess the word 'pattern' is quite bad, but it is the word that I have associated with this particular relationship.

Part of coming up with patterns is finding little places where 'incomplete' or 'bad' patterns seem to repeat themselves. I need to go cook, but I will come back and analyze Sylvie's analysis to try and make game design feel less futile.

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
300g celery, sliced, with tough strings removed
1 garlic clove, peeled
200g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
500ml vegetable stock
100ml milk
crusty bread, to serve
Method
STEP 1
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat, tip in the celery, garlic and potatoes and coat in the oil. Add a splash of water and a big pinch of salt and cook, stirring regularly for 15 mins, adding a little more water if the veg begins to stick.
STEP 2
Pour in the vegetable stock and bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 20 mins further, until the potatoes are falling apart and the celery is soft. Use a stick blender to purée the soup, then pour in the milk and blitz again. Season to taste. Serve with crusty bread.

QuoteAnimal Crossing requires you to collect money, farm for critters, and upgrade your town. [..] Even though most people are playing for the dress up and designy elements. [..] If the game simply gave you all the items right off the bat, you'd lack a sense of personal investment in your creations and most people would just make their dream house and quit the game after an hour.

I need a name for this perspective and to better understand my beef with it. It is intrinsically motivating to work creatively with what is available to you...

I enjoyed the premise of this film but I was sort of dreading this thing that it seems mainline animated Disney movies all do, where they strip away the fantasy for the sake of a well-meaning and even evocative, but painfully artless, statement on the human condition and life and love and so on.

A weird aside:

I received a book of psalms and something-elses from a stranger on the street the other day and I flipped through its pages and I noticed the same sort of rug pull happening in that text: here is a scenario, here is a message, and the scenario no longer matters. It was an empty vessel.

Quote11 "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[a] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

link

Encanto followed this basic structure but more beautifully and for 1 1/2 hours rather than three or four lines of simple text:

It sets up a relatable character with a relatable problem, and spins a beautiful fantastic tale. The fantasy-world is built on soft and flexible logic; when the problem is resolved it does not follow from the logic of the world, but from something about the human experience. We return to the soft and flexible logic, to tie up loose ends in a way that seems true to the message.

I'd like to revisit this through the lens of patterns but it's Christmas Eve and I want to get to sleep early and wake up at a good time and hang out with the family :)

(The tone I use above is judgemental because I found the film's fantasy to be a bit flat. But... I think it's interesting to observe patterns like this; I'd like to understand what it accomplishes and how to recreate it. I'd like to understand better what it is that made it not sing for me. And I did like a lot about the movie. There was just... something...)