[AB]

Speaking of reactive responses...

Quotescoring fell to the wayside because of devs borrowing the systems without thinking . . . Nowadays there's no excuse really, anti infinite mechanics are trivial to implement and devs have access to hundreds of games with well made scoring. Theres nothing stopping them besides themselves

- another bh comment

There's some condescension woven into this line of thinking; scoring systems that i don't like are bad, devs are the problem, there's no excuse for them not making the things that i like the way i like them.

Quote. . . a more coherent, enjoyable learning curve where the skills you learn transfer to all levels of play, instead of a bunch of stuff getting undermined/emphasized haphazardly . . .

- boghog expressing a specific design value, in a sense that is a little too reactive for me; it's clear he has a particular chip on his shoulder that he's reacting to, whether that be a specific game or a current trend

But then i decided not to send that yet, preferring to spend a little more time working my ideas, [AB]-ing the little seed of a thought. I discovered some more related writing by boghog, of course those articles (posts) linked inside the linked post, but also this: don't trust speedrunners

although our positions differ i really appreciate this lens you bring to scoring vs speeding, i had never quite thought about it in these terms before.

im not sure if you will find my perspective interesting or useful, but i will share my thoughts as a dev who avoids playing and making high score games:

i am generally most interested in presenting and being presented with curated experiences, ones where the player seeks out such experiences themselves but where there is a kind of "release" that i have not much encountered in high scoring games.

the physical sensation of an additive system, . . .

Re boghog's
" https://cohost.org/boghog/post/5269002-the-opportunity-cost"

[AB]

i have seen a lot of people say they do not have as much time for games, particularly bad or boring games, anymore.

to that i say, COWARDS!

i think what you mean to say is that you do not have patience for bad or boring games. you can see through their bullshit and you are having none of it.

[AB]

Done! I think it needs some ... hrmm ... playtesting, but ... I'm roughly happy with it?

Some ideas popped up during development that I dismissed, like having the comment window overlay itself on your screen, rather than your window scrolling down to hint at it. Mainly I dismissed this idea out of practical/lazy reasons, I wanted to save myself the work and effort.

[AB]

quick notes
to do after B - droqever browse catalogue
to do someday - bring back old droqever catalogue
to do someday - support droqever blog posts

Back link ~ All Things Shining

 I did not quote the part inside the jacket cover, but I must now link another thread which has been no doubt inspired by All Things Shining.

The subtitle of the book is "Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age;" Dreyfus and Kelly suggest, at large, that our modern secular age is riddled with a unique form of dissatisfaction arising from a lack of clear basis upon which to make decisions; everyone is uncertain what is right and what is wrong; we are empowered to make our own decisions, unhindered by a monodirectional system of value-making; but we are, too, burdened with making our own decisions, unsupported by a monodirectional system of value-making.

I am enjoying this read and I don't know where they will go with this book, how they propose to resolve this problem, but for now I understand that there is a dissatisfaction with considering many choices. There is a desire within me, within others, to walk a straight path. Not that I know what the right straight path is... but perhaps I should not fear to present a player with one such in a game, for a time, in order to spark that pleasurable feeling of monopresentness, directionality, purpose.

For a time.

See [AB] FRAMING for a structural approach to creativity and thought that seeks to approach such a position from a place of free choice.

in short:

If X+Y does not work, it feels good to add it in.
Trying to make X+Y work ahead of time systemically, it does not feel as good, and when/if it fails, it feels even worse.

It is a really great feeling, by  contrast, to make something work that did not work before. Something that should not have worked. Something that never could have worked. I will joyfully move mountains to create the possibility for something new to emerge.

It is also easy to lose sight of this and lose focus, trying to solve problems before they pop up, because of the positive associations I have with solving problems. "Negative Outcome #1" feels extra bad because it diminishes the joy of new creation. When a problem appears, I love to solve it -- but if there is a lot of crap or noise in the way it makes the solving less enjoyable, and it makes it less enjoyable as a direct result of my own hubris. Horrible, horrible feeling.

It's very tempting as a programmer, a programmer of games, to solve problems ahead of time. Very very tempting. However . . . in my experience, this leads to a lot of disappointment and stagnancy. There are two possible (and in fact very likely) negative outcomes, and the only positive outcome is not that positive.

Negative Outcome #1. An unexpected problem appears and I have to fix it, potentially reengineering my large robust solution in the process. Feels bad because work that was not supposed to need to be done now needs to be done; feels bad because the robust solution is revealed to have been incomplete; and feels extra bad, to me, because I really hate dealing with extra infrastructure: i.e. it actually makes the act of fixing the unexpected problem more laborious. See next post for how things should go!

Negative Outcome #2. Nothing really happens and the robust solution is not needed. Feels bad because all that work was for nothing, basically. Often flies under the radar and the bad feelings are minimal or even go unnoticed. But it is a bad outcome.

Positive Outcome. A sense of vaguely smug superiority. "I prepared for this possibility." Not that satisfying or positive because . . . at what cost? The good version of this feeling comes about when I foresaw literally this singular possibility and solved it, and only it, ahead of time. But then it does not feel good afterwards: it feels good at the moment of implementation, because I am certain I'm doing the right thing. The bad version, described here, is like the end result of a gamble. I'll prepare ahead of time just in case something under this umbrella happens to crop up. When a robust solution catches a problem it shouldn't feel like an unlikely coincidence. It should feel like a calm nothing.