"You should chase him down. If you're not a Pokemon... and you run like that... you're a bad guy."

Where does writing like this come from?

We are looking for part-time professors to teach courses in Game Design including:

GAME11738 - Team Project: Design and Development Cycle (1 section X 4 hour class)

- Teams are going to build non-videogames and package them. Fuck that sounds cool!
-

GAME27748  - Game Design 4: Data and Design (1 section X 3 hour class)

- Basically, what data is useful, how do you know what data is useful, etc
- Create data models by interpreting and visualizing data with spreadsheets and diagrams (cool. cool cool cool.)

* Come up with contrived scenarios for students to whet their data whistle!
* Modify designs based on data analysis to improve gameplay
(?) What does it mean to improve gameplay? Discuss this

GAME31469 - Game Design 6: Game Design Patterns (up to 4 sections X 3 hour class)

- WHAT ARE PATTERNS? (ask Jeff)
- 'Situate design patterns within broader historical, social and cultural contexts' wow, christ
- More spreadsheets and diagrams.

If I have an inkling of desire, an idea that I want to do, I do it immediately unless there's a good reason I shouldn't or can't. For example: I walked in the front door of our home and saw the messy kitchen and thought, hey, I have the energy and desire to clean the kitchen right now.

It's easy to say: Well, maybe I'll just go on the computer first, or do one of any number of other things that I could do. But this is something I know I want to get done and a minute's distraction easily turns into an hour's. I had to put away the groceries first -- I bought milk and frozen things so those had to go away ASAP. But then I did the thing I knew I could do in that moment.

Why didn't I do it earlier? I didn't want to. That's alright. Sometimes I can push myself to get things done -- and sometimes I must! -- but this habit means I get things done more often in the right moment for me, rather than doing them out of phase.

("Take Concrete Action" -- make a plan to do it with someone, set a timer, set something in motion. Make a real decision that places it at a moment in the future, not just putting it off to "when I get to it.")

QuoteMuch like DOOM, Hitman, or Devil May Cry, Death Loop is largely a game about a process. Tell me the demon is evil, tell me the target is an oil baron, then let me loose in a playground of death. The method I use to take out these enemies is the game here, not figuring out my motivations why.

Retiring Beyond NFTs into this new thread in order to avoid a thought process that revolves around what it seeks to avoid.

But the starting point is this: NFTs are bad because they impose arbitrary scarcity on a medium where resources are basically free. (Of course, computer usage and the internet are not entirely free -- the hardware comes with costs both financial and material -- but in general these costs are massively reduced.) Let's imagine a new world based on freedom of information, where everything is increasingly information.

"At worst, [polish is] aesthetic minutiae that only the creator cares about."

"focus on a [bigger] game [..] anything smaller I make isn't nearly as fun. the bigger one already is, just needs content" - how do you know? what content? 'content' as shortcut word as if the problem has been identified.

"following my own energy. I used to think many parts of the process had to be pushed through, but that was me doing it in a way I didn't like."

- intuitive motivation - just a feel for the ideas that have promise as a larger project, and which seem possible.
'motivation to have it wrapped up into a complete experience'
'i want to turn this into several levels and have people play it'
which ideas are 'likely' and 'exciting'?


inverse answers came more easily. red flags: what NOT to commit to

- "Minigames" was just a trap to let me off the hook for designing the core gameplay right away (don't procrastinate fundamental problems.)
- Stop ranking (ruminating), "just do it already"
- "following my own energy."
- Don't use tools I don't like
- Don't polish something that's not fun
 *** I asked more about this one. "If something shines with a rough prototype, you've got something that is going to glisten when polished. That benchmark is entirely subjective // Polish is best when it reinforces design signalling or affordances. At worst, it's aesthetic minutiae that only the creator cares about."

quotes from responses to these 2 tweets and privately
tweet 1
tweet 2

Not like, cry cry sad, but I'm a few pages from the end of The Silver Spike and the events are terribly sad; the motivations of each group are so clear and at odds and it's tragic. Darling, the leader of the Rebels, feels almost sorry for these two guys who we've been following the whole book, these two of four thieves who serve as book-long protagonists, who've just stabbed her in the side as well as two of her close allies, who've unleashed a terrible evil on the world, whose actions have directly and indirectly lead to death and suffering at every scale. Self-preservation.

Quote from: One of the Rebels[Darling] felt almost sorry for those two [thieves].

She overdid the empathy sometimes. I don't have any for guys who stick knives in me.

Quote from: One of the thievesI think if I had my druthers I'd rather the Rebels got the damned thing. The imperials are nasty enough without it.
[...]
I guess for guys like us it don't matter who's running things anyway. Whoever it is they're going to try to stick it to us.

The dramatic irony is heartbreaking. As reader I know who ought to trust who, and I know that it exists. But we don't get dramatic irony in real life... we're always trapped inside it, incapable of seeing the whole truth.

How can we have empathy and trust that others have it?

I don't like labels, but maybe I mostly don't like labels because they have been used by people in ways that I don't trust. As the listener, the recipient, I don't like labels; I don't trust them. e.g. I had a relationship to the label 'games,' but in a way that label was co-opted by people whose interests didn't align with my own in order to benefit themselves and others - e.g. the argument exists that including walking simulators in games is of a benefit to people creating walking simulators because it legitimizes them.

I don't begrudge these independent agents doing with labels what is good for them and not for me, but it's something I'm thinking about. I no longer believe the speaker has a responsibility to do right by me, or at least that I have no default expectation that people are acting in my interests. So I have to look out for myself.

By extension, I tthink I took on the attitude that as a speaker (a creator of things), I had no responsibility to the listener (the player or otherwise-appreciator of the things I create). But that's not great! I like to take responsibility and do my best work, and although in general I think the attitude of being responsible-for-myself as a listener is something that has mostly served me well I would like to place more value on

-- good speakers (creators) (people) who i trust

-- trusting listeners (i.e. who trust speakers/creators to do right by them)

Quote from: Ramiro CorbettaThe nice thing about this space is that anyone can just join in and bring in new points. But I do think that once a conversation starts getting this long, twitter becomes the wrong platform. And voice is better.

tweet

Ramiro's response to me, and this whole branching, sprouting conversation, plus a lot of other stuff happening lately, has me believing in the power & value of open conversation anew.

The strength of the platform.

I'm curious about Sokpop's release structure, where they release small games and

Other people seem interested in the Source for my games... I'd love to give people access to my source, genuinely. I just haven't made a habit of it.

I have realized that the end goal of the Close reading forum is to be able to do it internally - to stop myself from just skimming and consuming but instead perfoming the entire Close reading process, chewing on every little idea, without ever having to write it all down. Right now it's great practice, but it's kind of slow and produces a somewhat unnecessary artifact. I guess I enjoy doing it but sometimes it expels some embarrassing thoughts that I might want to keep to myself until they're more polished. I forget my good ideas if they're not written down sometimes. I forget my good ideas even if I do write them down sometimes too, though.

Wasn't sure in which forum this belonged but putting it here since it's sort of an "idea-expressing" project.

w/ Mer Grazzini.

(title of this thread was NFTs until Nov 9, when it was changed to Beyond NFTs)

I'm doing some research on them.
One of the things that I've often wanted to do is make a game which involves passing around objects. Trading.
The problem? It's a nightmare to do this! Seriously, it's just the worst. How complicated is the use of an NFT marketplace? Like, is there an NFT API for Godot?

I'm strictly not interested in owning a PNG, and all the NFT games I've seen seem like hot trash.

But a327ex's post on NFTs has me doing a little bit of research on one thing: Are there effectively-harmless NFTs? If I mint an NFT on an effectively-harmless marketplace, can it only ever be traded on that marketplace, or can it migrate to another one that does more harm?

Quote from: droqenI just realized I've been trying to design games without gates for the past 3 years. It's weird, though. I guess in general I think gates are bad. I don't like 'em. They are very useful for a lot of things and it's been important to know that. Understand your enemy.

Quote from: @wombatstuffokay so let me actually write an essay in here:

**All Game Design can be seen as Doors**

Games are full of locked doors, for good reason. It is one of the most easy to understand problems for us modern humans:

Door locked, find key, open door

You encounter a problem, solve that problem and get to continue.
All of game design is just different types of locked doors:

An enemie with 10 HP? You just got to throw 10 keys at it to open the enemie-door!
A puzzle? You just have to imagine the shape of a key in your head to open the puzzle door!
A Dialogue? You just have to use the key of reading text to open the dialogue door!

This framing helps to get to the core of a game quickly.
Because, in the end, each game locks some of its content behind a door.
To understand a game, you just have to understand what is a key and what is a door.

So a weapon upgrade is not a part of a combat system, it just means your keys can now open doors faster, a new puzzle mechanic is a Door that needs a new type of puzzle key, etc.

Basically, this system allows you to frame everything in a game through a single, unified lense, which helps you to see a game in its whole-ness, even if that hole-ness is key shaped!

w***** recently started a small devlog in paradise for P******* (****) and i had a thought: i want to respond to this, but i don't have anything to say yet. i don't know if speaking up will be meaningful. i guess this is where 'likes' came from. but... you know what? i hate likes! they're the worst. likes can die.

likes make lurking into something social-visible-acceptable, but likes also suck.

that is, if someone is reading and lurking, likes turn that into something visible; they make it easy for a lurker to turn into an 'active social participant'. but likes are hollow. they're more visible than lurking, but they just draw attention to the fact that no meaningful social interaction is occurring. a like is just a visible view. a like just draws attention to that emptiness.

Reminder to self: It is about appreciation, passion, love. I will be critical, but always looking forward.

"I'm pretty nerdy about it. I think of it as converting/sinking/gaining resources. // But .. I like to pull it back to what is the fantasy we're trying to convey."

I really like what Asher is saying about balancing -- it's just feeling it out, trying it out. This quote in particular though seems like something I can't get behind, but maybe it's very useful? Slapping a skin on top of a system. Shouldn't the fantasy run throughout the system? Maybe that's just the system-head in me. I want the form and content to be the same, not just gesture at each other.

New thought: maybe I just don't really care for the theme of Beast Breaker?

That is, I PREFER THE SYSTEM TO THE FANTASY, but my thought process goes wrong immediately afterwards.

The thought I was having above was "I PREFER THE SYSTEM TO THE FANTASY ... THEREFORE I PREFER SYSTEMS TO FANTASIES"

But instead, the thought shoud not be made general. I prefer the system to the fantasy... What do I like about the system? What don't I like about the fantasy?

Ther emight be a fantasy I like as much as or more than a system, and in that case I might love the marriage of the two.

FORM is not superior to CONTENT, they are just different.

I don't want to do a port but the basic premise and level generator and some of the enemy logic for Probability 0 really has legs. I would potentially really enjoy this!

Revisit the good ol' fall damage roguelike?

Making a game can be difficult, systemic games especially. Everything leaning on everything else. It's a hell of a puzzle. I liked the frankly relaxing nature of making a new game every day: throwing away the stress of "today's work must build upon yesterday's work" in favour of a structure enabling maximum freedom -- to empower myself to do "whatever I feel like" today.

I didn't stick completely to familiar genres, but I stuck to a few things that would help me stay on track and some of those things did involve sticking to some familiar spaces.
1, Every game is built in a single Godot project with all assets in its own folder (with exceptions: 12, 28, and 29 comprise the cassette player "meta" game, so they share assets). Using one engine and a clean format from the start made it possible to bundle the games together. I had folders named "1thru10," "11thru20," and "21thru30" from day one.

2, Every game is 310x130 resolution, and uses 10x10 tiles. The 'weird' resolution and tile size kept me on my toes, not relying too much on old patterns, was powerful/flexible enough to never get in my way, and finally was fixed so I never had to waste time thinking about what the right parameters were for a given game, they were already set.

3, Every game uses 4 directions and 1 button. The escape key takes you back to the menu. Same benefits as above, but also easy for the player to learn.

4, Every game has a win condition.

5. In every game you have an avatar that you directly control using the given inputs. There is a 'puzzle', as you move from game to game, of understanding the controls. Having this fixed across all games meant that it would never be much of a problem. also I just like this type of game! It lends itself to platformers often, but not always.