Eggplant Episode 126: Building Your Own Platform with Zach Gage

[droqen]

Regarding Eggplant Podcast's
"Building Your Own Platform with Zach Gage"

It's been a whiiile since I've kept up with Eggplant! I'm listening to this episode specifically. I love Eggplant! But I'm going to be my usual ornery self regarding this episode because it's very important for me to slice and stab at things to figure out how I feel about them.

[droqen]

OK, so it's a lil social space with puzzle games? I'm curious what it's like in there...

[droqen]

Puzzmo Public Manifesto
I'm into it! This could be its own Close Reading, they're talking about it in the episode now...

Players, not users
Games must never trick you out of your time. You should never wonder "what am I even doing with my life?" when you play a game. Good games are a collaborator to you in the pursuit of fun. Good games inspire curiosity.

[droqen]

Ah, the podcast form, I really... can't get into these the way I can get into a book. It's weird, it's like, a conversation I can't be a part of? A book, I can slow down or speed up.

Anyway, they're talking about some interesting stuff, but I don't know how to catch it, or how to feel engaged. There's a passing comment about how you're not scored in Osmos, which was interesting, in the context of how you're scored in Puzzmo... there is a score and there are leaderboards, but there's also (apparently?) an message that straight up says 'there are lots of ways to play this game, lots of ways to score yourself,' and also also (apparently??) lots of stats exposed. So you can score yourself, you can compete on whatever metrics you want. That kind of thing.

[droqen]

(~30, 31)

[A game with a broad range]
[a game that starts out looking like a sandbox until you begin to discover that there are constraints]

[droqen]

~36:30

Bernie DeKoven said something like
If you haven't home-ruled a game, you haven't really played it

[droqen]

[The instructions for each game are trying to say] "Don't feel constrained to play the way the website is promoting primarily"

[droqen]

[~47]

Things that players truly do want but will not lead to the best experience

Regarding leaderboards vs posting scores on twitter

[droqen]

Puzzmo has a line up because it has to have a line up*, not because they wanted a fun line up. However, they made the line up fun and cool as heck.

*because hard launching web stuff for a huge number of players all at once is a bad idea.

[droqen]

1:17:xx

Retention as a metric equals money as a metric
Question of metrics as goals