Scaling and Scoping with Asher Vollmer (Beast Breaker)

[droqen]

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.

[droqen]

Mastered the art of small numbers

Small numbers (integers) - A value of "1" can be increased, at the least, by 100% (to 2)

Asher says this is a 'downside' of small numbers.
i don't really like to look at it that way; it's part of what makes them beautiful in the first place, so how could it be a downside?
it's like saying a downside of lemons is that they taste like lemons :(
you can't take one

"How big or small should these numbers be? My intuition as a game design is that smaller numbers are always better. Like[..]just because they're more understandable as a person in a human brain, I can understand what it means to add two small numbers together, so I try to keep everything incredibly small."

I think he's taking the beauty of small numbers and ascribing his love of them to one feature of them. but that's not something you can do, the appreciating of something is for it in its entirety, not one upside

[droqen]

"When I'm asking the player to do math, I want the numbers to be smaller."

Makes sense.