from a discord thread where I posted stuf<\/p>\n\n\n\n
another chapter of Chris Crawford tonight:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThere are situations in which it is not quite possible to attain the purity of this artistic ideal. For example, I would not claim that only immature, childish people should design games for children. Nor would I suggest that good shoot-\u2019em-up games can only be done by shoot-\u2019em-up personalities. The realities of the marketplace demand that such games be written, and it is better that they be written by mature professionals than by simpering fools. Such emotionally indirect games, however, will never have the psychological impact, the artistic power, of games coming straight from the heart<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
this dude is intense<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nYou may well find yourself adjusting your goals as you perform this research function; such erratic decision-making is an embarrassing admission of poorly-defined goals, but reflects an honest willingness to adapt to the exigencies of the topic-environment. It is a departure from the ideal in which I have sinfully indulged myself many times.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
(line breaks are pdf artifacts, not how it is iactaully written)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
brian \u2014 <\/em>1\/27\/26, 9:58 PM<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nGames have failed to live up to their potential because the programmer did not expend enough effort, or rushed the job, or didn\u2019t bother to write in assembly language<\/strong>, but in few cases has talent or lack of it been the crucial factor in the programming of a game; rather, effort or lack of it is most often the responsible factor. If you place all of your self-respect eggs in the programming basket, I suggest that you get out of game design and work in systems programming. Otherwise, write the code and debug it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
the whole book is like this<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nGames must be designed, but computers must be programmed. Both skills are rare and difficult to
acquire, and their combination in one person is even more rare. For this reason many people have
attempted to form design teams consisting of a nontechnical game designer and a nonartistic
programmer. This system would work if either programming or game design were a
straightforward process requiring little in the way of judicious trade-offs. The fact of the matter is
that both programming and game design are desperately difficult activities demanding many
painful choices. Teaming the two experts together is rather like handcuffing a pole vaulter to a
high jumper; their resultant disastrous performance is the inevitable result of their conflicting
styles.
More specifically, the designer\/programmer team is bound to fail because the designer will
ignorantly make unrealistic demands on the programmer while failing to recognize golden
opportunities arising during the programming. For example, when I designed the game ENERGY
CZAR (an energy-economics simulation game), I did not include an obviously desirable provision
for recording the history of the player\u2019s actions. During the final stages of the game\u2019s
development, virtually everyone associated with the project suggested such a feature. From
technical experience, I knew that this feature would require an excessive amount of memory. A
nontechnical designer would have insisted upon the feature, only to face the disaster of a program
too big to fit into its allowed memory size.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nbrian \u2014 <\/em>1\/27\/26, 9:59 PM<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
it just like whiplashes between stuff that makes sense and then stuff that does not! Crawford is very<\/em> present in it<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nOne of the most disgusting denizens of computer gamedom is the transplanted game. This is a
game design originally developed on another medium that some misguided soul has seen fit to
reincarnate on a computer. The high incidence of this practice does not excuse its fundamental
folly. The most generous reaction I can muster is the observation that we are in the early stages of
computer game design; we have no sure guidelines and must rely on existing technologies to guide
us. Some day we will look back on these early transplanted games with the same derision with
which we look on early aircraft designs based on flapping wings.
Why do I so vehemently denounce transplanted games? Because they are design bastards, the
illegitimate children of two technologies that have nothing in common. Consider the worst
example I have discovered so far, a computer craps game. The computer displays and rolls two
dice for the player in a standard game of craps. The computer plays the game perfectly well, but
that is not the point. The point is, why bother implementing on the computer a game that works
perfectly well on another technology? A pair of dice can be had for less than a dollar. Indeed, a
strong case can be made that the computer version is less successful than the original. Apparently
one of the appeals of the game of craps is the right of the player to shake the dice himself. Many
players share the belief that proper grip on the dice, or speaking to them, or perhaps kissing them<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
dude does NOT think a designer should work with a programmer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
she should be a born artist (designer) who learns to program!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe next level of indirection is shown in a very clever boardgame design by Jim Dunnigan,
BATTLE FOR GERMANY. This game concerns the invasion of Germany in 1945. This was
obviously an uneven struggle, for the Germans were simultaneously fighting the Russians in the
east and the Anglo-Americans in the west. Uneven struggles make frustrating games. Dunnigan\u2019s
solution was to split both sides. One player controls the Russians and the west-front Germans; the
other controls the Anglo-Americans and the east-front Germans. Thus, each player is both invader
and defender: Neither player identifies directly with the invaders or the Germans; the two
combatants have lost their identities and are now actors.
The highest expression of indirection I have seen is Dunnigan\u2019s RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR game.
This boardgame covers the civil war between the Reds and the Whites. Dunnigan\u2019s brilliant
approach was to completely dissolve any identification between player and combatant. Each player
receives some Red armies and some White armies. During the course of the game, the player uses
his Red armies to attack and destroy other players\u2019 White armies. He uses his White armies to
attack and destroy other players\u2019 Red armies. The end of the game comes when one side, Red or
White, is annihilated. The winner is then the player most identifiable with the victorious army (i.e.,
with the largest pile of loser\u2019s bodies and the smallest pile of winner\u2019s bodies).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nbrian \u2014 <\/em>1\/27\/26, 10:09 PM<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nA perfectly interactive game (the “gamiest game”) is analogous to the two mirrors being perfectly reflective; each of the two players recursively exchanges places in an endless tunnel of reflected anticipation\u2019s. No matter how reasonable the behavior, the infinitely complex pattern of anticipation and counter-anticipation defies prediction. It is reasonable yet unpredictable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
from the father inire school of game design<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(what I am reading is a PDF of an html version of the book that appears to have been created in the early 2000s, so the typos are probably from manual transcription)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nLazy bytes are often associated with dirty rules (they like to hang out together in sleazy pool
halls). Dirty rules are special cases that occur rarely. If they occur rarely, the bytes associated with
them are not used often, hence they are lazy bytes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nbrian \u2014 <\/em>1\/27\/26, 10:41 PM<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nOriginally designed as a device to transport people and property from point A to point B as quickly, safely, and reliably as possible, it was transformed into a form of self-expression, a recreational device, and ultimately an end in itself. Could Henry Ford have anticipated dune buggies, vans with waterbeds, low-riders, and naked-lady hood ornaments? I doubt it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
brian \u2014 <\/em>1\/27\/26, 10:47 PM<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nThe computer will change our habits and our leisure time, but it will not change our personalities, for emotionally we are still the same people who built the pyramids, fought the Crusades, and colonized the New World.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
well….<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
there is really just an entire worldview in this 90 page PDF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
from a discord thread where I posted stuf another chapter of Chris Crawford tonight: There are situations in which it is not quite possible to attain the purity of this artistic ideal. For example, I would not claim that only immature, childish people should design games for children. Nor would I suggest that good shoot-\u2019em-up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,18],"tags":[47,48],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-words","tag-chris-crawford","tag-the-art-of-computer-game-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}