The Id DM Interviews Monte Cook

Stormonu said:

The chess anology works best if each player is playing either white or black, not pawn, rook, knight, bishop or queen as their only piece.

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That's how it works in Ars Magica. Each player plays multiple pieces - grogs, a companion, and a magus.

On a completely irrelevant note, that guy is on the high end of game designer atrractiveness!

He's in video as well

GeekSeekers - YouTube

Monte Cook: What surprises me most about players today is not their different tastes, but their unwillingness to accept that someone else’s tastes are as valid as their own. I blame Internet cranks for that mentality, and I blame game company spokesmen who have encouraged it in the belief that it would help them sell games. It’s the very people who must now solve the problem of a very fractured marketplace who fractured it in the first place.

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Pretty telling quote, IMO

Because the Internet is a boon to communication, but not necessarily to truth. On a message board discussion, it’s the loudest voices that you hear most, not the smartest ones. (Sometimes they’re the same, often they’re not.) It’s why you don’t really want playtesters to talk to each other while they’re playtesting. Groups A and B might have come up with one result, but then they talk to a guy from Group C who got a different result, and because the guy from C is persuasive (or a bully), you end up getting the Group C’s feedback from all three groups. (I’ve watched this happen.)

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I think this accounts significantly for where the titular game is today.

“Balance,” or rather the strict need for balance, is sometimes an illusion. To put it another way, if everyone’s having a good time, it often simply doesn’t matter. If it does matter to the other players, I will often help those players with tips or advice. Mastery, like balance, is mostly a psychological aspect to the game, rather than a game design aspect.

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Souds like the voice of reason to me.

What surprises me most about players today is not their different tastes, but their unwillingness to accept that someone else’s tastes are as valid as their own. I blame Internet cranks for that mentality, and I blame game company spokesmen who have encouraged it in the belief that it would help them sell games. It’s the very people who must now solve the problem of a very fractured marketplace who fractured it in the first place.

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Sad, but true. Sounds like he's not too disappointed he no longer has to climb that mountain.

Griego said:

Wow, so minimizing system mastery produces a game where "there’s no chance that you can lose"? Sounds like a bit of a straw man, to me.

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My take on that passage was he simply meant you can go too far in that direction (just like you can go too far in the direction of system mastery). It also looked like he was just giving his personal opinion, which I think designers should do so you know where they are coming from.

Personally I liked the article. Two things struck me, first the whole punishment versus reward thing made a lot of sense to me and clicked with my style of gaming. But his point about bullies and gaming debates online was the real winner. Defintely gave me pause to stop and think before I post stuff.

On that topic, while I appreciate talented game designers pointing out issues, what I would most like to hear from them is new ideas and solutions. The notion that the Interwebs has issues... very true... and worth mentioning at times. But when I read the Twitter feed or blog of lead game designers I'm primarily hoping I will find cool forward-thinking ideas, innovations, positive encouragement, and energy/enthusiasm. I really think that game designers should look at their own feeds and blogs and say "am I contributing to a positive view of the game, or a negative reactionary one?"

Game designers are in a unique position to be a positive and enthusiastic force in our community.

Alphastream said:

On that topic, while I appreciate talented game designers pointing out issues, what I would most like to hear from them is new ideas and solutions. The notion that the Interwebs has issues... very true... and worth mentioning at times. But when I read the Twitter feed or blog of lead game designers I'm primarily hoping I will find cool forward-thinking ideas, innovations, positive encouragement, and energy/enthusiasm. I really think that game designers should look at their own feeds and blogs and say "am I contributing to a positive view of the game, or a negative reactionary one?"

Game designers are in a unique position to be a positive and enthusiastic force in our community.

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Personally I am interested in designer's thoughts on the state of the hobby (especially designers like cook who have worked through several different trends).

I dont think everyone should feel like they have to contribute a positive view to the game. Any given game will have people who like it and people who dont like it. Designers are no exception. I expect them to have opinions about design and to engage people in discussion about their design philosophyl what he is pointing to is the problem that arises when people go beyond having opinions of "i like this or dont like that" and start telling others their prefered style of play is wrong (instead of saying "I don't like optimization" saying "you shouldn't optimize" or instead of "i dont like 4e" saying "you shouln't like 4e".). But this goes the other way to whe. Someone tries to force their optimism on others (when someone says "i dont like playing 4e" saying "yes you do" or "if you dont you are stuck in the past"). This is bound to happen here or there, but I think he has a point that it has gotten out of hand and that some people are really just bullying others into holding or not holding opinions (and I am not guiltless myself).