"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview

[FrogReaver]

Perhaps we could return to something resembling substantive topical discussion?

Whose the bookie and what are the odds?

 

[Umbran]

I don't know...the word "design" does not have within it the need to poll the public.

Who said anything about "polling the public"? I said that, if one is concerned about design, one should "listen to" the folks you expect to use your product. Exactly how you do that is not something this conversation has addressed.

 

[FrogReaver]

IMO. Design is usually a mix of artistic elements and engineered elements. In the development process these elements often inform each other in an iterative process until a final product is reached. (*Note: some extremely creative and imaginative engineering is more akin to art than engineering).

Games are typically designed as a mix or art and engineering, not completely either. They don't have the freedom of a painter with canvas not the singular solution or small set of solutions an engineer might provide. In the end as with most things, it's a mix of artistic and engineered elements.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I used to game with Ron, and love his weird brain (and MAN can he game!), but video content is just something my brain does NOT enjoy.

Huh, me too. Did you know him in the North or the South?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Who said anything about "polling the public"? I said that, if one is concerned about design, one should "listen to" the folks you expect to use your product. Exactly how you do that is not something this conversation has addressed.

Semantics. Design doesn't require anything beyond having an idea and implementing it. Listening to your proposed audience might be very useful, but not needed for design.

 

[zakael19]

Who said anything about "polling the public"? I said that, if one is concerned about design, one should "listen to" the folks you expect to use your product. Exactly how you do that is not something this conversation has addressed.

Can you talk a bit about why you think this is so required? I've seen lots of designers/creatives say the exact opposite on top of successful games and careers, so I'm struggling to figure out why you think this is so important - outside of shareholder responsibility type requirements to get market share.

 

[Umbran]

Semantics.

Why yes, it is! Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with meaning.
To attempt to dismiss with the word "semantics" is to dismiss by saying that my post is concerned with what we actually mean!

Precision in what we say, hey what?

Design doesn't require anything beyond having an idea and implementing it.

With respect, no. Design and implementation are two different things. You can implement without design - and what you get is... 1e AD&D, really - spit and bailing wire, kit bashing, a Rube Goldberg agglomeration of bits and pieces each which serves some small function that eventually gets you to the end, but with a lot of extra effort and pieces whose joining is brittle, prone to breakdown.

 

[Emberashh]

Semantics. Design doesn't require anything beyond having an idea and implementing it. Listening to your proposed audience might be very useful, but not needed for design.

After all, theres designers making games for cats.


Now, he is listening to the intended audience, but something to note is that gathering data from the intended audience comes after an initial design is formed and brought to playability, and the actual "design" of the game never really changed. Game design is iterative, and its generally unwise to be constantly incorporating feedback, less you end up with by-comittee design and collapse any ability for the game to appeal to people.

And that talk is actually really great because it, fascinatingly, goes into a concept of "Empathy Mapping", which is pretty damn close (but more broadly applicable) to my idea of Synchronicity, which has been my general method for evaluating mechanics before and after its presented to a live player.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'That may be true, and at that point I'm not familiar enough, especially 30 years later, to say. Though I would point out that the meta-plot and all the setting elements that go with it, is so central to their idea of the play of the game that saying the core rules don't say X, especially after they told everyone to basically ignore those rules, says a lot about how it was played. It was a performative sort of game, as WW represented it, and the performance was meant to correspond with the meta-plot and setting, not the rules!

I'm just saying there was nothing about the mechanical structure of the game that particularly encourages that. Whether the setting/metaplot does so I think is a separate question.

 

[Umbran]

Game design is iterative...

Well, it can be. There's nothing forcing it to be so.