Game design has "moved on"
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
Dungeoneer
First Post
Incidentally, for those upholding chess as a game that can't be improved, David Sirlin has announced Chess 2: The Sequel*.
* Presumably the designer is being SLIGHTLY tongue-in-cheek, but it's still a fun idea.
* Presumably the designer is being SLIGHTLY tongue-in-cheek, but it's still a fun idea.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
Where are you seeing this? Who is saying this? IME, people who claim "X has moved on" are seeking to remove all things X prior to current ideas. Like if everyone followed one political viewpoint or one philosophy. It ends up being a weakening of the world of ideas. Which is what is happening now in game design.
Game and puzzle design is creating a pattern for players to solve, perhaps competitively, but not necessarily so. Saying games have "moved on" is likely Pomo narrative absolutism whitewashing terminology to control people's thoughts and actions and calling deranged any who do not wholly accept this "only" understanding. ...Otherwise, these are provocative questions on your own site to bring up.
Personally, game play is a science. Game design is an art. Improvements to design are about cleaning up errors on the one hand and coming up with breakthroughs on the other. Breakthrough ideas which bring something before unseen into the mix. All of them are fashions and none of them. Calling a feature a flaw means a critic is calling part of a game's design poor. Players claiming they also see it as a flaw, but prefer it that way is... Actually, that's probably not any player, but a hostile hater, not fan, telling you "players of this game like unfun, badwronggames" or something similarly derogatory of the game's fans. Like how its fashionable to belittle people (or maybe just feel ashamed for those) who earnestly enjoy Monopoly.
Older games that are good spawn many copycats, this happened to RPGs too. The older designs are played I would say, but there is a myth of "the new is better". So "new and improved" versions of games come out and supplant sales of older games, which might even be taken off the market. In some ways new versions can be good for old products, old Disney movies are ubiquitous, but potentially bad in other ways, "Everyone knows D&D is about telling shared stories!"
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
I think game design has absolutely changed over the years, as has our expectations from a game. As part of writing TimeWatch, I was looking back at the fantastic old game Time Master, published in the '80s or early '90s by Pacesetter. The ideas are incredibly fun. The mechanics are a convoluted, confusing mess. It's a good reminder that rules design has evolved.
Same with Boot Hill, or Metamorphosis Alpha, or early Gamma World, or 1e Paranoia. Heck, 1e Call of Cthulhu was notable in part because the d100 system was so intuitive, but even it no longer supports some of the things we expect from rules systems nowadays.
Same with Boot Hill, or Metamorphosis Alpha, or early Gamma World, or 1e Paranoia. Heck, 1e Call of Cthulhu was notable in part because the d100 system was so intuitive, but even it no longer supports some of the things we expect from rules systems nowadays.
It might be that SOME people saying it have that motive.
But in equal measure, we'd have to be sticking our head in the sand to not see that the way games are written and designed is not the same. Old RPG rules were often convolutedly written. It is entirely possible to rewrite the mechanic/rules to get the exact same result (look-up tables vs THAC0 vs d20 combat). It's the exact same mechanic and statistical outcome, just rephrased differently.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I think it is true on the whole, games tend to be more orderly and streamlined than they were when i first started playing, and that is generally a good thing. But i guess where i have trouble with the whole "design has moved on" thing is i rarely see it applied to those issues and it is often just used to reflectche tastes and preferences of a single pocket of the gaming community. Gaming styles are incredibly balkanized these days, but I often get the impression that the individual camps believe they are t the forefront of the hobby. I think this is where so much of the anger and rage come from in things like the edition wars. Saying design has moved on, often isnt much different from saying rpg are only X or Y. At least when I see it used (it usually just seems another way of saying "don't do that").
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
I draw a real distinction between "the state of the art has advanced" and "this game is different." The former should apply more-or-less globally to games, whether you like them or not.
- There's currently an emphasis on fast character generation or ready-to-play characters (Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, D&D Next (at least partially), Feng Shui)
- Clunky game mechanics are generally jettisoned for ones that are intuitive (negative ACs)
- Books are better arranged and laid out, hopefully with indices
- Dice mechanics tend towards the fast and elegant
For instance, I love Shadowrun despite its system, which seems dated to me. Characters are really complex, and my elven PR guy rolls 23 d6 (plucking out the 5s and 6s) every time he uses a particular skill. I don't think we'll see a lot of new games using that system. I don't kid myself into thinking I'm the arbiter of taste, though, just because I find it awkward.
I wonder if this is what helped make 4e feel ponderous to me (despite the fact that I run two 4e campaigns, both of which I love.) As more and more other games skewed towards lighter, faster and more streamlined mechanics, 4e piled on complexity and detail. Maybe it tried to lead, and not everyone wanted to follow.
- There's currently an emphasis on fast character generation or ready-to-play characters (Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, D&D Next (at least partially), Feng Shui)
- Clunky game mechanics are generally jettisoned for ones that are intuitive (negative ACs)
- Books are better arranged and laid out, hopefully with indices
- Dice mechanics tend towards the fast and elegant
For instance, I love Shadowrun despite its system, which seems dated to me. Characters are really complex, and my elven PR guy rolls 23 d6 (plucking out the 5s and 6s) every time he uses a particular skill. I don't think we'll see a lot of new games using that system. I don't kid myself into thinking I'm the arbiter of taste, though, just because I find it awkward.
I wonder if this is what helped make 4e feel ponderous to me (despite the fact that I run two 4e campaigns, both of which I love.) As more and more other games skewed towards lighter, faster and more streamlined mechanics, 4e piled on complexity and detail. Maybe it tried to lead, and not everyone wanted to follow.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I think you lay out reasonable things here. I might quibble with one and four thoughon the grounds that those introduce very real design trade offs and (in the case of one) there are still games doing quite well on the market that indicate things havent wholly moved in that direction. For example, fast and easy character creation can reduce the complexity and depth of characters in the game. I myself have a preference for rules light fast games with deeper character creation rules. So more investment on the front end.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
I agree it is entirely possible to express the same rule in different ways. But 1e To-Hit tables, 2e THAC0, and the d20 universal roll are really very different game mechanics and not statistically the same at all.
1st, 1e used d20 rolls to compare to a To-Hit table. It balanced the die results based on two sliding modifier scales and a curvilinear outcome relationship derived from cumulative odds on linear result die. Pretty radical stuff. Plus, it never left that 20 outcome span allowing an infinite quantity of results to be expressed on the one die.
2nd, THAC0 was a whole rewrite of the To-Hit system that dropped sliding scales and included 5 instances of 20 before increasing the results possible to beyond 20. All just to keep the modifiers from 1e, which it didn't account for, from breaking the game. This strange beast lost most of the strength and flexibility of the previous design for an attempt at simpler notation.
3rd, d20 universal is simply a floating 20 number variable result span that modifiers actually shift up and down the natural number line. A line where an arbitrary DC was set, which forced the DM to become a player. This design actually removes any hope of success for lower level PCs and failure for higher ones. It needed "always succeeds or fails" funky results to artificially keep characters playable, but only served to slow down the game. Not to mention the d20 was no longer just used for game elements benefiting from large variables like attacks and saves, but "skills" and plenty of other rolls which should never have used a 20 point spread. Initiative anyone? Boy, did that get tedious quick.
Per my read and understanding of my 1e, 2e, 3e combat rules, the AC system remains equivalent per armor type (allowing that 3e the number goes up instead of down).
The fighter's # remains consistently tied to improving by one point per level.
As such, 1st level fighter vs AC 5 has the same odds in all 3 systems. It holds true at level 5 and so on.
This is the same mechanic, expressed differently, and potentially better in subsequent editions.
The fact that 3e uses that mechanic for everything else, is a different matter.
One could say that assuming my observation of sameness is true, that D&D hasn't "moved on" with regards to attack resolution.
But I do believe it has improved with clarifying how to explain and present the basic attack resolution (looking stuff up on tables that can be represented just as easily with basic math is a design point that the industry has "moved on" from).
