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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8337110" data-attributes="member: 6801252">You need to accept that best practices exist only in the context of particular aesthetic movements, that have particular goals and then you need to discuss those best practices in terms of achieving those goals. You have to accept that some other people have different goals and will sue different techniques to pursue those differing goals, and that some people have similar goals but are differently comfortable with different techniques because they weigh the outcome differently. Much like literature criticism, we need to understand game criticism as being descriptive and adopt a system of lenses and schools that allow us to identify differing value systems and move between them. Just like in literature or in food, no one thinks everything produced is good or enjoyable, but failures exist in the context of a literary or culinary tradition, rather than in an absolute sense. Some people think the Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece of literature, other people think its badly written, it depends on the value judgements you use to determine the criteria-- whats important to you determines the state of success. But conversely, this does mean you can do something wrong, because the techniques you're using can fail to achieve your own goals, which in theory, means people are having less fun than you want them to be having-- its just that we kind of have to know how the game is creating fun, how its meant to create fun, and so forth in order to meaningfully engage with how to make it more fun.Many of the most vigorous debates we have here actually come down to people trying to make the same set of goals applicable for games from movements they don't really share the same goals of, or policing the firm boundaries of the existing movements.</blockquote>

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