Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6418921" data-attributes="member: 22779">But your analogy falls flat.&nbsp; Genre classification isn't as specific as a pipe wrench.&nbsp; It would be closer to, &quot;You want to build a house?&nbsp; What kind of house do you want to build?&quot;&nbsp; Without classifications, you can't ask that question.&nbsp; You can't ask, &quot;Do you want a log house, or a split level or a back split or a three storey house or what? &quot;I can say, &quot;I want to design a game&quot;.&nbsp; The obvious question here is, &quot;What kind of game is it?&quot;&nbsp; Without genre classification, all you get are things like, &quot;Well, it's kinda like A, not like B and C is right out the window&quot;.&nbsp; Same goes for &quot;I want to play a game&quot;.&nbsp; What kind of game do you want to play?&nbsp; What kinds of games do you enjoy?&nbsp; Do you enjoy games like X or games like Y?&nbsp; Which is where your genre conventions come into play.That's why your physics analogy also falls flat.&nbsp; You are applying a mathematical model to genre.&nbsp; Good grief, genre is never that specific.&nbsp; It's porous and there are all sorts of things bleeding over from one edge to the other.&nbsp; That sort of thing usually doesn't happen in physics until you get into the really wonky stuff.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />And yet, we do that all the time.&nbsp; In the design phase, you can exclude all sorts of designs long before you get to the wind tunnel.&nbsp; You certainly don't need to build a working model to tell that some designs are flawed.&nbsp; A steam engine won't work, for example, to fly an airplane (at least, not easily) and we can reject steam power for airplanes.&nbsp; We can look at the design of an engine and know, fairly well, how much thrust that engine will produce and know, while still in the drawing on paper (or computer screen) that an engine might not be powerful enough or too powerful for a particular air frame.All of this we know because we have all sorts of theoretical models for how engines work.&nbsp; After forty years, tens of thousands of hours of play time, hundreds of thousands of players, why can't we start building theoretical models for RPG's?&nbsp; I don't need to sit a group down and play test to know that a game that uses farting for a random generator is likely not going to work.&nbsp; Why can we not look at the body of work that is out there and not create genres for that body of work?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 6418921, member: 22779"] But your analogy falls flat. Genre classification isn't as specific as a pipe wrench. It would be closer to, "You want to build a house? What kind of house do you want to build?" Without classifications, you can't ask that question. You can't ask, "Do you want a log house, or a split level or a back split or a three storey house or what? " I can say, "I want to design a game". The obvious question here is, "What kind of game is it?" Without genre classification, all you get are things like, "Well, it's kinda like A, not like B and C is right out the window". Same goes for "I want to play a game". What kind of game do you want to play? What kinds of games do you enjoy? Do you enjoy games like X or games like Y? Which is where your genre conventions come into play. That's why your physics analogy also falls flat. You are applying a mathematical model to genre. Good grief, genre is never that specific. It's porous and there are all sorts of things bleeding over from one edge to the other. That sort of thing usually doesn't happen in physics until you get into the really wonky stuff. :D And yet, we do that all the time. In the design phase, you can exclude all sorts of designs long before you get to the wind tunnel. You certainly don't need to build a working model to tell that some designs are flawed. A steam engine won't work, for example, to fly an airplane (at least, not easily) and we can reject steam power for airplanes. We can look at the design of an engine and know, fairly well, how much thrust that engine will produce and know, while still in the drawing on paper (or computer screen) that an engine might not be powerful enough or too powerful for a particular air frame. All of this we know because we have all sorts of theoretical models for how engines work. After forty years, tens of thousands of hours of play time, hundreds of thousands of players, why can't we start building theoretical models for RPG's? I don't need to sit a group down and play test to know that a game that uses farting for a random generator is likely not going to work. Why can we not look at the body of work that is out there and not create genres for that body of work? [/QUOTE]

Verification