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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 6221521" data-attributes="member: 3192">Games and the rules that comprise them can become relatively better based upon the design goals for the game. While Evolution is not synonymous with improvement, it can appear so if any current changes are towards preferred ends. If the changes aren't to your preference, then the current evolution might be cast as decline or devolution.And yes, lots of people who care for a game, opinion, theory, or anything else phrase their ideas as "long needed improvements for...", "overcoming the backwards thinking of...", and so on. This doesn't mean these opinions are or are not actual improvements, but it is important to recognize if what is actually occurring is the shifting of a game's goals, much less its whole concept. This shifting of understanding is often what is happening as different philosophies rise and fall in and out of fashion, and not just in the gaming community.Look at the storygaming community. They don't readily admit to a unique identity for games or game play at all. Instead their designs refer to every act and element as exclusively improvised narrative. It feeds a particular belief system where certain absolutes must be adhered to as understood within its shared philosophy. While very well researched, the shared language is steeped in ideas which don't just enable specific designs, but actually block other ideas which lead to alternate conclusions. And while there are very enjoyable and popular games stemming from the community's design philosophy, they are actually no better designed than other games. They are only better within the specifics of that philosophy's goals and concepts for games. Yet for some adherents living within this realm of thought the rest of the hobby needs to quit everything but.On the other hand, the philosophy that led to those games has been very successful and influential across the gaming market. By changing both the goals and concept of games and gaming we are getting new games which play very differently than anything before. Of course, we are also forgetting why other games were ever enjoyable in the first place. If no one would ever design Chess given such a game design philosophy, designers won't try and improve on it and its popularity will decline.The real problem comes from insular thinking. It leads from the belief that what is good for me must be good for you and what is bad for me must be bad for you. It is allowing one philosophy, one culture, or one community as the determiner of good for everything. If you share goals with a game, then the ingenuity of its design can probably be better appreciated by you. As our fashions and preferences change older ideas and practices come back into vogue, like old games, and can be appreciated again. But this is a slow process and by no means should we think folks who don't like the current or up and coming fashions must accept them. A truly diverse world means opening ourselves to many understandings and playing not many games, but many games based on many different designs and philosophies. Think of it like the 90s when D&D needed to stop being a combat game and defining everything as either combat or non-combat, as if nothing else had any meaning beyond combat. Many people are currently in the same position with narrative games when it comes to non-narrative gaming.</blockquote>

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