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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Melan" data-source="post: 4886566" data-attributes="member: 1713">There is a relation between unethicality and falseness. The nostalgia argument implies false consciousness; an attraction to old games only based on an emotional attachment to a falsified past. While I don't discount that people may feel nostalgic for the games they played when they were in their teens, the argument becomes false because people (even these same nostalgic people) may have rational reasons for playing the games the way they do. Even the simplest of them, comfort, transcends nostalgia; aesthetic preference, interest in a certain interpretation of old-school gaming (e.g. "rules light" or "player skill-based") or just attraction to the creativity of the scene that surrounds old-school may be just as, or much more relevant. Possible. I also feel nostalgic for the odd combination of 2e and Photocopied AD&D (a very popular version in early 1990s Hungary) I started with. However, I am happy to keep that as a pleasant memory, and play a different form of old - one that was often new to me when I got to know it, and elements of which date back to a period before I was born.The error is made when games are considered analogous to technology and thus subject to technological progress (or "evolution"), which they are not. Game mechanics - task resolution systems and pure numerical components - are technology, and can be optimised. Addition is inherently, although not overwhelmingly easier than substraction, and therefore mechanics that involve one over the other can be considered more and less progressive.However, when we enter the broader sphere of rules as an integrated system of mechanics, typical game procedures and assumptions about play, the analogy is already invalid. Is a rule system that emphasises abstract combat less or more evolved than one that identifies specific attack types? Is random character generation less or more  advanced than point-buy? Says who? "Professional game designers" have been quick to declare this or that solution to be the way of evolution and to be "more fun" - 3e's "monster simulation" stat blocks were touted as superior to AD&D's by designer rhetoric; in 4e, it is argued just as vehemently that the tradeoff in simulation vs. playability was not worth it, and consequently, stats were scaled back in the new game. These decisions may no longer be objectively measured. At best, they may be derived from market research, but that's not an objective science (for various reasons; some methodological, some related to the inner culture of companies that resort to market research); usually, they are pure subjectivity dressed up in rhetorical falsehood like "it is more fun that way" or "we have made sure to evolve and advance the game for our dear, dear customers".That is only the level of the rules: you still have cultures of play, the design aesthetic that influences the game, literary and other antecedents (do I take Leiber or do I take Rowling?)... Here, the technological argument becomes entirely irrelevant; or what is a lot worse, misleading.All in all, what you may perceive as suboptimal could as well be a legitimate choice based on rationally identified preferences. One of those sets of preferences (and I am simplifying here, since old-school is itself composed of sometimes competing or contradictory preferences) is old-school gaming. And I will note that "overrated" is a poor term to start a conversation over, as it combines vagueness with conotations of snobbish dismissal.</blockquote>

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