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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6105087" data-attributes="member: 4937">The problem with that theory, on really any theory that depends on claiming that it was just random chance that lead to something being invented first, is that methodologies tend to be invented first because they are natural, powerful, and successful.  People have been trying to make social interaction as compeling mechanically as tactical combat for decades now.  It's practically a Holy Grail in cRPGs.  If you can come up with a system for making dialogue as compelling tactically as it is important for advancing a story, you are going to be famous.  The guy that popularizes that system is going to be a household name, at least among households with a certain geekiness score.  On the social resolution front, its just not clear that it is out there.  It's not clear that the elements that make social interaction engaging map well to any sort of tactical mini-game.  It's entirely possible that the thing that is most compelling and engaging about social interaction just isn't wired up the same in the human mind as the thing that makes combat mini-games compelling.  Combat mini-games, even in abstract form say chess or some bubble popping puzzle game, are pretty clearly wired to that human core firmware that is about running from lions, throwing sticks, and bringing home dinner.  It's all those spatial reasoning centers that let us predict where the antalope is going to be so that when we throw the pointy stick it performs a ballistic trajectory those third order differential equations intersect at food.  It's all beating down the leopard in a bloody visceral gut spill battle stuff so that the tribe is safe.  That's where most games go, and that's the natural ticklable pleasure center for gaming.But its not at all clear that the whole, forge bonds with the tribe and improve my social standing firmware is tickled by the same things.  It's not clear that we want to use our brains to solve those problems in the same way.  It's not at all obvious that the way to engage that part of our brain in a social setting like an RPG isn't just to engage that part of our brain directly and let that firmware run.  It's not at all clear that the direct and most powerful way to engage or social fantasy isn't just to engage in a social fantasy with as little of the rock-papper-scissors metagame for determining who 'wins' getting in the way as possible.One of the reasons I think that is that its the way 3 year olds, or 5 year olds, or 7 year olds engage in fantasy social play.  If they play 'war' or anything else in the genera, they start figuring out the rules to determine who really wins.  They make up some sort of system of arbitration.  But if they play 'house' or anything like that, they don't.  They just talk it out.  And that tells me that we may have hit upon that system not because of some arbitrary accidental heritage of wargames, but rather because that is what largely what we want and need.</blockquote>

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