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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9042101" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Okay. Why? There are many priorities in game design. Considering fun alone, and nixing all other possible concerns, is very likely to cause significant issues.An excellent question! Unfortunately, there is no single answer. There is no formula for good design. It'd be pretty cool if there was, but there isn't. Instead, you have to do a mix of three things: choose something you think players will find worth doing, read others' work and seeing what stuff they decided players would find worth doing, and talk to people you think would be interested in the kinds of things you'd like to make and find out what they already think is worth doing.Sure. But if you simply sear it and taste it, you can't learn that deglazing with balsamic vinegar after you're done cooking takes the flavor into the stratosphere, because you'll never bother with this ingredient that is horribly not-tasty on its own (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters" target="_blank">The Vinegar Tasters</a> notwithstanding.) This is the fundamental problem with any method like this, what is apparently in marketing terms called "A/B testing": the problem of local maxima. Every direction away results in locally worse outcomes, so you can't tell whether there are other, equally-valid but distinct maxima elsewhere, nor whether the maximum you have is global (if one even exists.) In mathematics terms, strict optimization along these lines is a "naive" algorithm. You need further tools, thing s truly beyond "I do think the design approach is bad. That doesn't mean I think the design is bad (really, the worst I would call it is incomplete.) Which is another part of my point here.And as for that last bit, this is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I want. I'm saying that announcing "just make the game fun 4head" IS distracting from actually discussing how you achieve the goal of making the game (more) fun. Because you discuss how to make the game (more) fun by talking about the destinations you're aiming at and how you mean to get there, not by saying 'Well just do the most fun thing. Done." "Just design for fun" is by intent a conversation-ender, not a conversation-starter. It terminates analysis, pushes discussion into the ineffable (and thus often into infuriating and intractable debates about philosophical notions), and just generally is counterproductive.Instead, one should start from an actual design goal, like "gameplay focused on long-term strategy and problem-solving through logistics, resource and personnel management, battlefield diplomacy, and carefully mapping/documenting the environment." Or, "gameplay focused on naturalistic reasoning used to predict future outcomes based on understanding the mechanics of play and collecting (potentially incomplete) knowledge about relevant things, people, or events." Or, "gameplay focused on high-action adventure, through dynamic encounters, irreducible tactical decision-making*, and player-driven motivators." These are design goals. And you can almost certainly guess which games I'm referencing with those goals, because whether their implementation was good, bad, or indifferent, they really did have goals and really did pursue them.*Meaning, choices that cannot be reduced to mere calculations.</blockquote>

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