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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8626610" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Yeah I guess I just think, when  you say things like......then you don't seem to be using a "weak" meaning of "predict." You seem to be using a pretty strong one: "How does this theory teach us to construct games?" And the thing is, it doesn't. It doesn't even do so weakly."What kind of successes do you think GNS is a tool for predicting?" (and likewise failures) is why I pointed to things like "coining new phrases in English" or "writing good poems" or "cooking good French cuisine." As part of doing these things, you learn theories that are...not really "predictive" in any sense with regard to "success" or "failure." These bodies of theory, which contain both highly formal and highly informal elements, may kind of give us information about "what we will see given the model is true," but...because they've mostly been constructed in response to what is observed, that's a bit like saying that if I kept a daily schedule, that schedule would be "predictive" of my daily activities. Of course it would be--I wrote it so that it would remind me what my activities are supposed to be!Likewise, I really don't think GNS does very much to tell us "what to do, avoid, or expect in our future games." It's a classification scheme--closer to a cladogram than a manual. At absolute best, it lets us consider in advance that some methods have been counter-productive, and others have been useful, but that's nowhere near the level of "kind[s ] of success...GNS is a tool for predicting." I would not ask a paleontologist to ask me what "success" or "failure" their models predict because "prediction" is not, and has never been, the purpose or intent. Classification, association, and the ways these things can enlighten us are the purposes and intents of these models, even though these are theories from a purely physical science. Likewise, things patterned after Campbell's "monomyth" (but recognizing that his actual project was deeply flawed and probably false at its root) have literally zero interest in predicting what stories will contain or predicting what story-elements will "succeed" or "fail," but rather "what are elements that stories frequently contain? How are these elements used? How prevalent is their use?"The closest you can get to "prediction," in these models, is saying that there are (probabilistic) links between certain structures. E.g., if a particular unclassified dinosaur fossil appears to show feather impressions, then it is probable that you will also find other structures, such as lightened bones or certain types of dentition (or even a beak in some cases). If instead you find certain types of serration on the teeth, then you are probably looking at a carnivore, and will thus find other structures that support a carnivorous diet. Etc.GNS is not meant, in any way, to provide guidance or instruction on the construction of games any more than a cladogram of known dinosaur fossils is meant to provide guidance or instruction on the construction of dinosaurs. Now, if we had sufficient command of genetics to be able to whip up creatures to our whim, then yes, a cladogram of dinosaurs could be a useful tool in the sense that it would show us structures that tend to go hand in hand (and thus, have tended to succeed in tandem with each other), but it could not really tell you much about whether a novel combination of traits would succeed (as in, survive and thrive in any given environment).If someone asks you the question, "How should I make a new kind of sandwich?" it would be, formally speaking, an incorrect answer to say, "Well, these are ways other people have made sandwiches." What the person wants with that question is a guide that explains the causal relations between parts, the justification for choosing ingredient X or condiment Y (e.g., very few sandwiches would ever include sauerkraut or thousand island dressing, but reubens do, for particular reasons). GNS is not predictive in the sense of answering, "How should one build a game?" It is of some predictive value if your question is more in the sense of, "What structures can games use?", but only in the pretty limited sense that it was specifically designed to survey what things had been done and ask whether there were any visible gaps (with the rather specific intent of "we already know gap X exists, but we wish to articulate what it is and why it has been overlooked.")</blockquote>

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