The Parable of the Toaster | When "It's a Player Issue" is no excuse

[Maxperson]

*they

But, more relevantly, yes, steakhouses should have palatable vegan options, ideally. Your vegan buddy shouldn't be screwed just because you had your birthday at your favorite steakhouse.

But admittedly, this is why most restaurants have menus in the first place-- so that the people that visit them can make selections without going elsewhere for something different.

Its not a perfect analogy for games, but there is something to be said for including small options that widen the use case to make it easier on the diversity of the table playing them.

A few things.

First, I have yet to see a meat dish for me at a vegan restaurant. Why should a steakhouse have a vegan dish for you? It's a steakhouse.

Second, I said they don't have a good selection of vegan options, not that there wouldn't be a dish or two for you to pick from. You just won't have much of a selection. An expectation that a steakhouse will have a good selection of vegan dishes is a very unreasonable expectation.

 

[Maxperson]

This is about my speech not being suitably deferential?

No. It's that you name game design faulty if it doesn't account for your preferences, rather than understand that game design doesn't have to account for your(or my) preferences and can be specialized for one particular playstyle.

Again, it's not faulty design for you to misuse the system in an attempt to force it to play the way you like. If you can tweak it so that it's fun for your playstyle, that's awesome. It's just not bad or faulty game design if you can't tweak it to your desires.

 

[Maxperson]

Thing is, to make this analogy work your neighbour doesn't see the screwdriver on your bench, he sees a box. You know what tool is in the box but he doesn't, he needs to borrow a tool and so you hand him the box in hopes the contents will be of any use. Not until he opens the box and tries to use the contents does he realize just how unsuitable that tool is for the job at hand. Who's at fault? Him, for not specifying his needs more clearly; or you, for not giving him what he needed; or both, or neither?

He should have asked to look inside the box before he wasted his time. I've borrowed and loaned a good number of tools in my time, and I've never given or received a box with unknown tools in it hoping that something in it might work.

 

[Maxperson]

And when the designer's preferences and the end user's how-to-use-it disagree, who is right? That's the whole question here, it seems.

It's not a matter of right and wrong. It's a matter of use and misuse. You can misuse a tool to great effect, depending on what you are trying to do. Other times misusing a tool can cause injury or worse.

In RPG terms the game was designed with X, Y and Z in mind. You can use it the way it was designed, or you can misuse it in a way it wasn't designed for and maybe it will work out and maybe it won't. Regardless of whether or not you use or misuse the the tool, its design isn't faulty. It just might not be compatible with what you want to do with it.

 

[Maxperson]

The problem is, buying it and playing it also identifies preferences they don't like, if such are present; but by that point it's too late: the commitment's been made and the money's been paid.

And again, it takes minimal effort to look up reviews and commentary on what any given game is about. And you can do it while you are at the store by using your phone.

If you're paying without looking and it's too late, that's on you. You could have and should have looked it up before you plunked down the cash.

 

[Umbran]

No. It's that you name game design faulty if it doesn't account for your preferences, rather than understand that game design doesn't have to account for your(or my) preferences and can be specialized for one particular playstyle.

Effectively, the difference between, "I like pistachio," and, "Non-pistachio ice cream is flawed. All ice cream should be pistachio, for you too," is not a matter of deference.

 

[soviet]

But don't you see that you can increase utility by putting at least a bit of pistachio into every single product, thereby increasing those products' utility to pistachio lovers while having no adverse impact of any kind to anyone else.

Products that don't include pistachio should have big labels saying 'NO PISTACHIO HERE' just so that hapless customers are not deceived.

 

[Umbran]

Games can be like that, except there's three voices rather than just two. The marketing says one thing, the game rules (i.e. the designer(s)) say another, and actual end-use play says a third; and some or all of those voices may be quite obscure in what they're trying to say.

My wife and I are hobby cooks.

In a cookbook, or an article, you cannot trust the name of the recipe, or the picture of the food, to know if you will like it. With experience, you can look at the ingredient list and procedure, and have a better guess, but it is still not a 100% guarantee. Ultimately, you have to actually cook it, making sure you actually follow the procedure, to know. And even that isn't really overall certainty - another version of the dish, or an experienced chef, might change your mind.

We realized, though, that barring allergies and a couple of edge cases of equipment failure, cooking food you don't know, or ordering it in a restaurant, is pretty low risk. If you taste it, and don't like it, you can order a pizza from your favorite place, and suffer no significant harm.

It is similar with gaming. I find I must repeat myself: Unless you actually read the entire text of the game, and honestly try it as presented, CERTAINTY WILL BE DENIED YOU! You cannot have it, the game makers cannot provide it.

So, admitting that, we aren't actually talking about the games. We are quibbling over your risk tolerance.

As a practical matter, if your risk tolerance is extremely low, you're going to have to be proactive, and watch out for that yourself.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It is similar with gaming. I find I must repeat myself: Unless you actually read the entire text of the game, and honestly try it as presented, CERTAINTY WILL BE DENIED YOU! You cannot have it, the game makers cannot provide it.

So, admitting that, we aren't actually talking about the games. We are quibbling over your risk tolerance.

As a practical matter, if your risk tolerance is extremely low, you're going to have to be proactive, and watch out for that yourself.

I think you're ignoring the ability of an experienced gamer to make pretty good guesses from reading a rules set at least. I'll agree its not 100%, but I'm pretty confident that I will spot what is liable to be problems for me and/or the people I play with by a thorough reading of the rules for a game and be right around 90% of the time. Even when I'm wrong its probably something seemingly small that will create problems when it comes up rather than seeing a problem where it doesn't exist.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

No. It's that you name game design faulty if it doesn't account for your preferences, rather than understand that game design doesn't have to account for your(or my) preferences and can be specialized for one particular playstyle.

Again, it's not faulty design for you to misuse the system in an attempt to force it to play the way you like. If you can tweak it so that it's fun for your playstyle, that's awesome. It's just not bad or faulty game design if you can't tweak it to your desires.

I thought about this for a while, and I think a core issue is that it demonstrates an inability to grapple with the subjectivity inherent in discussing game design-- its an art form, there isn't firm ground to fall back on to differentiate the normative statements being made by me or in opposition to me, the framework through which we might draw a distinction between the desires of the individual and what is/isn't "actually" faulty is self-referential. Any statement made on what might constitute good design is intrinsically subjective, and this could apply as a criticism of it.

We fundamentally don't do that with anything else artistic, its certainly possible and acceptable for someone to set themselves in opposition to my ideas-- but the underlying notion that my framework is any different than say, an edwards essay about what makes for good design, a class on what makes for good writing, a Justin Alexander blog post about how you should prep situations rather than plots, the assessment of an experienced judge in a cooking competition, isn't super defensible.

That's why I think this is problematic, its policing the same thing everyone else in this thread is doing, including the people trying to make it a problem, and they certainly aren't obsequious about their views-- the tone is consistently just shy of caustic.