Like the character might be pretty damn ready to commit the violence, but then the person being threatened says something that makes them change their mind. (Or, not! That's for the player to decide at that moment.) You know, the Martha moment, except not done badly.
Exactly. I don't need my characters actions being defined for me, nor do I need to feel like Im walking on glass where I'll trigger a Move thats going to take that agency away from of me.
If someone were to ask me how I felt about it, I’d call it a “me” issue.
Thats kind of the unspoken truth of the whole discussion is that this is all a matter of taste. That doesn't mean that the produced gameplay can't be examined objectively (they absolutely can be once we work through the kludge of language to reach mutual understanding), but whether or not we consider that gameplay good is up to taste.
My position is this structure is not inherently a genre emulation mechanic.
In that context then sure, I don't disagree at all. But I've been using it in terms of a specific game (or set of games), rather than just the mechanic stripped of the genre theming.
While GMAGD doesn't get into aesthetics, I clearly think its an important aspect of a given game mechanic. I think with a video game audience, a lot of this gets washed away because aesthetics are much more critical and complex to convey.
Bad sound design, bad UX, bad animations, bad graphics, etc all go into the final aesthetics of a given game Action (and unlike in TTRPGs, can't be casually ignored), which makes video game aesthetics a
dramattically more complex problem to solve, and one that, for that crowd, isn't often considered on just a purer gameplay level. Though, it should be.
Id even argue a failure to consider it on this fundamental level might actually be at the root of a lot of problems different video games have with feeling good to play. For example, to go back to Mario jumping from ages ago, Mario's jumps always hit the mark on aesthetics. Nintendo spends an egregious amount of time on it for every game it features, and the aesthetics reflect that.
Over in Skyrim, where Jumping is present, the same can't be said. Its there, and it ostensibly is fine (little chance of failure where it can be used, and the animations aren't necessarily bad) but in comparison there basically isn't a comparison.
Part of that is because Mario is a platformer and Skyrim isn't, but that doesn't necessarily mean jumping has to be so bad in Skyrim. A few mods later and a decade later, Skyrim jumping feels pretty good, even for a game not about jumping all over the place.