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World of Design: The Lost Art of Making Things Up
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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8126030" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>Just to bring it back to this final point, since I did take things elsewhere, I would really need to get a better sense of the OPs thoughts on what caused this and how he would characterize the atrophy. My own opinion is media's impact isn't that black and white, and that a lot of what the OP is describing could just as easily be chalked up to things like cultural changes. I was young when video games first started becoming a normal part of everyday life. At the time they were exciting, and incredibly inventive (I still remember the newness factor and how that shaped what was thought of as possible in terms of game structure). I think over time, the target audience narrowed and the tried and true formats narrowed, so within that medium there was a clear narrowing of imagination (at least in terms of content and structure). I realize there has since been a big change though with the growth of smart phones, iPads and the internet, and I am not well versed enough in present day video games to comment on their structure. All I can comment on there is video games as I played them from roughly 1982 to 1999 (which is around the time I started to lose interest----though I did have consoles until about 2003). For me, how you describe that change over time is extremely subjective. I really enjoyed some of those early games that were not hindered by any established video game aesthetics or design principles, they were literally carving out new territory. Everything from the some of the weirder games we used to play on Intellivision (from Shark Shark to Tron: Deadly Discs) to the classic arcade stuff like the original Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers (or my favorite, Punch-out). I remember computer games in the mid-80a and late 80s like Kings Quest, Police Quest (pretty much any Sierra game at the time), and stuff like Pirates or Zany Golf. Then things feel like they crystalized and you could characterize that as a narrowing of creative vision or you could characterize it as a refining of design. Personally I enjoyed the charm, the creativity and the rough edges of stuff like Kings Quest but I also happily played the standard formats that were developing. And I think there was a lot of creativity any time the medium advances (I remember the impact of resident evil when that first came out----I don't think I had ever been that immersed in a video game). To tie it back to what I have been saying this whole time, which isn't advances in technology are bad, but rather don't throw the baby out with the bathwater----see what is getting left behind in the advance---I think that is more the point here for me. When it comes to video games I am probably not the best person to be analyzing because I haven't played them in almost two decades. So I am way out of touch. The last game I really enjoyed was Shenmue on Dreamcast (and Crazy Taxi was fun too). </p><p></p><p>In terms of whether video games negatively impacted my creativity. If I am being honest, it was a double edged sword. I think in some ways it enhanced my creativity, but in others video games did steer me away from the type of imagination the OP is talking about. </p><p></p><p>Just to get back to the don't throw the baby out with the bathwater thing, I think this is the appeal of something like the OSR to me (and the appeal of going back to the old game books and remembering how we used to do things). I think what you can get with any medium is a bulld up of stuff and a build up of assumptions over time, and those assumptions can become like this self reflective aesthetic that everyone feeds from. And that applies to styles of play as well. I remember feeling a creative atrophy around adventure structures in the mid-to-early 2000s. And the thing that broke that atrophy for me, was re-reading the 1E dmg and remembering how this used to be a game where we explored and didn't know where the dice were going to land (where we embraced the impact of dice on the story, rather than fought against it; and where something like a linear adventure structure built around encounters, which was the norm in the early 2000s, wasn't what first sparked my interest in the medium. Realizing that, and realizing that I had jettisoned something essential from the early days of the hobby, helped me to revitalize my interest at the time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 8126030, member: 85555"] Just to bring it back to this final point, since I did take things elsewhere, I would really need to get a better sense of the OPs thoughts on what caused this and how he would characterize the atrophy. My own opinion is media's impact isn't that black and white, and that a lot of what the OP is describing could just as easily be chalked up to things like cultural changes. I was young when video games first started becoming a normal part of everyday life. At the time they were exciting, and incredibly inventive (I still remember the newness factor and how that shaped what was thought of as possible in terms of game structure). I think over time, the target audience narrowed and the tried and true formats narrowed, so within that medium there was a clear narrowing of imagination (at least in terms of content and structure). I realize there has since been a big change though with the growth of smart phones, iPads and the internet, and I am not well versed enough in present day video games to comment on their structure. All I can comment on there is video games as I played them from roughly 1982 to 1999 (which is around the time I started to lose interest----though I did have consoles until about 2003). For me, how you describe that change over time is extremely subjective. I really enjoyed some of those early games that were not hindered by any established video game aesthetics or design principles, they were literally carving out new territory. Everything from the some of the weirder games we used to play on Intellivision (from Shark Shark to Tron: Deadly Discs) to the classic arcade stuff like the original Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers (or my favorite, Punch-out). I remember computer games in the mid-80a and late 80s like Kings Quest, Police Quest (pretty much any Sierra game at the time), and stuff like Pirates or Zany Golf. Then things feel like they crystalized and you could characterize that as a narrowing of creative vision or you could characterize it as a refining of design. Personally I enjoyed the charm, the creativity and the rough edges of stuff like Kings Quest but I also happily played the standard formats that were developing. And I think there was a lot of creativity any time the medium advances (I remember the impact of resident evil when that first came out----I don't think I had ever been that immersed in a video game). To tie it back to what I have been saying this whole time, which isn't advances in technology are bad, but rather don't throw the baby out with the bathwater----see what is getting left behind in the advance---I think that is more the point here for me. When it comes to video games I am probably not the best person to be analyzing because I haven't played them in almost two decades. So I am way out of touch. The last game I really enjoyed was Shenmue on Dreamcast (and Crazy Taxi was fun too). In terms of whether video games negatively impacted my creativity. If I am being honest, it was a double edged sword. I think in some ways it enhanced my creativity, but in others video games did steer me away from the type of imagination the OP is talking about. Just to get back to the don't throw the baby out with the bathwater thing, I think this is the appeal of something like the OSR to me (and the appeal of going back to the old game books and remembering how we used to do things). I think what you can get with any medium is a bulld up of stuff and a build up of assumptions over time, and those assumptions can become like this self reflective aesthetic that everyone feeds from. And that applies to styles of play as well. I remember feeling a creative atrophy around adventure structures in the mid-to-early 2000s. And the thing that broke that atrophy for me, was re-reading the 1E dmg and remembering how this used to be a game where we explored and didn't know where the dice were going to land (where we embraced the impact of dice on the story, rather than fought against it; and where something like a linear adventure structure built around encounters, which was the norm in the early 2000s, wasn't what first sparked my interest in the medium. Realizing that, and realizing that I had jettisoned something essential from the early days of the hobby, helped me to revitalize my interest at the time. [/QUOTE]
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