Been meaning to respond to Enrique’s comments on what appeals to us in games for awhile. Finally found a moment to breathe and decided to post this up rather than, you know, breathing.
It’s a breakdown of what I see as the four core tasks that constitute most gaming experiences. I’ll leave a link to the full article, but for a tease, here’s the Cartesian graph that finally let me start wrapping my mind around where I was going.
Look forward to any comments.
I’m not a big baseball fan, but after last weekend’s once-in-a-lifetime NCAA Austin Regional, I had to buy tickets to the Super Regional.Â
For those who don’t know, last Saturday the University of Texas and Boston College played the longest baseball game in NCAA history, 25-innings and over seven hours. Austin Woods provided the real drama, however, picthing 13 innings of no-hitter ball. The President of Vince Young University called Woods’ overture the single greatest athletic performance in school history. We’re really hoping Woods can replace Roger Clemens as the greatest picther Texas has ever produced. Seriously, I need a voodoo doll for this purpose.
Better, on Sunday, a worn out UT team entered the bottom of the 9th-inning down 10-6 to Army in the Regional Championship game. The longhorns rallied to first tie Army 10-10, and then won the game on a walk-off grand slam that left the score 14-10 in favor of Texas. Monday, it was announced that Woods’ cap would be going into the Baseball Hall of Fame in honor of the 25-inning victory.
So my son and I are heading to game 2 of the Super Regional between Texas and TCU to see who goes to Omaha. We expect a good game, but it couldn’t possibly approach the drama of last weekend? I mean that would be greedy, right? Like VY stealing two Rose Bowls greedy.
Here’s a little bit from the historic game.
I hate when national reporters smooth a quote for print. SI.com and ESPN.com both used the sanitized AP version of San Antonio Spur’s coach Gregg Popovich’s quote about the beatdown they received from the Mavs last night. Not the Statesman, however. The Statesman went with full verbal honestyin printing this from Popovich:
“They kicked our ass every which way but loose,” Popovich said. “Their energy and aggressiveness was great.”
Not bum, rear, butts–or whatever other safety word would pop to mind. And frankly, asses is what Popovich meant, and it’s the word that most exactly fits the Spurs miserable showing. Kudos to the Statesman for sticking to the truth of the matter. That’s some honest reporting.
I’m still trying to figure out what our wellspring meant by geekery going mainstream. I know that in the court case that CJ discussed Wizards suggested that 6 million people play D&D. You can either view that as .1% of the global population–or dream of some Chicago-sized Xanadu filled with DMs, GMs, and the sound of rolling dice echoing through the streets like police sirens in New York City. So Sam’s right–there really are a lot of viewpoints to float around here.
Now, I have a confession. I haven’t played a tabletop game in many months. I think I’ve played 4E about four times. Mostly this has nothing to do with the game itself (my mainstream life has been insanely busy), but I have my biases.
Back in 2000, the first column I ever wrote for Dragon became one of the first to be translated into Third Edition. At that time, I likely would have been a slow convert to 3E if not for a circle of early adopter friends and a personal desire to keep getting published. Turns out that while 3E tightened the reins on some of my more ludicrous 2E free-wheeling, it also created a system of content generation that tapped into the very essence of rising Internet fandom. 3E embraced fanfic and spawned some current hotshots in game design because of it (Mearls is the clear example of this). This fan-driven design scheme is an idea that other companies like Bioware (with NWN and Dragon Age) and Maxis (Spore) have embraced. Get your fans excited about the design process and let their creativity drive your product’s shelf-life. 3E was an open API half a decade before Facebook or the iPhone.
The OGL was highly entertaining for me as a player and as a (very sporadic) game writer. I met a ton of fun and talented people due to OGL. Monte Cook via AU/E, Justin Jacobson at Blue Devil Games, Bill Collins from both of the above, Mike McArtor at Paizo, and a host of others that defined the community power of an open system for me. I have to admit that when WotC closed OGL in 4E, my interest moved closer toward those electronic game designers who kept the spirit alive–well, that and other joint writing spaces like wikis, but that’s neither here nor there.
So, yeah, I’m a little prone to discussing the system and culture of gaming. But I’m sure I’ll find plenty of other geekery to go on about. Moreover, I’m also the resident sports geek. I’m awful at paying attention to fantasy leagues, but I’m totally jazzed that the Cavs might tie the ’84-’85 Celtics home wins record for a season. To clear up my biases on the sports front: I grew up in Dallas and I attended the University of Texas. I maintain all expected and implied affiliations from those occurrences without apology. Disclaimer done.
Hope we can keep this entertaining.