Re: Is Innovative Gameplay a Dead End?

"Particle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> That's the emergent structure of Chess, but not the story. Every time a
> different Chess move is played, another possible direction for that story
> emerges. What you are doing is the equivalent of taking a stereotypical
> romcom plot and saying "That is the story of the Romantic movie", when of
> course it is merely a structure.

Why do you say Story differs from Structure?  Most works do tell the same
story and do have the same structure.  Of course, to see that relationship
you have to regard the story in fairly abstract terms.  "Hero's Journey,"
"Obligatory Love Interest," "Villain Nearly Takes All," etc.

> > Someday, an area course on film will be required of Game Designers
> > in university curriculums.
>
> I would have thought it more likely that future game design courses will
> require a study of boardgames, cardgames etc,

That will be required as well.  You can have more than 1 required area
course.  ;-)

> Indeed, go back to Orson Welles and all of his revolutionary inventions
for
> Citizen Kane. But we're sort of beating around the same bush here. Neither
> Orson nor George wanted to reinvent the cinematic experience so completely
> that it wasn't cinema any more. They wanted (and managed) to innovate
within
> the elements of the cinematic artform to produce astounding works. I'd use
a
> similar analogy about your music examples.

So, do the amount of technical innovation you can afford for your project.
I think the mistake a lot of fledgelings make is not realizing there's a
*budget* for various kinds of innovation, including the technical.  Even if
you aren't spending money, you've only got so much time before you aren't
eating anymore, or your morale is totally destroyed, or whatever.  The
budget is not infinite.  You can't, for instance, create a MMOG as your
first solo project.

> Imagine if most literary debate were only about
> reinventing letters. That's the level that gaming is at.

I don't think that's the correct comparison.  With rare exceptions, the
mainstream industry isn't inventing any game mechanics at all.  And those
indies which are trying to invent, aren't reinventing the alphabet.  They're
inventing new things.

>> You want it done right, you gotta do it yourself.
>
> This I am discovering.

Heh!  And for this very reason, yesterday I decided to resume Ocean Mars
again.  I've looked at 2D to Keep It Simple Stupid, I've searched high and
low for open source codebases, I've contemplated working with other people
on various things.  But in practice, I already have a codebase, I already
know it well, and I'm not seeing cooperating with others to be any kind of
value add.  All the things I really want to accomplish, I'm going to have to
do myself anyways.

> I have a question, by the way. What is indiegamedesign.com going to be?

One of these days it'll have blurbs about Ocean Mars on it.  I had a less
shitty website back when I was 3DProgrammer.com, but it was still pretty
sad.  I hate web design, it's nothing but bureaucracy to me.

-- 
Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.