thread: 2008-10-24 : Me and Robin Laws talk about writing
On 2008-11-03, Eero Tuovinen wrote:
If somebody is saying that indie games do not have as much emphasis on the reading experience (the ampleness, texture and imaginative content of engaging with the book as entertainment for its own sake) as any supplement treadmill game, he's basically right; I can't see how anybody could or would contend that, considering how much more work is put into fictional worlds and people, art and world-building in traditional rpg houses than in indies.
This is important in that whatever any individual one of us happens to think, the reading experience is not only a factor of product quality, but also one of game design technique. Any single product may quite rightfully be built to leverage light simplicity and direct to-play motivation, but the reverse also exists as a technique: history seems to prove it pretty solidly that there exists a valid market audience for games that put all their effort into exciting fictional content that motivates the reader to become the GM-facilitator for a whole group of players. The games that combine this approach to product design with 100% concerned system design are rare beasts at this point - The Shadow of Yesterday sort of does something like it, but it doesn't really have quite enough fictional bulk to it. Of course, it's questionable whether this sort of thing can or should be done when your design priorities are the sort of lean, narrativist things Forge has traditionally fostered.
