thread: 2009-01-06 : Art, the State Thereof
On 2009-01-07, Jonathan Walton wrote:
Vincent, I kinda think the stuff Jason's doing with Medical Hospital could get at your musket-loading thing. Like, what if you had to perform a series of physical tasks that represented each stage of reloading the gun. And, in the meantime, other players could do other things in real time.
1. What's something you'd like to see a lot more of in new game designs?
Just one thing? Structured freeform. Real time resolution. A focus on social design. Syncretism between different kinds of analog games.
2. What's a game design point from an older game that you think has been unfortunately overlooked?
Lighting the candle in Polaris.
3. What's a game that you wish somebody would just hurry up and design already? (Not what specific game, but a game with what qualities?)
I want a game where the different players are explicitly playing by completely different rules that are sometimes complementary and sometimes create interesting tensions between them.
Also, yeah, I want that game that takes the form of a bunch of mini-games strung together. I was struggling to design one of those when I joined the Forge and still haven't seen one.
4. What's a game that you figure is still just plain out of our reach? (Again, not what specific game, a game with what qualities?)
I feel like there are games that we could play (in a collaborative freeform fashion with the right group) that are still impossible for us to design in a structured way. I also feel like we could design almost anything, so it's more a question of what would people actually design that would gain some traction in the current community.
I don't think, in the next couple of years, that we'll yet see any non-narrative games (games that mimic non-fiction, for example, or are largely abstract like classical music). I also feel like the costs of producing fancy game boards and tokens and cards will go down, but will continue to be high enough to prevent the rise of board and card game inspired hybrids. Some will trickle in, but we have to wait a bit longer for the real flood.
I'm also not sure we can create a game that makes one feel alone.
