thread: 2011-02-21 : Into the Unknown?
On 2011-04-04, Josh W wrote:
Yes actually, held back on it in case you were saving up some gameplan/info splurge:
In Rock of Tahamaat, you distinguish between mechanics and free play. What I'm wondering about is the interface between those two; I'm guessing from your other games that you've played like this before, and I'm wondering if you set the specific mechanics up to answer those questions free play wouldn't, or in some other way set them up so play would flow towards them.
See for me, free play has it's own currents and dynamics, ever play a skydiving game? You know how you can miss some rings or bananas or targets or whatever as your going down, or you can pull right at the last minute to get into them?
For me some games are like that, where the free play just starts missing mechanics, and you have this choice to distort what your doing and hop into the mechanic that interests you (usually combat or magic), or to carry on.
I'm wondering if you've got some principles or semi-conscious defaults your using that say "I need to shift this mechanic a bit, because I can't imagine them actually starting there" or "this bit needs a mechanic".
Also I'm wondering what you see when you say "free play", whether it's a single thing or a family etc, but that's a bigger question!
Also, this stuff about connections is basically about hope right? People will persevere at something to get a payoff, but they need to have some kind of confidence and hope that this payoff will actually arrive?
So if your mechanics for whatever reason put a gap between now and the coolness people want, then you have to remove ambiguity sufficiently that people can chart a potential path through to it. If you don't, then some other player with unusual farsight or previous experience needs to encourage the other players all the time, keep their hopes up. That might happen anyway, but you need to minimise that so everyone can play out of their own motivation.
Is that the basic jist? Is there some big important bit I'm missing?
