So what's the gameplay in my game?

Game Play & Game Design
#21

Or, to put what I’m describing badly :frowning: another way, I would shoot fewer bubble-trapped-fluffies if you replaced the graphics with something less appealing. There is satisfaction to removing the fluffie from the magnified, squished effect. My macro-strategy for playing the game would probably be the same as always, but the statistics of the decisions I made on a micro level would change.

If it changes the way that the players play the game, then surely, by definition, something is part of the gameplay?

#22

I don’t think it would change the gameplay at all - just shift the emphasis from content consumption to mechanisms. The atmosphere in Quake is part of the content - it’s what you’re consuming, not the gameplay. You could design a dark, broody level in Quake which had a door in it; just outside the door there could be a happy meadow with flowers and bees and the sun shining. Has the gameplay changed? No - you’ve only virtually walked a few feet - how can the gameplay change in a few feet? You are simply consuming the emotional content of the game. A designer leaves the atmosphere of a game lying around like an odour. It’s like the emotional fingerprint of the game.

The fluffies in Alien Flux have an emotional aura which we wanted you to pick up on. You might remember in the diary when Chaz first designed them and they looked a bit like some kind of mutant squid. They were so ugly it was actually fun wasting them to put them out of their misery. The mechanisms of gameplay didn’t change - kill them all and the jellies came after you - but the emotions we inspired in you shifted the emphasis of the game.

Now: think again about what you’ve said about Quake 3 head positions. Replace with a sphere with a stick showing which way it’s pointing. Graphics… or gameplay? Replace the nice detailed gun with a large coloured oblong block so you can easily identify its firing rate and damage characteristics. Graphics… or gameplay?

Cas :slight_smile:

#23

Perhaps a players perception of gameplay is affected by content/graphics?

#24

As an aside:
I remember when harcore quake2 players would choose software rendering, all detail levels to ‘low’, all in order to maximize framerate and ‘clarity’ of the picture (so that no beautiful smoke trails get in line of sight for example).
In effect they turned down ‘content’ in favour of ‘gameplay’.

In my perception, gameplay is just part of the whole gaming experience. An important one (depending on the genre), but still ‘just’ a part.

#25

[quote]Perhaps a players perception of gameplay is affected by content/graphics?
[/quote]
Definitely :slight_smile:

#26

When you play a computer-game, the “game” you are playing is not usually the same “game” as the “game” played by everyone else who plays that computer-game; it’ll be the same as some of them, but there are many different “games” that people play with the same tool (computer game). This is a concept which MMOG desigerns have (been forced to…) come to terms with over the past 5 years (or much earlier for some of the more enlightened MUD admins), and which is now pretty much taken for granted. It’s the key to understanding why there are always griefers in every MMOG (amongst other things which it explains).

Hence…

I.e. I can be sitting in front of your computer-game, but the “game” I’m playing might be, for instance “how big a score can I get in 5 minutes”, or it might be “I like seeing fluffies get swallowed”. In the latter case, I might ignore the mechanics of your game, and play it in order to see as many fluffies get eaten as possible - even though this forces me to cope with the ultra-hard jelly incursions etc. Players of these meta-games will typically ignore the game-rules if it suits them as part of their game - so e.g. if they like killing fluffies they will intentionally commit suicide in order to restart the game with full fluffies, rather than play through as far as they can go, because it’s a more efficient way of getting back a full complement of fluffies.

Changing Quake’s graphics changes the meta-games I’m willing and/or choose to play. Therefore, de facto, it changes the gameplay of the ACTUAL “game” (combination of computer-game + current meta-game) I’m playing, even if fundamentally the computer-game itself may not seem to have changed it’s own gameplay.

I count this as part of the computer-game’s gameplay, since most good designers innately design-in the opportunity to play various meta-games within the game, and I credit them with all the meta-games for their game.

Does this make sense?

The point I was attempting to highlight was: why have the animations at all? why not just have a single oblong for the player? How do you decide that the player-model (soft-content, traditionally ALWAYS considered part of “graphics etc”) is actually a gameplay-feature (as you implicitly have in your para above)?

I was trying to find some way in which soft-content can more obviously affect gameplay…and maybe the example I chose is wrong.

#27

Indeed, you picked the wrong example but in your previous paragraph just there you have shown yourself to be an enlightened wizard.

Meta games.

Meta games are what we forget all about when we grow up. Meta games are what we did when we were kids. We didn’t just push Matchbox cars around and round and then put them back in a box. We played with them, which means exploring all the fun and different ways of bending the rules purely to amuse ourselves.

Your thinking here is sheer genius, and it shows us how we can’t see the wood for the trees.

What I’m trying to get at here is maybe best served by an analogy: imagine playing with a ball. The ball makes up the fundamental rules of any game you play with it. It weighs so-so, it bounces like this, it’s about so big and hurts this much when it hits you on the nose.

All the games you can subsequently play with the ball are determined by all of its unchangeable characteristics. You can play football with almost any sized ball. You can throw it at each other. You can just bounce it up and down if that’s what’s fun for you.

Sometimes we make some further arbitrary rules around the ball to try and make playing it more fun, maybe with the aid of the interaction with a few other immutable rules like a certain flat area to kick it around on or a pair of jumpers to kick it between or a racket to twat it with.

I believe we can draw some direct parallel between any game we play as kids and any kind of computer entertainment.

So back to a specific example: what’s the metaphysical “ball” in my game? What’s the arbitrary ruleset I’ve imposed, and what’s the scope for having fun by bending the rules?

Cas :slight_smile:

#28

By “Meta Games” aren’t you actually just referring to emergent gameplay? Emergent gameplay is what happens when you mix a number of simple well defined systems, these systems interact in a number of ways to create a depth of gameplay that none of the individual pieces provided.

For the example of the ball, the ball has limited abilities. Basically it’s round, it can bounce and it is impeded by forces like gravity and friction.

Then you have a kid, a kid can kick a ball, he can carry a ball, throw a ball, spin a ball, bounce a ball etc.

By himself a kid can merge the two rule sets, he can take advantage of the force of gravity on the ball to spin it in place on his finger, or he can kick it in the air and see how many times he can kick it consecutively without letting it touch the ground. He can even see if he can kick it through his parents bedroom window.

Add a few kids and a lot of things can happen, Dodgeball, keep away, tag, hacky sack etc.

Emergent gameplay is what happens when you design a few simple systems with well defined rules and don’t place any limitation on how they interact with one another (within reason of course). This allows the player to invent his or her own strategies and goals that the designer of the individual systems never thought possible.

#29

[quote]By “Meta Games” aren’t you actually just referring to emergent gameplay?
[/quote]
Related, but not the same. The lesson from MMOG design has been that meta games are ALWAYS played, no matter what the computer game you are “interacting with” (merely to differentiate between playing the meta game and playing the c-game, I’m going to call the latter interacting, even though it’s still playing :)). Whilst a games developer might not realise in advance some of the ways their game will be played, if they thought about it more carefully, they could work it out. Emergence is about things that, by definition, you could not possibly - ever - work out in advance that people were going to do.

Emergent XXX comes from “the emergence of unexpectedly complex and unpredictable results from the composition of simple rules”. The first time I encountered it in Computer Science was with fractals and chaos, where infinitely complex chaotic systems with infinite data can be generated from tiny mathematical equations which can be recorded with only a tiny number of bits. And the generation of the chaotic systems is actually entirely deterministic (!).

(a definition I used to use, from notes on previous research I did years ago):
“Emergent behaviour is where the behaviour does not lie in plain sight, but emerges over the course of a simulation - i.e. the simulation may well be deterministic (i.e. 100% repeatable, leading to the same results every time), but there is no way of predicting those results in advance, without actually running the simulation, and recording the results for later retrieval; there is no simplified mathematical equation for prediction. In several ways this is similar, in practice, to non-determinism - both encompass the need to actually simulate/execute to find out what happens.”

For instance, if you have 5 sets of equations, and each can be combined with the others, you have some number of combinatorial permutations. Typically this is considered not sufficiently complex to merit the label “emergent”, because nothing has emerged - you’re instead just witnessing the obvious predictable logical side effect of combining those terms.

#30

At the risk of veering off the current (and quite compelling) thread I just wanted to address cas’s original question regarding the “gameplay” in Alien Flux by quoting from H. J. R Murray’s History of Board Games Other Than Chess in the chapter entitled “Hunt-Games”

[quote]…Hunt-games are played by two persons, one with many pieces and the other with not more than four pieces, and the player with the larger number of men endeavor’s to take his opponent’s men or to hem them in so that they become immobile. The larger body represents a party of hunters and the smaller body is their quarry, a small number of dangerous animals which can kill a hunter who has lost touch with his comrades…
[/quote]
Murray goes on to discuss the history of hunt-games, citing evidence that indicates an Asiatic origin, followed by a migration through India into the Arab world and then into Europe by way of Spanish Moors. By the middle ages hunt-games were extremely popular throughout Europe. He also describes the evolution of the gameplay as the number of pieces and types of movement changed and varied over time and across geography.

It isn’t difficult to view Alien Flux in these terms, with the computer playing the “hunter” and the player & his fluffies, the “prey”. One could argue that there are tons of video games that could fit this category (including Asteroids) This isn’t surprising, given that the majority of academic texts on board games cite 5 major categories of games, into which pretty much all board games throughout history can be classified. One advantage to studying these classifications is that they help in distilling gameplay to it’s essential elements independent of graphics, sound, etc. One way to get at the “gameplay” in Alien Flux, or any other game, is to look at the history of games that led up to it (and I recommend going back earlier than “SpaceWar”:)), examine the things they have in common, and then from there look at how the game adds to, or varies from, those basic elements to make the gameplay unique.

This was not meant to detract in any way from the discussion of “Meta Games” only to add a little historical perspective to the conversation on gameplay as it pertains to AF.

#31

Q3 - that let you see where your opponent was looking at

I guess that was more a “techy” thing at the beginning. I don’t know if it was intended but you can (ab)use the head animation for simple yes/no communication in team games :slight_smile:

Meta games

If you give the players a level editor gameplay can change drastically. A recent example is the “ski jump map” for Q3:

http://www.betamap.de/files/Maps/q3skijumph.zip (624kb)

Basically it’s just a big ramp (as seen on tv) with a special snow texture (a shader with surface_params slick).

#32

I would just like to throw in my .02 on the concept of graphics / sound content as a component of game play. I feel from my personal gaming experience and from a number of books I’ve read on such subjects, that content is really tightly coupled to the game play issue. A major factor in a game’s success and “fun factor” is the player’s ability to get “into” the game. The game has to fulfill them on several levels to accomplish this. Visiual stimulation is only one level. Likewise, an adrenelin rush from a challenging twitch-and-click is only one level as well. The more levels that you can fulfill will help you peg a player’s fun meter and make your game something they want to come back to.

Take a game that you really enjoy. One that you feel can stand on its own for game play alone. Then turn off the sound completely and play again. It still plays the same (unless directional sound is a critical factor, of course!) and is hopefully still fun, but I would be surprised if you didn’t feel something was missing. Likewise, crank the graphics down to the lowest available setting and you will probably get the same “not quite” feeling. So the sound and graphics content of that game are indeed important factors in the player’s imersion.

This doesn’t mean you have to write the hottest possible 3d engine that can push billions of pixels per second. It just means you need to create an environment (graphics & sound) that is right for the feel you are trying to get with your game. You can play WarCraft 2 today, many years after it came out, and probably not say “boy I wish the buildings were all 3d”. The graphics and sounds are right for the game and the mechanics of the game play are well thought out. As a result, WC2 is almost timeless. As I mentioned in another thread, I still enjoy playing X-Com to this day. The graphics would be laughable if someone tried to release it as a new game today, but they are right for that game and I do not find myself wanting something better.

To tie this into the meta-game concept, let’s look back at the ball analogy. The ball and it’s physical characteristics are the core of the mechanics of your game (game play). However, the environment you create to play with the ball (the rules of the game, the play field, etc) are all intricate and necessary components to the specific ball game being fun.

-Lawrence

#33

[quote]You can play WarCraft 2 today, many years after it came out, and probably not say “boy I wish the buildings were all 3d”. The graphics and sounds are right for the game and the mechanics of the game play are well thought out. As a result, WC2 is almost timeless.
[/quote]
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Without question, graphics, sound, etc all contribute to the aesthetic experience of a game. IME though, if the game mechanics or gameplay are not compelling on their own, no degree of aesthetic embellishment is going to give you that “timeless” experience.

When I think about gameplay vs graphics, it makes me think about chessboards and monopoly sets. There are thousands of “custom” designed varieties of these games, but they are still the same game. If I buy a Civil War chess set, it becomes a game of North vs South. If I buy a Baseball chess set featureing the Yankees vs the Mets, it becomes a metaphor for the World Series. If I buy the Star Wars Edition of Monopoly it changes the theme of the game from real estate development to galactic conquest. Most of those who buy these “designer” games already own either a generic (in the case of Chess) or the original (in the case of Monopoly) version of the game, so clearly these customizations add to the aesthetic enjoyment of the game for those who buy them. However, the game mechanics are the same, no matter what form they come in.

I’ve heard people use the following argument against the FPS genre of games: A great game comes out, you play it for a while, and then the next year a new game comes out with better graphics and a new and more complex “story” and the old game, while perhaps not forgotten, goes on to gather dust on the shelf. If this is the case, then how can you call any of these games “timeless”? But what about “Doom?” people say, or “Half-Life?” those were great games and they still are! Perhaps, but how many of you will go back and spend hours again on Half-Life after HL2 comes out?

Just like the Baseball Chess set or the Monopoly: Star Wars Edition, the design of these games contributes greatly to the aesthetic experience of the game, but this is an ephemoral quality, whereas the gameplay is what makes the game of FPS popular and will probably continue to do so for years, if not centuries to come.

Another way to look at this is to make an analogy with another medium. Romeo & Juliet has been performed for centuries, has been set in a variety of locations and time periods, and has been used as an allegory for a host of different subjects & issues (compare the Franco Zeffirelli film with Baz Lurhman’s) The acting, the direction, the sets, light, etc. all contribute to whether a particular production is successful, but what makes R&J “timeless” is the thing all these productions have in common, namely the story.

“Stories aren’t games!” you cry, “and games aren’t stories!” Very true. Theater and film and books are narrative experiences, games are interactive experiences. The way I see it, game mechanics are the interactive analog to stories in narrative media. It’s what defines a game, and the “story” of a game (in the narrative sense), is like the acting, sets, props and costumes in a play. It can contribute greatly to the success or failure of a particular interpretation of a game, but is independent of the qualiy and timelessness of the game itself, which is embodied in the game mechanics and gameplay.

#34

The thing about bending rules is a really good point- I remember the entertainment we got from playing Quake 1 with the FOV on 170 degrees. Eventually we developed a kind of FOV handicap system for a while, where the better you were the higher your field of view had to be.

#35

You stray a little too far into gross generalizations for my liking…

No disagreement w.r.t chess-sets. But the following are not true:

“all computer games SUBSET_OF chess”
“all computer games SUBSET_OF (UNION (all board games))”

I know I’m stating the obvious, but the point is that those statements don’t even come close to being true.

If you want to claim that soft-content is no more than embellishment - that the gameplay has to be right first, that a game cannot stand on great soft-content alone - then you can’t do it by generalising from something as backwards and dumb as chess. My main gripe against chess is that it’s a one-dimensional game. Even if you look at the meta-games that people play with it, it’s still only a two or maybe three dimensional game (the additional dimensions being “psychological gameplay [feints etc]” and “endurance [who gets tired and makes a mistake first]”) - apologies to chess afficionados if there are a couple of other dimensions I’ve not mentioned!.

The primary dimension is that it’s a combinatorial game where the number of possible game-states is far far far beyond the capacity of anyone to comprehend, and the only way to predict the outcomes from a given state is through simulation. I.e. it’s a game that is so computationally intensive to strategise about that it is always complex to play. And yet you can create short-term and long-term strategies within that massive search-space. And the search space is so huge that your opponent can only spot your strategy with HUGE difficulty. But that’s all there is to it.

Everquest, OTOH, has a hell of a lot more dimensions (e.g. socialisation, levelling, etc). This is mainly because of the blurring between meta-game and computer-game, where metagames are deliberately supported by the game-design. To quote one of the Ultima Dragons (IIRC), when talking to the Ultima 8 dev team about a pre-release version of U8 (and this is certainly a quote that Raph Koster would have known about during EQ’s design) “No, you don’t understand; it IS about baking bread!!”. The point being made was that the Ultima series cultivated a hardcore audience who played it for its effectiveness at world simulation (they played a metagame of using it as a world-simulation rather than as an adventure game); the computer game was about following a plot, playing through quests. Some people would just fire it up and bake bread all day, then fletch some arrows, do a bit of hunting, wander around the game world, etc.

If you want to talk about how “graphics, sound, etc all contribute to … a game”, you either have to start from multi-dimensional games, the really rich stuff like EQ’s, or if you want to make life easy, at least start with the rich singleplayer stuff, like the U series. Or else you have to specifically exclude them from the discussion.

I’m afraid that, for me, chess just doesn’t even come close to being relevant in such discussions; it’s the stone-age abacus that’s feeling it’s age next to a Cray supercomputer (although no-one would deny that abacuses still have value, are desirable, and can even be better than a supercomputer in some situations).

#36

I do agree with what you say when applied to chess and Monopoly, but the point I’m trying to make is that the gameplay and the graphics etc (I think that’s what you mean by “the design of these games” above, going by the context?) are not always non-intersecting sets; computer games tend to expand the area of intersection (possibly only because they can offer so much more richness than other gaming-media, such as board games, ever could). Some elements of the graphics etc are a part of the actual gameplay.

I almost walked into the troll-trap there, but resisted at the last minute ;). Suffice it to say that R&J is a formulaic story that was ripped-off (like much of Shakspeer’s best work) from other authors and playwrights, and there have been millions of abominable productions of R&J - if there’s any timeless quality to the play, then it’s obviously very weak, given how easy it is to murder, and end up with a truly ghastly production.

#37

Sorry for the slightly delayed reply. I forgot to sacrifice a goat to Linus today, and so when I clicked on the reply button Linux bombed and corrupted two hard-drives in the process. God, I love linux!

[quote]Indeed, you picked the wrong example but in your previous paragraph just there you have shown yourself to be an enlightened wizard.

Meta games.
[/quote]
I’m afraid I can’t take much credit :). I may be one of the first to talk about them here, but the concept itself has been kicking about for quite a while in MMOG-design circles. I can’t find any references to people actually naming the concept, but it’s only the last step after all the observational work has already been done by people like Raph K (UO, EQ, and now SW:G), and god-knows how many MUD admins over the year (starting with Bartle and Trubshaw).

[quote]Your thinking here is sheer genius, and it shows us how we can’t see the wood for the trees.
[/quote]
Does no-one else here think about meta-games all the time? If not, perhaps it’s worth me trying to write it up, pull together all the sources, research, and observation, and try blasting it out at Gamasutra etc…I admit it’s never come up in conversation, not even with the few freelance game-design specialists I know, but I’d just kind of assumed… ::slight_smile:

If you can make head-or-tail of the email I sent you, it might help a little. The “available strategies” that you have to think about when running through the process have a lot of similarity to “meaningful ways in which you interact with the game” - so identifying them might help with demonstrating the ways in which your game channels people’s metagame play…i.e. the metagames it [your game design] encourages.

Or, if you’re looking for a list…

[]Dodging skill (simple) - navigation+dodging (harder) - navigation+dodging+tactical shepherding of enemies (really hard)
[] Examples: manoeuvering is hard enough to make “playing without using the fire button” a significant challenge in itself. As you get good enough to fly around at full speed and dodge everything, you start to try doing the same, but trying to make arbitrary waypoints in the process - perhaps giving yourself a time-limit (would be easier if the game had a bonus timer for you to time yourself by!). If you get really good, you might deliberately incite jelly-incursions, just to show off “how many seconds you can survive”. Basically, dodging and navigation are no longer good enough - you have to plan ahead where and how you’re going to lure them, and do this at very high speed.
[]Playing with the fire button held down all the time…this could be better supported by having a “percentage kill ratio” and “shots fired” on the score-bar that is updated in real time.
[]Playing without moving. I mention this mainly because I suspect many beginners start off like this (you see the crosshair, you’re playing for the first time, you probably choose to concentrate on learning to shoot well before learning to drive. YMMV of course - a LOT - from player to player). It’s perhaps a playstyle you should do more to discourage early-on, because it leads to bad habits that make it harder and harder for the player to improve…

#38

[quote]You stray a little too far into gross generalizations for my liking…

No disagreement w.r.t chess-sets. But the following are not true:

“all computer games SUBSET_OF chess”
“all computer games SUBSET_OF (UNION (all board games))”
[/quote]
I’d never suggest such a thing. It would make as much sense as saying:

“all food SUBSET_OF cheese”

The fact that filet mignon is nothing like cheese, doesn’t make cheese, as an example, any less relevant in discussions of how we eat & digest food. If I were comparing world simulation games, I wouldn’t use Chess as an example any more than I would use cheese in a comparison of beef cuts. Of course I probably wouldn’t use Alien Flux either.

[quote]If you want to claim that soft-content is no more than embellishment - that the gameplay has to be right first, that a game cannot stand on great soft-content alone - then you can’t do it by generalising from something as backwards and dumb as chess.
[/quote]
I don’t understand. Are you arguing that the gameplay doesn’t have to be right? or that a game can stand on great soft-content alone?

[quote]Everquest, OTOH, has a hell of a lot more dimensions (e.g. socialisation, levelling, etc). This is mainly because of the blurring between meta-game and computer-game, where metagames are deliberately supported by the game-design. To quote one of the Ultima Dragons (IIRC), when talking to the Ultima 8 dev team about a pre-release version of U8 (and this is certainly a quote that Raph Koster would have known about during EQ’s design) “No, you don’t understand; it IS about baking bread!!”. The point being made was that the Ultima series cultivated a hardcore audience who played it for its effectiveness at world simulation (they played a metagame of using it as a world-simulation rather than as an adventure game); the computer game was about following a plot, playing through quests. Some people would just fire it up and bake bread all day, then fletch some arrows, do a bit of hunting, wander around the game world, etc.
[/quote]
I’m still confused. You seem to be violently arguing my point. Your whole description is of the activities the players engage in, the way they interact with each other and the world as it is defined and enabled by the mechanics of the game (it may not be the “superficial” game described on the box, but it is one implicit in the rules of the simulation) All of which is independent of audio & visual fidelity, or even temporal or geographical setting (players engage in the similar types of activities, for similar reasons, in Star Wars Galaxies)

[quote]If you want to talk about how “graphics, sound, etc all contribute to … a game”, you either have to start from multi-dimensional games, the really rich stuff like EQ’s, or if you want to make life easy, at least start with the rich singleplayer stuff, like the U series. Or else you have to specifically exclude them from the discussion.
[/quote]
I chose Chess and Monopoly to illustrate the distinction between the mechanics of a game and its implementation, specifically because they are simple examples. I appreciate your description of EQ as it supports my thesis by providing a more sophisticated example of the same principal.

[quote]I’m afraid that, for me, chess just doesn’t even come close to being relevant in such discussions; it’s the stone-age abacus that’s feeling it’s age next to a Cray supercomputer (although no-one would deny that abacuses still have value, are desirable, and can even be better than a supercomputer in some situations).
[/quote]
Okay, I get it that you don’t like Chess :wink:

#39

[quote]I do agree with what you say when applied to chess and Monopoly, but the point I’m trying to make is that the gameplay and the graphics etc (I think that’s what you mean by “the design of these games” above, going by the context?) are not always non-intersecting sets; computer games tend to expand the area of intersection (possibly only because they can offer so much more richness than other gaming-media, such as board games, ever could). Some elements of the graphics etc are a part of the actual gameplay.
[/quote]
I agree, but then again if a chess board didn’t have squares, you couldn’t play chess. A game, no matter how simple the mechanics, must still be realized through it’s content. What’s relevant is the distinction between those elements (graphic or otherwise) that enable certain types of activities and behavior to take place, and those elements that support the overall aesthetic experience, but don’t alter the gameplay itself. There’s a flip-side to this as well, which is that “soft-content” can often alter the mechanics of the game for the worse. Using a FP POV in an RTS might make the visuals more “realistic” but could destroy the (intended) game mechanics by making it next to impossible to coordinate one’s forces. In this case, the game doesn’t simply look different, it actually becomes a different game.

[quote]I almost walked into the troll-trap there, but resisted at the last minute ;). Suffice it to say that R&J is a formulaic story that was ripped-off (like much of Shakspeer’s best work) from other authors and playwrights, and there have been millions of abominable productions of R&J - if there’s any timeless quality to the play, then it’s obviously very weak, given how easy it is to murder, and end up with a truly ghastly production.
[/quote]
You are 100% correct on all counts (except with regard to the “timelessness” of the play). Whatever you or I might think of the it, the play continues to be produced, and people to continue to “rip” it off (eg West Side Story) so clearly there is something that has enabled the story to persist for 500+ years, despite the fact that there have been countless god-awful productions of it.

Likewise, I anticipate that 500+ years from now, people will continue to play FPS and world sims despite the fact that untold millions of bad games will no doubt be produced in these genres.

You keep taking such exception to my examples, and yet in each case, you seem to be supporting my argument. ???

#40

Of course not…but you were using a metaphor to talk about computer games that was based upon aspects of, and observations from, chess. I was pointing out that chess is too far removed from computer games to have any relevance to this discussion (although it IS a game, and it DOES have issues of gameplay-vs-graphics etc of it’s own…as you pointed out).