well, the job of a lead designer is, in fact, to think for the people who will eventually play the game.
I am simply doing my best to guess how a lead designer would think. A good one.
So yes, it is coming across that way.
Because thats what they do.
That is their job.
I'm sure they could just go POLL everyone and ask how they want it designed.
But have YOU ever heard of that done (I have, but its rare and usually about stuff that barely matters)
Unfortunately, anyone who's ever had a creative job (my job, is actually to tell people that their ideas are wrong, because I am a music producer. I correct artists for a living) knows that what sounds nice and cozy is not always whats best. Sometimes you need to put in that really abrasive lead to accentuate the rest of the song.
This topic is far more complex than just 'what is most flexible is good'.
This is art in the making.
And sometimes the beauty in art lies in its constraints and limitations (also an important concept if you've ever played dungeons and dragons, the best games of that I have ever played stayed close to the rules, the ones that deviate too much tend to be more immediately flexible and fun for a second, but the games were far less memorable and meaningful)
Let people play how they want, they paid the 13 dollars.
I'm enjoying this debate, and it hasn't degraded to petty insults yet, at least allow me a few more posts of a nice calm debated instead of this forums classic one liners of
"no"
"I hate it"
"It wouldn't fit minecraft"
etc
you can easily ignore this thread.
Quote from wintermuet »
well, the job of a lead designer is, in fact, to think for the people who will eventually play the game.
I am simply doing my best to guess how a lead designer would think. A good one.
So yes, it is coming across that way.
Because thats what they do.
That is their job.
I'm sure they could just go POLL everyone and ask how they want it designed.
But have YOU ever heard of that done (I have, but its rare and usually about stuff that barely matters)
I think notch is doing fine as a lead developer. By claiming he's doing it wrong with how it is right now you are kind of insulting him.
And permanent difficulty doesn't make the game any more or less memorable.
I'll use my little brother as an example.
I learned about minecraft from a friend, and then I showed my little brother minecraft.
He thought it was an amazing idea of a game, and wanted to buy it.
My friend let him try out actual indev with his account and he loved it to bits.
We waited 2 weeks till i could actually buy myself and my brother an account for minecraft.
Then infdev rolled around.
My little brother liked infdev as much as indev.
you should see the world he made, he still has the first world he created in infdev. And you know what?
He's build some amazing things in it.
When he needed stone he was determined enough to create what he called a derrick: a simple 5 by 5 shaft that went down, literally to the bottom of the map (at that time lava).
After a little while of building large structures he got annoyed by the mobs and just switched to peaceful for a while.
Then, when he was done with the derrick, he went right back to hard.
He loves this game, and he finds it very enjoyable
he likes fighting mobs and mining, and building amazing things.
On some of his large, more purely decorative, projects he likes to switch it to peaceful so he doesn't have to worry about mobs and so he can do things like survive long drops without needed to use a whole bunch of sand or anything.
And every time he switches it back to normal or hard and goes looking for caves and fighting mobs and going into dungeons.
A set difficulty doesn't make this game more memorable.
Doing great things, building something you're proud of and running through a mine and from a horde of creepers and skeletons at times makes this game memorable.
And the best part is, you don't have to do all these things at once, you can chose when you want to really fight mobs and you can chose when you don't want mobs to distract you to make your giant temple.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"No one shall be able to drive us from the wonderland that ZUN created for us."
-ChaosAngel092
I suppose we will have to agree to disagree (also I edited my post wile you were likely writing that, sorry)
In my opinion, challenge and replayability make a game memorable, and replayability is defined by a diversity of different gameplay experiences. I think that the more confining each gameplay experience is, but the large the potential for gameplay experiences is, means that you will make tons of files because each one must make choices that give its world uniqueness. If notch were to make this game so your initial decisions have a large impact on how you will be forced to eventually play the game to survive and experience everything, then it seems to me to naturally lead towards the tendency of allow a greater diversity of game-play overall, by making each world very unique, making new worlds have a much larger intrinsic value.
This just comes down to personal opinion in the end :smile.gif:
Imagine if you had to, at the beginning, decide all the world variables that will define how each world is created?
That would technically reduce flexibility in some regards (because you can't change things on the fly), but it makes each individual world far more unique. And each of these very unique worlds will be something that is not like someone else's world. It is your world. And it is special. Not just because you painted on a blank canvas differently each time, but the canvas itself was a unique challenge to work with in each case.
I can see your point, and I don't necessarily think it's a bad one...
I just would go the other way. Or, if I was clever, find a way to let them somehow both coexist inside of the same system (like what they tried to do in new vegas)
This slider reminds me of cheat codes.
Sure, you could just CHOOSE not to use cheats.
But personally, I would simply REFUSE to put cheats in my game. Period.
The Thief games were pretty amazing, even the console one (even if it was WAY different, still pretty cool).
I can see your point, and all I can say to that is that I suppose you are right in that regard. Their design philosophies, as you seem to be aware, are similar to my own in a few regards (and what I hope are notchs for my own sake :tongue.gif:).
I think perhaps that there should be some middle ground, as opposed to complete and easy cheat-like flexibility and control of game features, and yet some way for these to be constraining in a way that makes each game file unique and every decision adds a facet to the world (flexibility options are cool, but sometimes they removes the tiny details of what helps to make each world/save unique).
I wonder how this could be handled. Ideas?
I think Fallout: New Vegas had a good option, allowing the player to go into, essentially, a 'hardcore' mode (I would also like there to be a game mode that is similar to Hardcore in Diablo... you die, your save file gets nuked).
I am all about options, I just think that the options of this type should happen when you start a game file, and not mid-game. Or something like that. Making everyone play on the hardest setting would just alienate new players. I'm partial to the idea that more things that you do in the game, and really almost any game, should be choices that limit your options in one area, and expand the options in another area. Every choice should have both penalties AND rewards. Including little things like choosing difficulty, and world generation.
The Thief games were pretty amazing, even the console one (even if it was WAY different, still pretty cool).
I can see your point, and all I can say to that is that I suppose you are right in that regard. Their design philosophies, as you seem to be aware, are similar to my own in a few regards (and what I hope are notchs for my own sake :tongue.gif:).
I think perhaps that there should be some middle ground, as opposed to complete and easy cheat-like flexibility and control of game features, and yet some way for these to be constraining in a way that makes each game file unique and every decision adds a facet to the world (flexibility options are cool, but sometimes they removes the tiny details of what helps to make each world/save unique).
I wonder how this could be handled. Ideas?
I think Fallout: New Vegas had a good option, allowing the player to go into, essentially, a 'hardcore' mode (I would also like there to be a game mode that is similar to Hardcore in Diablo... you die, your save file gets nuked).
I think it may come down to what you consider here to be "cheating", really. To me that flexibility is integral to my experience. Control of game features is one of my favourite things. That's almost a separate minigame for me; I check them out before I ever start a game. I like to have as much say in my game experience as possible even if all I change is the colour of the HUD or some such trivial detail. If there were a control panel with 500 options it would still not daunt me in the least, because then I have more direct say in what I experience. I added so many mods to Fallout 3 that it wasn't the same game at all at the end; it was actually a lot harder and more complex, but it was mine. The game didn't have enough options for me after a certain amount of time, so I added my own.
A game is more than a static piece of work like a recording or a book. It's by default an interactive thing. The more you can be involved in that process, the more you are going to enjoy your game. This is not to say that everyone will be working those options to the best possible ends for themselves each time, but you have to let people do as much as they can themselves so that they can learn to do it. If they ask for advice then you can help them out, but telling people how to have fun is usually not as successful as letting them find their own.
That being said, I have no problems with difficulty options of any stripe being added; they make the game partly yours. But enforcement of such options I find to be highly restrictive; enforcement makes it not an option at all. I get your headspace about wanting to show off the vision or the philosophy behind the work, but honestly that's irrelevant to most gamers; at the end of the day the game has to be fun. Optional things let more people have more fun.
Also, 100th ninjedit of the day: Minecraft isn't really the kind of game to do what you're thinking of with your consequence model of gameplay. It's not a bad concept, it's awesome for stuff like Dragon Age, where there's a relatively linear progression with lots of small and large choices affecting your flow and giving you vastly different outcomes each time, but even there you only really have X amount of replays before you've found every sidequest and heard all the party banter. Minecraft is based on emergent gameplay, which gives you a huge pile of things and says "here you go, have fun with it." Its entire design is based on having the PLAYER decide what his fun is with these tools. Almost literally like a big box of LEGO with only instructions on how they interact, not what you should make with them. So a consequence/enforcement model here locks down a lot of what the game is about. There are going to be people playing at all ends of the difficulty spectrum, and many will never leave their spot. But there will be just as many people who want to change things for whatever reason; even if it's to let their little brother have fun with the game for the afternoon.
And I'm even going to ninja myself here! But I thought of a music analogy for you. Imagine a game to be a song. The song gets worked on and finished, and people like it. But to a gamer, a wide array of options give them the chance to remix the track, do their own "cover" of it, if you will. The gamer is more than an end-user, they are an artist in their own right (or mind, YMMV). And it may be good or totally horrible, but since they're only singing it in their homes, then it's okay. They still <3 the song, but on their own terms.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from will_holmes »
Quote from anon »
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that I'm the only person who plays Minecraft normally.
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that there is no such thing as playing Minecraft normally.
I would like it, so that if you want it, you can have it. Don't like it? Don't choose permanent damage. It would make hardcore players happy, to know the fact they don't always have an escape route a button click away.They have to be a man, and knock the **** out of that zombie with their bare hands, in order to survive.
Or you could be more of a man and resist the urge to change the difficulty. What's the point for this completely unnecessary feature? Let people play how they wanna play, if they want to regenerate hearts after a fight let them, it's not hurting or bothering you in any way.
I mod all my games too, but see, I mod my games AFTER experiencing them once, sometimes two or three times. It's a matter of respect to the artists who created it, in that case. I want to experience their vision before I modify it into my modification (remix :tongue.gif:) of their vision. This is also true for music.
Could you imagine if, as a musician, you simply had people taking out and adding instruments during the first time they listened to it?
Would you ever remix a song you've never fully listened to?
If people want to mod in controls that change the gameplay, thats awesome, more power to em.
But I definitely think a game should be created on standalone merit, and the the modified gameplay options are up to the enthusiasts to pursue. If someone, halfway through, changes the equalizer settings too much to what they THINK they will like on the first listen of a song, they could very well ruin the song for themselves. You are missing the point of what the creator would be trying to convey. This is true for games as art. The designer has an intention and a vision. Fun is usually one of them, but it tends to be far more deep than that. Especially since fun and enjoyment aren't hard to achieve, there is a special type of enjoyment that game makers are seeking. They are trying to, generally, challenge you, give you obstacles to overcome, and allow you to feel proud of what you have accomplished in pursuit of that fun.
Quote from inmagnanimous »
Quote from Super Shotgun Guy »
I would like it, so that if you want it, you can have it. Don't like it? Don't choose permanent damage. It would make hardcore players happy, to know the fact they don't always have an escape route a button click away.They have to be a man, and knock the **** out of that zombie with their bare hands, in order to survive.
Or you could be more of a man and resist the urge to change the difficulty. What's the point for this completely unnecessary feature? Let people play how they wanna play, if they want to regenerate hearts after a fight let them, it's not hurting or bothering you in any way.
refer to thread.
read all responses.
grasp whole concept.
its easy I promise.
Eh, who am I kidding, this is like the most unpopular idea ever, no ones ever gonna agree with me (unless they are a game designer or some other sort of design related individual, and even then, only maybe).
I hear too often 'don't tell people what to do in single player'. Those people are missing the point so dramatically. Designers HAVE TO CARE WHAT PEOPLE DO IN SINGLE PLAYER. sigh.
Honestly, OP, why the hell would you care if other people switch their difficulty slider?
He's suggesting the idea to Notch, or rather getting feedback before suggesting the idea, or whatever.
I don't think he cares what YOU do, but he cares about the game as an art piece, and naturally he wants it to be as fully fleshed out of an object as it can be, so I would assume. It's like cheat codes. You ever wonder why any designers choose NOT to put cheats in games?
I'm not sure it is so much "out of respect" for the original artists (perhaps it is) but it is more just "that's how the game is, so that's how I want to see it".
I'm actually not sure if its out of respect for the artists either. Perhaps its more along the lines of 'respect for the integrity of the art'.
I personally feel that neither of our points are simply better or worse than another. Design is, after all, an art and a guessing game. I have also made many bad design decisions in my life, both in programming (my college major) and music (my hobby and job). I just hope that notch does what I like! But maybe, just maybe, he will disappoint me, and it will be better than if he didn't. We will see :biggrin.gif:
I don't know if anyone's already said this, but I think if you change the difficulty, it should take a while for it to take its effect. If you fall in lava and you switch to peaceful, maybe the game will switch to peaceful after about two minutes. That way, you can go to build mode anytime you want, but you can't switch to peaceful temporarily to avoid dying if you're in a bad situation.
I mod all my games too, but see, I mod my games AFTER experiencing them once, sometimes two or three times. It's a matter of respect to the artists who created it, in that case. I want to experience their vision before I modify it into my modification (remix :tongue.gif:) of their vision. This is also true for music.
Could you imagine if, as a musician, you simply had people taking out and adding instruments during the first time they listened to it?
Would you ever remix a song you've never fully listened to?
If people want to mod in controls that change the gameplay, thats awesome, more power to em.
But I definitely think a game should be created on standalone merit, and the the modified gameplay options are up to the enthusiasts to pursue. If someone, halfway through, changes the equalizer settings too much to what they THINK they will like on the first listen of a song, they could very well ruin the song for themselves. You are missing the point of what the creator would be trying to convey. This is true for games as art. The designer has an intention and a vision. Fun is usually one of them, but it tends to be far more deep than that. Especially since fun and enjoyment aren't hard to achieve, there is a special type of enjoyment that game makers are seeking. They are trying to, generally, challenge you, give you obstacles to overcome, and allow you to feel proud of what you have accomplished in pursuit of that fun.
Quote from inmagnanimous »
Quote from Super Shotgun Guy »
I would like it, so that if you want it, you can have it. Don't like it? Don't choose permanent damage. It would make hardcore players happy, to know the fact they don't always have an escape route a button click away.They have to be a man, and knock the **** out of that zombie with their bare hands, in order to survive.
Or you could be more of a man and resist the urge to change the difficulty. What's the point for this completely unnecessary feature? Let people play how they wanna play, if they want to regenerate hearts after a fight let them, it's not hurting or bothering you in any way.
refer to thread.
read all responses.
grasp whole concept.
its easy I promise.
Eh, who am I kidding, this is like the most unpopular idea ever, no ones ever gonna agree with me (unless they are a game designer or some other sort of design related individual, and even then, only maybe).
I hear too often 'don't tell people what to do in single player'. Those people are missing the point so dramatically. Designers HAVE TO CARE WHAT PEOPLE DO IN SINGLE PLAYER. sigh.
You know, I actually do see where you're coming from. I totally get your "respect for the artist" headspace, and your desire to pay homage to their work and vision. It's just simply that the vast majority of gamers aren't consciously in it for such an experience on that level of profundity, though you are. I'm not knocking your POV at all, but it's not something you can make people care about. Yes, designers have to care what people do, but players don't have to care about whether they've honoured the designer's vision or not. I have seen a painted DeLorean before; a car made of stainless steel designed to not NEED any paint, and it was eye-jarringly blue. I'm sure John DeLorean would be horrified to have to actually look at it, but the guy driving it was happy, so in the end that is the most important part.
In the specific case of Minecraft, I'd say international fame, a million players, and enough monies to start his business properly when he's not even finished yet are plenty of real respect for Notch's work. Honestly I don't think he's in this for the deep reasons you're ascribing; he seems like a "WOOOO Games!" kind of gamer to me. That's the vibe I pick up when I read his comments; that he's having as much fun making this game as we are playing it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from will_holmes »
Quote from anon »
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that I'm the only person who plays Minecraft normally.
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that there is no such thing as playing Minecraft normally.
I am simply doing my best to guess how a lead designer would think. A good one.
So yes, it is coming across that way.
Because thats what they do.
That is their job.
I'm sure they could just go POLL everyone and ask how they want it designed.
But have YOU ever heard of that done (I have, but its rare and usually about stuff that barely matters)
Unfortunately, anyone who's ever had a creative job (my job, is actually to tell people that their ideas are wrong, because I am a music producer. I correct artists for a living) knows that what sounds nice and cozy is not always whats best. Sometimes you need to put in that really abrasive lead to accentuate the rest of the song.
This topic is far more complex than just 'what is most flexible is good'.
This is art in the making.
And sometimes the beauty in art lies in its constraints and limitations (also an important concept if you've ever played dungeons and dragons, the best games of that I have ever played stayed close to the rules, the ones that deviate too much tend to be more immediately flexible and fun for a second, but the games were far less memorable and meaningful)
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
Who CARES?
Let people play how they want, they paid the 13 dollars.
notch cares.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
I'm enjoying this debate, and it hasn't degraded to petty insults yet, at least allow me a few more posts of a nice calm debated instead of this forums classic one liners of
"no"
"I hate it"
"It wouldn't fit minecraft"
etc
you can easily ignore this thread.
I think notch is doing fine as a lead developer. By claiming he's doing it wrong with how it is right now you are kind of insulting him.
And permanent difficulty doesn't make the game any more or less memorable.
I'll use my little brother as an example.
I learned about minecraft from a friend, and then I showed my little brother minecraft.
He thought it was an amazing idea of a game, and wanted to buy it.
My friend let him try out actual indev with his account and he loved it to bits.
We waited 2 weeks till i could actually buy myself and my brother an account for minecraft.
Then infdev rolled around.
My little brother liked infdev as much as indev.
you should see the world he made, he still has the first world he created in infdev. And you know what?
He's build some amazing things in it.
When he needed stone he was determined enough to create what he called a derrick: a simple 5 by 5 shaft that went down, literally to the bottom of the map (at that time lava).
After a little while of building large structures he got annoyed by the mobs and just switched to peaceful for a while.
Then, when he was done with the derrick, he went right back to hard.
He loves this game, and he finds it very enjoyable
he likes fighting mobs and mining, and building amazing things.
On some of his large, more purely decorative, projects he likes to switch it to peaceful so he doesn't have to worry about mobs and so he can do things like survive long drops without needed to use a whole bunch of sand or anything.
And every time he switches it back to normal or hard and goes looking for caves and fighting mobs and going into dungeons.
A set difficulty doesn't make this game more memorable.
Doing great things, building something you're proud of and running through a mine and from a horde of creepers and skeletons at times makes this game memorable.
And the best part is, you don't have to do all these things at once, you can chose when you want to really fight mobs and you can chose when you don't want mobs to distract you to make your giant temple.
-ChaosAngel092
This is how people should be when they play minecraft.
It was awesome.
My stories only consist of:
"Trying to find more materials for a building"
"Maybe I should make a cobblestone generator"
"I'll just pick up this spring of lava an-OHGODWHY"
*lose everything*
In my opinion, challenge and replayability make a game memorable, and replayability is defined by a diversity of different gameplay experiences. I think that the more confining each gameplay experience is, but the large the potential for gameplay experiences is, means that you will make tons of files because each one must make choices that give its world uniqueness. If notch were to make this game so your initial decisions have a large impact on how you will be forced to eventually play the game to survive and experience everything, then it seems to me to naturally lead towards the tendency of allow a greater diversity of game-play overall, by making each world very unique, making new worlds have a much larger intrinsic value.
This just comes down to personal opinion in the end :smile.gif:
Imagine if you had to, at the beginning, decide all the world variables that will define how each world is created?
That would technically reduce flexibility in some regards (because you can't change things on the fly), but it makes each individual world far more unique. And each of these very unique worlds will be something that is not like someone else's world. It is your world. And it is special. Not just because you painted on a blank canvas differently each time, but the canvas itself was a unique challenge to work with in each case.
I can see your point, and I don't necessarily think it's a bad one...
I just would go the other way. Or, if I was clever, find a way to let them somehow both coexist inside of the same system (like what they tried to do in new vegas)
This slider reminds me of cheat codes.
Sure, you could just CHOOSE not to use cheats.
But personally, I would simply REFUSE to put cheats in my game. Period.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
Also this is the second giant debate I've seen/been in today and it too has not burst into flames.
I fear the end of the earth is nigh. D:
I can see your point, and all I can say to that is that I suppose you are right in that regard. Their design philosophies, as you seem to be aware, are similar to my own in a few regards (and what I hope are notchs for my own sake :tongue.gif:).
I think perhaps that there should be some middle ground, as opposed to complete and easy cheat-like flexibility and control of game features, and yet some way for these to be constraining in a way that makes each game file unique and every decision adds a facet to the world (flexibility options are cool, but sometimes they removes the tiny details of what helps to make each world/save unique).
I wonder how this could be handled. Ideas?
I think Fallout: New Vegas had a good option, allowing the player to go into, essentially, a 'hardcore' mode (I would also like there to be a game mode that is similar to Hardcore in Diablo... you die, your save file gets nuked).
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
I think it may come down to what you consider here to be "cheating", really. To me that flexibility is integral to my experience. Control of game features is one of my favourite things. That's almost a separate minigame for me; I check them out before I ever start a game. I like to have as much say in my game experience as possible even if all I change is the colour of the HUD or some such trivial detail. If there were a control panel with 500 options it would still not daunt me in the least, because then I have more direct say in what I experience. I added so many mods to Fallout 3 that it wasn't the same game at all at the end; it was actually a lot harder and more complex, but it was mine. The game didn't have enough options for me after a certain amount of time, so I added my own.
A game is more than a static piece of work like a recording or a book. It's by default an interactive thing. The more you can be involved in that process, the more you are going to enjoy your game. This is not to say that everyone will be working those options to the best possible ends for themselves each time, but you have to let people do as much as they can themselves so that they can learn to do it. If they ask for advice then you can help them out, but telling people how to have fun is usually not as successful as letting them find their own.
That being said, I have no problems with difficulty options of any stripe being added; they make the game partly yours. But enforcement of such options I find to be highly restrictive; enforcement makes it not an option at all. I get your headspace about wanting to show off the vision or the philosophy behind the work, but honestly that's irrelevant to most gamers; at the end of the day the game has to be fun. Optional things let more people have more fun.
Also, 100th ninjedit of the day: Minecraft isn't really the kind of game to do what you're thinking of with your consequence model of gameplay. It's not a bad concept, it's awesome for stuff like Dragon Age, where there's a relatively linear progression with lots of small and large choices affecting your flow and giving you vastly different outcomes each time, but even there you only really have X amount of replays before you've found every sidequest and heard all the party banter. Minecraft is based on emergent gameplay, which gives you a huge pile of things and says "here you go, have fun with it." Its entire design is based on having the PLAYER decide what his fun is with these tools. Almost literally like a big box of LEGO with only instructions on how they interact, not what you should make with them. So a consequence/enforcement model here locks down a lot of what the game is about. There are going to be people playing at all ends of the difficulty spectrum, and many will never leave their spot. But there will be just as many people who want to change things for whatever reason; even if it's to let their little brother have fun with the game for the afternoon.
And I'm even going to ninja myself here! But I thought of a music analogy for you. Imagine a game to be a song. The song gets worked on and finished, and people like it. But to a gamer, a wide array of options give them the chance to remix the track, do their own "cover" of it, if you will. The gamer is more than an end-user, they are an artist in their own right (or mind, YMMV). And it may be good or totally horrible, but since they're only singing it in their homes, then it's okay. They still <3 the song, but on their own terms.
MineScience - viewtopic.php?f=25&t=166560
Dragonator - viewtopic.php?f=25&t=141803
Sand Skiffs - viewtopic.php?f=25&t=233346
Or you could be more of a man and resist the urge to change the difficulty. What's the point for this completely unnecessary feature? Let people play how they wanna play, if they want to regenerate hearts after a fight let them, it's not hurting or bothering you in any way.
Could you imagine if, as a musician, you simply had people taking out and adding instruments during the first time they listened to it?
Would you ever remix a song you've never fully listened to?
If people want to mod in controls that change the gameplay, thats awesome, more power to em.
But I definitely think a game should be created on standalone merit, and the the modified gameplay options are up to the enthusiasts to pursue. If someone, halfway through, changes the equalizer settings too much to what they THINK they will like on the first listen of a song, they could very well ruin the song for themselves. You are missing the point of what the creator would be trying to convey. This is true for games as art. The designer has an intention and a vision. Fun is usually one of them, but it tends to be far more deep than that. Especially since fun and enjoyment aren't hard to achieve, there is a special type of enjoyment that game makers are seeking. They are trying to, generally, challenge you, give you obstacles to overcome, and allow you to feel proud of what you have accomplished in pursuit of that fun.
refer to thread.
read all responses.
grasp whole concept.
its easy I promise.
Eh, who am I kidding, this is like the most unpopular idea ever, no ones ever gonna agree with me (unless they are a game designer or some other sort of design related individual, and even then, only maybe).
I hear too often 'don't tell people what to do in single player'. Those people are missing the point so dramatically. Designers HAVE TO CARE WHAT PEOPLE DO IN SINGLE PLAYER. sigh.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
He's suggesting the idea to Notch, or rather getting feedback before suggesting the idea, or whatever.
I don't think he cares what YOU do, but he cares about the game as an art piece, and naturally he wants it to be as fully fleshed out of an object as it can be, so I would assume. It's like cheat codes. You ever wonder why any designers choose NOT to put cheats in games?
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
I'm actually not sure if its out of respect for the artists either. Perhaps its more along the lines of 'respect for the integrity of the art'.
I personally feel that neither of our points are simply better or worse than another. Design is, after all, an art and a guessing game. I have also made many bad design decisions in my life, both in programming (my college major) and music (my hobby and job). I just hope that notch does what I like! But maybe, just maybe, he will disappoint me, and it will be better than if he didn't. We will see :biggrin.gif:
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
You know, I actually do see where you're coming from. I totally get your "respect for the artist" headspace, and your desire to pay homage to their work and vision. It's just simply that the vast majority of gamers aren't consciously in it for such an experience on that level of profundity, though you are. I'm not knocking your POV at all, but it's not something you can make people care about. Yes, designers have to care what people do, but players don't have to care about whether they've honoured the designer's vision or not. I have seen a painted DeLorean before; a car made of stainless steel designed to not NEED any paint, and it was eye-jarringly blue. I'm sure John DeLorean would be horrified to have to actually look at it, but the guy driving it was happy, so in the end that is the most important part.
In the specific case of Minecraft, I'd say international fame, a million players, and enough monies to start his business properly when he's not even finished yet are plenty of real respect for Notch's work. Honestly I don't think he's in this for the deep reasons you're ascribing; he seems like a "WOOOO Games!" kind of gamer to me. That's the vibe I pick up when I read his comments; that he's having as much fun making this game as we are playing it.
But I'm the kind of person who would violently refuse to ever put a cheat code in a game I designed :tongue.gif:
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)