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[Reelya]

Not that there can't be games that focus on fun over being engaging. They don't really advance the medium, but people like arcade games for a reason.

engagement includes fun. It's just a neutral term for it that doesn't have the same emotional connotations.

What we mean when we say "games are fun" is that they are engaging.

[Hanslanda]

I find Alien Isolation fun even though I'm too terrified to play it.

[Egan_BW]

What's so scary about Allen anyways?

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

This may be relevant. It discusses games and moving beyond "fun".

There were never meant to be winners or losers, stockpilers or paupers. There was only supposed to be the experience, weak or strong in individual cases, yet always uncompromising precisely because it is reached through the player’s actions. There are whole swathes of material that perhaps only three players in the entire world have seen. Some characters died a slow death at the end of the game, weak and betrayed. A few never find answers.

No, it certainly wasn’t much fun. However, I feel that this should not be the insult that we have allowed it to become.

Fun is a tyranny. If we believe that this new artform of ours can achieve its potential, that we can instil meaning and myriad interpretation by allowing our audience to actually alter the physical reality of the art itself, then I believe that ‘fun’ is only one, now-rather-tired genre of experience that we should be aiming for. We need to believe in the power of mechanics and of medium, and use ours in a way that is unique, directly tangible in whatever it is that we are trying to say about being us.

It is through the industry’s conservatism within these devices that so many of the games we make feel unsatisfying or rote. Our reliance on the gilt relics of game design, every possible scalpel, brush and knife rolled up in that word ‘fun’, means that we are making the same games, over and over. Our skill with these repetitive, strategic and qualitative mechanics means that the metaphors and messages which games transmit are of a similarly limited inventory. We produce and play so many games that are about power, loneliness, totalitarianism, banality, isolation and the Kafkaesque, and little else. Of course, The Black Crown Project, set up on its whistling-wind hill and involving the player in a nightmarish administration, is about all of these things. I don’t claim to be anything less than a coward when it comes to finding and using new tools myself. But God forbid that all games be like The Black Crown Project. God forbid any more of my games are like it.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

You say that more is not always better. I agree. More difficulty is not always better.

[Blastbeard]

Re: Suggestions About What the Game Needs to Not Have

- Microtransactions
- In-game Purchases
- Excessive DLC
- Voice chat
- Opinions
- Fun

Bay 12 Games Forum >  Dwarf Fortress >  DF General Discussion >  Post reply ( Re: Suggestions About What the Game Needs to Not Have )

Wait, this isn't Other Games...

[overseer05-15]

There are opinions that the word "fun" holds back some of the understanding of the scope of the medium and can be used against the medium. For example, there was an educational game (an interactive fiction type) about being an African-American slave girl in the pre-civil-war South. It was blasted for "making oppression fun". In fact, the "game" was like a visual novel, and not really any different to say, watching a movie or reading a textbook about the history of slavery. It was merely an interactive way of presenting it. The critics complain about "winning points" in the game. They've clearly never played it and have an idea of "games" being "fun" and being about "scoring points" that's about 30 years out of date. The term "fun" doesn't help much to dispel those misconceptions about how and why interactive formats are used.

Concept: Escaping the American South as aforementioned slave girl in a vaguely Metal Gear-esque stealth game.

[Bumber]

What's so scary about Allen anyways?

Wikipedia says it was probably the site of Texas's first train robbery. It also says it was the home of the Caddo and Comanche.

Maybe the train passes through an Indian burial ground? Oooooooh~ Spooky!

[overseer05-15]

What's so scary about Allen anyways?

Wikipedia says it was probably the site of Texas's first train robbery. It also says it was the home of the Caddo and Comanche.

Maybe the train passes through an Indian burial ground? Oooooooh~ Spooky!

So many bad things happen in america its like it was built on hundreds of indian burial grounds

[Hanslanda]

What's so scary about Allen anyways?

Wikipedia says it was probably the site of Texas's first train robbery. It also says it was the home of the Caddo and Comanche.

Maybe the train passes through an Indian burial ground? Oooooooh~ Spooky!

So many bad things happen in america its like it was built on hundreds of indian burial grounds

Also weird how the Bible Belt gets hit with all the hurricanes and tornadoes. Almost like God actually hates hypocritical pieces of shit.

[overseer05-15]

What's so scary about Allen anyways?

Wikipedia says it was probably the site of Texas's first train robbery. It also says it was the home of the Caddo and Comanche.

Maybe the train passes through an Indian burial ground? Oooooooh~ Spooky!

So many bad things happen in america its like it was built on hundreds of indian burial grounds

Also weird how the Bible Belt gets hit with all the hurricanes and tornadoes. Almost like God actually hates hypocritical pieces of shit.

That's rich coming from the Nazi panda who's really a decent fellow.

[Reelya]

Also weird how the Bible Belt gets hit with all the hurricanes and tornadoes. Almost like God actually hates hypocritical pieces of shit.

It's not weird. There is in fact a causal link, but going the other way:

https://globalnews.ca/news/4264762/natural-disasters-religious-faith/

New research from the University of British Columbia suggests that deadly natural disasters can help boost people’s faith.

The study, authored by Oscar Zapata, a post-doctoral researcher in UBC’s school of community and regional planning, found a link between disasters with high rates of death or injury and church attendance by people who already believe in God.

[Il Palazzo]

This thread is not what we were hoping for. Sure, we quickly realised it was conceived in a drive-by insemination by some local regular shoddily disguised as a dark, handsome, insane stranger. But still we wanted to believe he'd stay around, and titillate us some more with his terrible ways. That he'd tell us all those unspeakable things we never knew we needed to hear. Of course, that never happened. Now all the magic is gone, and what's left is a rapidly growing belly of a very mundane derail. The prince is not coming back, and it's too late to abort.

[dragdeler]

I never believed he'd be coming back, though I do think he's genuine. Fella just nutted off and went on.

[Reelya]

The only decent thing to do is keep this thread alive as long as possible, in loving memory of the gracious visit from one of the true gods of game design theory. May he golf forever in heaven now that he's lost to us.