Take this, Raph

This is a direct answer to Raph. I was going to just post it in the comments of his page, then it grew slightly beyond the original intention and I got scruples about posting it there. I guess he is probably going to find it even here. It has an heated tone not because I’m against Raph, but because this is a theme I feel strongly.

Why not make this game?

BECAUSE IT SUCKS!

This is the extreme exaltation of the meta-game I hate. It’s the total abstraction of the formal system from its context. Think of game mechanics and slap them in whaterver context.

It’s like the monetization of game design. Reducing it to a point where it’s so devoid of any quality and inspiration that you can recombine it the way you like. Like the T-1000. A game designer delirium of omnipotence.

The “healing game” could be a very interesting concept. But NOT. Repeat, NOT on a game that is based on a fantasy world.

When I’m in a fantasy world I think of Tolkien and I think to all those myths that have been part of my early years (I read LOTR at 12). I DON’T THINK of a trauma center. I think of adventurers in armors, spellcasters, dragons, menacing castles, orcs, goblins. Histories about foreign and harsh lands. Magnificent sights. The struggle to survive away from your home. The nostalgy. The need to preserve your world from an invasion, the fight against the corruption. Men of valor and charisma. And this is what I want to PLAY. What I would like the game to reenact and evocate. Drag me in. This is what I want the game to make me FEEL. And the current game mechanics, that silly mata-game of colored bars and buttons, doesn’t make me feel that way AT ALL.

It’s exactly that meta-game level to be totally innappropriate, ineffective and that I was criticizing.

I’m sure there is a space of possibilities for a good “healing” game that could even appeal a decent number of players. Something like “Behind the enemy lines”, or even the simulation of the emergency rooms. There are Tv series extremely successful as “ER” (I hate these, but that’s another matter). I would start from THERE to design a good “healing” game. I would start to study what makes these successful series “tick” to discover what are those narrative structures that are strong and could be translated in a game. What draws the interest, what could be fun to simulate. And I’m pretty sure that more than the “healing” theme what is strong is the relationships between the characters, the human level, what goes on beyond the facade of the role (the “doctors”) and the suspense of the sudden emergencies. The need to make CRUCIAL choices quickly, the need to cope with your limits. A fight against time. And the HOPE.

THESE are the parts that may be strong and may have a valuable impact. This is what engages the public on an emotional level. THESE are the myths and ideals. Not another fucking games of colored bars and buttons to press, for god’s sake.

Again we LIVE myths. We live in a symbolic space. We are MADE OF SYMBOLS. But not symbols as math as formal systems. Symbols as cultura myths, ideas, influences. In the exact same way you close your eyes and start to dream by images that you cannot understand on a rational level. It’s all about the emotional level. We watch, love and read from “Aliens” to “Nightmare” to “Lord of the Rings” because of the emotional level. Because of what they evocate. Because they go to “touch” particular feelings you cannot control.

NOT because they are formal systems.

People want to feel the THRILL, the suspense. Be frightened, be comforted. Feel betrayed, defeated and then revolt to it till a liberation. Cry and scream. Be there. What’s “art” if not the revelation and communication of all this?

You called for it:
SWG sucked exactly because it betrayed its myth. Because it was incapable to evocate what the players expected. Because it was a formal system and a meta-game inappropriate, alien to the “call” that you should have answered being the lead designer. Because it was a patchwork of influences coming from UO slapped on a SW theme. And it sucked.

And it sucked in the exact same way it would suck to design an healing game with the same mechanics of the current mmorpg combat.

You can take a fucking pinball and theme it after LOTR, or Star Wars, or an hospital, or a church or a driving game. But that’s not how you communicate effectively the myths attached to each. A pinball doesn’t communicate anything if not the fact that it is a pinball.

And a game of colored bars and buttons doesn’t communicate ANYTHING but itself. Deaf and mute. As I said: autoreferential.

When you moved to do SWG you brought with you your experience with UO, but you weren’t able to adapt that experience to find a different, new approach to a different genre and “shared myth”.

Take Stanley Kubrick. He was a genius. He was able to make the best sci-fi movie, the best horror movie, the best war movie. Were these looking or feeling the same? Not at all. This genius had the sensibility to approach each genre in an UNIQUE way. Take George Lucas, he is able to do just one movie and nothing else and he keeps redoing it over and over.

I’m not saying that you are like George Lucas and able to do just one thing. But this is what you made everyone think with SWG. You fell on your ass there not because the game wasn’t fun enough and those ideas wrong. But because the approach was inappropriate.

And if you say what you say you make me believe you learnt nothing from it.

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