BLITZEN'S PROFILE

There is a patch for that (by Cherry?), if I am not mistaken. I wouldn't know off hand where to find it. Anyone?

author=slashphoenix

author=Blitzen
In my opinion, everything was preachy and practically useless.

I'm curious, care to elaborate?

I felt that there was no real practical advice in the "So you wanna be a game designer" video. It was as though it gave you all the ingredients for a recipe but no instructions. It's kind of a hollow list of traits, "know ur maths past advanced algebra, also be good at talking to people," without any sense of how to apply them.

Not every game is an "experience" in the sense that the guy in the video was talking about. Some games have more in common with "tic-tac-toe" than they do with Ayn Rand underwater. It is clear form the video that has conception of "the game" skews towards the latter, especially in the video about diversity in video games where he sort of mockingly references Frontierville.

But this may just be my interpretation. I'm someone who has a certain perspective and interest in aspects of game design(academic but also practical), but for everything I do know about game design in theory and practice, I felt it really taught me nothing, not because I had already heard what he had to say (although its the same sort of one-liners that are thrown around) but because there was flawed logic behind his presentation of them. Not all "great games" are Bioshock, not all great game designers know anything about math, myth, or fundamental psych for that matter.

The OoT deconstruction was more practically useful. In terms of revealing design principles and emparting skills, it's analysis of OoT dungeon design was concise and direct, and shows you how episodic progression is tied to environmental design in a particular way to enhance playability, exercise problem solving, and keep the game from breaking itself. Very insightful.

Remember Socrates who talked to the leading men in his society and realized they knew nothing, and then talked to craftsmen and realized they had more "knowledge" than the others? Reminds me of this. We can learn more from post-mortems and desconstructions of real-world examples than we can from airy talk about what we "should" do.

Got a submission reply back today.

Thank you for submitting your writing to our magazine. The story caught our attention but after consideration we've decided it's not a piece we can use.

Please consider our magazine again. We wish you luck placing your story elsewhere.

What do you guys think? Is this encouraging or discouraging?

das rite comrade

Hmm... I don't like them so much now that I'm really looking at them... I'm going to do some others soon.