SNODGRASS'S PROFILE

No I haven't studied Japanese at all. I just happen to find actual words for the terms associated to them.

For example, just as lasting legacy can be different from upping legacy but seem like they are similar: the concept of masks and tatemae also seem the same...except they are not.

So a person can only rely on what his ignorance fills him with until...he finds a word that represents that concept and then later on, for simplicity or succinctness' sake, you use that word so as to reduce the length of your posts but deliver the same meaning and direction for a person to understand you. (It's also a great way to filter out who are the ones exhibitng troll level personalities especially the hidden ones.)

As far as whether creators can or cannot predict a legacy level concept before the product is finished, I believe they can. It's just harder to justify until you see proof but you always have that guess.

James Cameron if I'm not mistaken was rumored to use Avatar as a prototype for Battle Angel Alita through it's implementation of 3d technology. You might say...well Cameron is rich, wealthy and influential but really it wasn't the technology alone but the "concept" that drove him. At least from the vague rumors I've read. We might never know and that's the sad part.

Everyone also knew that Arrington of Techcrunch had the idea of Ipads before Apple and even Apple were criticized for pursuing that because people didn't see the viability of the product. The problem wasn't technology, the problem was people not having guys who are great at upping the legacies of their design which then leads to more legacy upping design which then leads to actual legacies which sometimes changes into flawed marketed legacies that sell a more fairy tale level type of story as to how an idea came about.

In game design, legacy is just an extension of these surprise results. Even for general legacy, they are often made up of smaller results that lead to bigger results. They're just rarely told and if they are told, it's often interspersed in books that revolve around the main idea. It's why it's important to raise the question at all. Many of the important legacies (that can be generally implemented to improve the entire genre as opposed to just a game) come in small packages but often times it's only the coder side through copying scripts that gets the focus. For many people, especially newer people, they don't get that game design side of things until their skills get them access to the apprenticeships of the greats and that's very rare and even fewer share that as it becomes closer and closer treated and perceived as trade secrets.

Even when fan-made interviews are made for mod makers, they rarely are asked this question nor are tasked to collect and share this little bits for future generations and thus the concept of game design stagnates and the impression becomes blamed more on accidents over and over until a mainstream game finally blows up and popularizes a concept and then the mainstream quality of those concepts deter game designers due to the complexity of the total package while people miss the simplicity that can still be implemented into the basic core of a game. This then leads to another era of darkness until some small game maker popularizes themes like room escape games and then everyone follows suit again but the potential to speed this up or share this tidbit earlier is lost and everyone just copies but few remember.

This is made even worse when the concept that becomes popular is only a sliver of the idea. Slivers are very hard to teach. Easy to mimic for the skilled but total quality is lost. Take the themes of vampire stories. It's easier to copy Twilight's style rather than copy the elements that made Twilight great and vice versa, you can make something great but if it's seen as too much of a copy (because there's so little hint of what parts inititated the paradigm shift), it doesn't "click" at all especially when you're transferring it into a different engine or medium.

This is why it's a thread about game designers talking about their own games. When you talk about other games, you're tasking the game designer to fit into your expected box while wanting an answer that doesn't. It also promotes criticism which then leads to fear of future posters sharing their little revelations. For example, if we talk Mario and Tomb Raider, this thread then becomes about them rather than what they give. Worse, it jumps places to places. No pun intended. You look at Mario as a whole or Tomb Raider as an "example" when from game designs, these aren't game design example at all. You have to talk about jumping, boob physics, iconic feminist design, etc. But who's to say you pointing out Mario isn't relevant at all? Some games like Portal have legacies as games not as sets of features that have special effect in increasing legacies.

That's why in the end, and in the beginning of my post, I already set forth the guidelines. Talk only about your own game designs. Talk about upping legacy rather than lasting legacy to avoid such dilemmas as asking these questions:

"Can we, or should we, as amateur game designers try to create a legacy? Unless we're determined to think about our own mortality I'm not sure if it's possible."

These are all in the OP if people just really care for the topic. Even the basic skeleton is provided.

Think through your game design in terms of reviewability, memetic possiblity, as good old games, as entries/potential entries for databases and recall events where your fans finally felt ok to reveal spoiler-type events to the fellow fans.

The more you avoid the OP, the more you avoid the wall of texts, the more it just creates dilemmas. Just to clarify, I'm not saying the OP is clearly written but I've already tried to anticipate the parts that will lead to more confusion. Talking more about the possibility rather than just following the instructions and avoiding looking at your actual game designs won't lead the topic closer to the goal of answers that may lead to further game design improvements.

Again, this goes hand in hand. You don't really think many game designers actually work on games thinking, "yes this is what I want to leave behind upon my death".

Sometimes they just do things out of fun and in hindsight, marvel at the planned and unplanned reactions to their games.

Most importantly, if you create this distinction, you'll miss out on the best parts which is accidental designs that turned out to be great or create unforeseen waves and then this leads to the game designer having a different insight from their earlier insight.

There's nothing bizarre about getting to the point and you can't get to the point any earlier than the topic title or the first sentence in a reply.

papasan96, a couple of fallacies:

If personal attacks cannot be done against a person whom nobody knows then it would be impossible to drive a new member away due to a mean community.

Being an English Language teacher doesn't make anyone a linguistic expert at English. There's a reason many poke fun at how convoluted English is. Then there's the upper layer of English English laughing at American English.

I never claimed my communication to not be horrible. You can tell though when a person is communicating (hint: they will actually discuss the topic rather than the person) or when they simply resort to "a more polite version of attacking the messenger rather than the message". Emphasis in polite as I'm not claiming you are attacking me.

Indeed the onus is the communicator, not the listener. When a person makes a thread, he is the communicator. When a person goes on a thread, he is the communicator. The listener never says anything because he is busy listening.

This is most apparent for game design legacies. When a designer is making a design intention, he is the communicator. Once his baby is out in the public, he no longer holds that prestige. The onus is how many people who played his game reach his ears and how many of his answers reach the other person. It's why it's so important to get these answers from the actual game designers of their own games or at the very least, some hint as to why certain design choices were made.

The more you go away from that, the more the answers get filtered through hearsay, PR and fan speculation. The more it gets to that point, the more exclusive and worthless the answers become for game designers. For example alot more people would be interested in the game design and game degradation of Deus Ex than Daikatana. Unfortunately Daikatana being the more controversial game, books and articles were written on that compared to the first level open ended design of Deus Ex's first stage even though that's more important to spread around. It's even worse for RPG maker games. Even if a maker says something, there's no archive or single key word or single thread to collect all these. The communication then dies and is left at the mercy of the herd of fans. Except for the fact that the more original, creative and fresh a game is the less mainstream it is and the less mainstream it is, the more it suffers from rabid fans and the more rabid it is, the more post-hindsight herd awesomeness becomes the legacy of such games rather than the more modest origins of some of the best legacy upping game design decisions especially those that receive unexpected praise.

Finally the last fallacy is this idea that anyone can or wants to defend a wall of text especially the writers of such a wall of text. The idea of wall of texts are that they should stand on their own that's why they are wall of texts. It wouldn't even reach a wall of text if it doesn't have sub-points to lengthen it to wall of text length.

I do agree that it's a shame but then it's also a shame that the more popular threads on most forums are often the most shallowest. It doesn't take away the necessity of such threads. Even if 1 or 2 lurkers appreciate or understand it, the point of any thread is discussion not simplicity. Discussion implies parties will ask questions on details they can't understand. It's like a teacher discussing a certain meaning of a word to a child who can't read or comprehend a word. He needs to ask specific questions related to that subject and he needs that child to want to question and answer the topic. If he didn't, he would be a poor teacher and the child would end up clamming up on a question the next time. Equally, if it's the child who doesn't want to learn and just runs around learning the word and instead pokes fun at the teacher's manner of speaking, the teacher simply can't teach the word to a child with the exception of threats from failing a class, spankings, calling his/her parents, etc.

What's worse of it all is that teachers (especially for English languages) are often teaching/sharing a universally taught and technical syntax that has a clear right and wrong including standardizations. Even in the mainstream, few people rarely see director commentaries (probably even actual directors) and even in places that archive rare stuff like say torrents who make it easy to be curious about classic movies you haven't heard of - the number of movie copies that include director commentaries are few to none and these director commentaries are often tailored at the shallowest and most obvious of points so did you really expect that the road to a thread that demands more mundane details to be full of people being able to answer or contribute to the thread much less claim to comprehend or be interested in it?

author=Marrend
Since we're only supposed to respond to the thread title, not the first post (that's a weird concept), I assume that you mean leaving a legacy of really cool games that people will point to say, "This is how it's done."

Sure, I've got some games under my belt, but none of them are shown as examples of what to do. I may have a few examples of what not to do, though! Which kinda counts?

I don't get how you will get that kind of impression. The thread title IS the first post. The first post is the thread title.

Oh and I don't mean to go all zen but nothing counts and everything counts.

This isn't a topic where there is a right or wrong. This is a topic where there is simply answers.

author=eplipswich
I must tell you, snodgrass, you seriously must learn how to get to the point sometimes...not random blattering of your own thoughts...Basically, I cannot see the conclusion of what point you are trying to make in the first place...

Maybe you should seriously speak to people outside more often...If you don't believe me that a lot of people here don't understand you, try talking like this in real life and see if people actually understand you...It's like you're from a different world altogether...
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In any case, like others mention, make a game really, really good, original, creative and unique from others. That's how to make a game stand out. Marketing does play some role as well but the former is the most important.

P.S. No offence, but I would like to see you make a game with a story of a language of words. I'll be interested in such a game, really.

Have you actually talked to people outside?

Albeit yes, I live a life of pseudo-hikikomori (though I'm not Japanese) and up until recently where I broke that streak of being indoors - I was a full on hikikomori. It doesn't change basic human attitude though whether I'm inside or outside. Politicans still campaign. Athiests still worry about religion brainwashing. People are still failing to convince many people to go vegan. Hilariously even the WWE managed to make a heel out of a vegan.

Unless you're a public speaker (who deals with non-controversial topics), 99% of the people don't understand each other once they actually talk.

That's why religion is a sensitive topic. That's why politics is a sensitive topic. You can even credit this as the key issue for why philosophy is dead as a college course. People don't want to talk about anything related to philosophy. You can go all psychological and people would accept that more than philosophy because it has weaker ties to their emotional bias.

Even for philosophical games, you can much faster "create" it and have fans improve upon it and drool upon it more than you can initiate a successful topic unless such topic is the vainest of philosophical magnitude (like if Aeris was a prostitute or not and even that is considered wtf by most people).

This very human irrationality mixed with the desire to make everything impersonal while reacting emotionally is why such stock statements like making a game really really really good, original, creative or unique to others don't sum up anything at all and don't answer the thread. I wasn't just insulting the stock obvious, I also didn't want to "randomly blabber" on with this additional layer that's why I used such things as Twilight.

A perfect product who's legacy is so ingrained that even for fans of the product, it no longer feels like an insult to hear insults about that movie/book because it has moved and lived past irrationality. It is a mainstream concept that can go both ways no different from the stuff like Madonna, Lady Gaga, Disney girls, etc. It is both mainstream polarizing and mainstream politically correct to have any emotion towards it.

Now if you want to go and head further to that branch, you can but that branch is only partially relevant to bringing up the actual point of the thread which is a topic about game design.

If this is still not obvious to you, let me give you a couple of clearer but certainly off-topic points.

Your premise is that I'm randomly blabbering and doesn't get to my point.

If this were a game you would say the direction of the game goes nowhere and therefore it is of lower quality.

If this were stock advises, you could simply say the game design needs more KISS.

But if you remove the emotional biases and take the tinted glasses off, factually you are the one who randomly blabbers.

Your point was you cannot see the conclusion. That should have been a period.

To extend that without randomly blabbering you have to then show your desire for whether you lean towards wanting to understand something or you were simply not interested and just wanted to give your comment.

Even after that, there's no guarantee that you can't randomly blabber. Take the guy who came before you who said he won't reply until I spoke English but felt like he still needed to ask what the topic was all about. Take the guy who came before you who said they only addressed the topic title and even included that statement in the first sentence but still felt like they had to write the exact same sentence as a reply, later down the thread.

...but you didn't do that did you? Instead when faced with confusion, you emotionally blabbered on about an irrelevant idea like talking to more people outside. You then followed this by trying to answer the question with stock answers even though you already admitted that you didn't get any conclusion.

If this were a more straight forward test, you'd basically be the guy who doesn't know 1+1 but felt like writing down 3 anyway.

If this were a game it would even be more complex. It would be the equivalent of a great (but mind you not mainstreamly praised) game being creative, maybe original but because maybe it's created on a dated engine like Rpg Maker games, your reply would be the equivalent of saying you did not understand why someone would make SNES era graphics type of game in this day and age and then further blabbering on that the game maker must not have played with people outside.

Anyways, in case you go on an emotional rant and further make some irrational comeback thinking I merely said this to insult you (or maybe to confuse you/whichever), just take a step back and realize that this reply is notable to the thread. It's not just me broking down your reply for personal sake, I'm highlighting why this thread is made. People are irrational. Many times they don't realize it. Many times they don't realize the irrational gap they take for conclusions. You don't realize how inanely off-topic and off-base your idea of talking to people outside is but you react that way simply because it matches your initial emotion and you have to fill that gap with rationality. Well guess what? In game design, there's not always room for that especially with game engines that can't compete with the capacity of better coders and more expensive staff. That's why legacy is so important.

Even something as mundane as the Marvel Brothel creator stating he actually visited an actual brothel owner is a major example of upping one's legacy and yet if you drill this down to stock advises, you get the less helpful advise of "do your research" (and even the comment came from such a thread titled that way)

...and yet whether the game creator consciously recognized this, the two answers are inherently different. Do your research as an advise, trains people to just do their research.

Visiting a brothel to make a game based on a brothel, while holding the same overall point, creates a different legacy and a different implication as to how to up that legacy. Unintentionally or intentionally, the game creator by stating such an advise channeled something closer to the advise most directors give to newbies which is to find a bottleneck. That is a set that is still expensive but cheaper to produce scenes on. Example, a haunted house where you can make the entire film on one place and still create layers of depth as shown by the original Saw movie (obviously not the sequels).

As you can see this was always problematic because games have cheaper ways to..."expand areas". A mountain tile and a plains tile could make one entire epic movie where as that's not possible in a live action film without adding huge costs.

By stating a more specific advise, the creator creates a revolutionary reverse-bottlenecking advise. That is instead of visiting areas just to do one's research, one can visit an area to do a research but more tailored to that area.

Example, room escape games are based on the concept that everything takes place in one house and it has promoted many unique ideas. Except for the fact that many of those ideas are still unexplored by many more general rpg games and thus many games are limited to cheap game designs such as Inns not being Inns or only Bars having lots of npcs. I'm not saying you should merge that but if you observe the design of these other games, how come they can create more depth in an isolation setting compared to more general rpgs who have the conveniences of npcs. That's just one example and it's still an example that's flawed. You can still create a stock advise out of that but the specific answers are always more unintentionally revolutionary and sometimes actually revolve around requiring contemplation and with more contemplation, such obvious reactionary excuses as talking to more people outside would not even get past the submit button at all or at the very least be edited out in all forms.

Edit: Unfortunately I don't know enough about rpg maker to make a game yet. I'm not even sure this is the preferred engine. The other unfortunate thing is I saw one of the best games based on language in excrutio eternum and I'm not sure I can make a game based on language that tops that design. It's a Neverwinter Night mod where one sub-plot was you had to collect the words of a mute poet and then fill it with the words of her poetry. Design-wise, it's just a more uniquely done twist on fetch quests (the words were actual items) and I'm not that big of a fan of the conclusion but again, design-wise, it's just hard to top especially in terms of making such an idea stand out. It's truly one of those ideas that wouldn't work as well if the engine wasn't 3d or the engine was too 3d...or at least the emotion of impressiveness would be vastly dampered.

Uhh...trend after your death? Um...really?

I get how you can say that about vampires because I spoke that more in passing seeing as this is still about game design but it was obvious the vampire genre was being overplayed before Twilight arrived thanks to the popularity of Buffy and Angel.

That ushered in some vampire theme teen movies that broke the mythos of the vampires further. Most notably True Blood and Moonlight. The later Blade sequels probably belong here too. Anyone who has followed that "trend" knew that even if you were a fan of those themes, the genre was being saturated and even traditionally good designs were not gaining traction. Moonlight fans for example were notable for loving the fact that Moonlight stood on it's own and brought some fresher originality to the theme but with the way the vampire as common guys themes were playing out all over the place, it just didn't have traction to stay on TV for long.

Twilight then came and suddenly a bunch of new stupid concepts of the supernatural came and ushered in more copycats. If you want to talk about the overall history of fictional vampires though, yeah of course Anne Rice and Dracula were very notable but I was speaking within a vacuum of space and because this is not about vampire but just an analogy to give people an idea of the different subtle depths and types of legacies, I gave a lighter sweep of the details partly because I'm not much of a vampire fan to begin with and again the point of mentioning those is to show how certain legacies regardless of quality can be raise or lowered with certain ideas many of whom don't just fall under "make a better product". It just wouldn't make sense to force players to have been part of the Anne Rice craze or any specific vampire craze just to get that idea. Twilight at least is more universally known especially in the mainstream. Even someone like me who has never read or watched it know some parts of it's tale thanks to the wide spread hate that ushered in satirical pieces that are more tolerable to consume.

Your argument is valid but the problem is you're looking too much at something that doesn't need it. It's like if my reply to you was to say Buffy was never trendy that's why it never clicked as a movie and that quality not design made the later TV series work. IT DOESN'T MATTER! The context of any thread on a subforum called Game Design & Theory is always Game Design & Theory. That's the goal every thread here should have. It doesn't matter what the side examples specifically are, the important part is whether they link to the ultimate topic which is game design and also whether they are multiple topics or just expanded layers of one topic which is the topic title/question.

It's not about what those specific semantics are all about if you truly are about the topic of game design. They are legit issues in context only if this were a vampire forum and the point of the topic was to determine what is trendy vs. what is legacy but like I said, it's impossible to be confused about the two in terms of game design because every game has a legacy. It also doesn't make sense to up the trends nor to suggest ideas of upping trends. You just look at the trending games and extrapolate for yourself if that's anyone's goals. It doesn't need designer input.

Even more mind boggling, the concept of trends would compound the very problem of what I was trying to avoid which was to avoid obvious stock statements. Again it's like the context of trying to rephrase this from upping the legacy of game design into what game designers would want their lasting legacy of. If I truly meant that, I'm basically removing the part of the question that gives opportunities for answers to have actual value vs. just a thread that promotes lazy answers that don't help with providing insight to game design.

No, it's more like you're confusing a thread about game design (that's created under a sub-forum for game design) and thinking it's a topic about vampires, trends, some form of philosophy where legacies only apply to famous titles...or some other topic that ultimately even if it's answered or addressed don't relate much to motivating unique answers that would contribute to game design. Case in point you mentioned greatest legacies as if my analogy somehow brings up the idea of greatest legacies. You can do a word for word search for the word greatest and you'll see you were the first reply to even bring that specific word (greatest) out of thin air.

Even the word trend, the difficulty with even considering your statement is that once I consider it...it's so wrong that I can't even write a proper counterpoint because it's just so...wrong and even with multiple edits to this reply, I still have a hard time showing why it's not about trends because again, it's so confounding that even the slightest respect to that possibility unlinks itself from game design. From the very get go the concept of legacies and trends are so far apart that it's not even a round peg to a square hole. It's a branch that totally rips the contextual skeleton of a thread about game design once I do so. Seriously, once it became about trends, all I can think of was non-game design related discussions such as the marketing, advertising, packaging, timing, wrapping of a game rather than the specific content of the game.