Notices by clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone), page 4

@sliminality this was a great watch

@dante @polinski yesss read dawn of everything

really gotta remember to tell my NYC friends & mutuals that I'll be here BEFORE I am sitting in a hotel with nothing to do for one(1) evening

hi from brooklyn

@stardust alas this is for work, I'm afraid, and they're not so amenable to Good Ideas as the people of mastodon

@leon @mcc not sure it's that centralization is "cheap" so much as it is capable of externalizing its costs into places you aren't looking at

@dante ????? b

@ataylor I think one element that helps is when players have emotional attachment to things that extends beyond their own game, so if you tell someone about Cuno% in disco elysium they'll be delighted because they care about Cuno. And if I tell you that a muslim empire conquered the whole of britain for a generation, that's similarly inherently funny+interesting bc of real world context

@apophis clipping and streamability is actually interesting to bring up bc I kind of think that's maybe distinct from "getting people to tell stories". Like Crusader Kings isn't particularly engaging to watch but naturally produces fascinating stories. Or as an extreme example, eve online

@ataylor That's an interesting point about mvp+content thing, I'll have to think more about how dev process affects this. On the subject of authored vs procedural, Crusader Kings is interesting for having a mix of both... and I guess maybe something like Sunless Seas also tries to operate in that space, though I think it's less successful at producing stories. Will have to reflect on why.

@ataylor yeah totally, Disco Elysium really succeeds on that front as well (especially with making rolls into branching points where both branches are funny/interesting). I think what's most intriguing to me right now is asking like, is there a throughline between Dwarf Fortress and BG3 that makes them both have this same property? Is there a design space that exists in the middleground between them? Or are they distinct incompatible techniques?

I'm particularly interesting in what video games can learn from indie ttrpgs, which are (at their best) -very- good at capturing this sort of expressiveness. My current group is playing Blades in the Dark and it's so fun to see how dynamic the play ends up being. I think many of the successes there are available to video games too!

Mind, there's not actually a value judgment here. I've enjoyed some clicker games well enough. But I'm curious to figure out what makes a game "expressive" and how to capture that in the most efficient package possible. What design choices cause players to tell each other stories?

I'm developing a theory of game mechanics where there's a spectrum between "upgrades" and "options". Contrast, say, clicker games (pure upgrade) with something like deckbuilding in a TCG.

The question that keeps running through my mind is: is one players' experience of a game -interesting- to another player? Crusader Kings: yes. Dwarf Fortress: definitely. All these twee city builders coming out with good aesthetics and basically linear progression: definitely not.

@lynnesbian tbh I played an entire game of crusader kings on a steam deck with very little difficulty. wonderful things are possible with radial menus

@jovialthunder ... I see

@jovialthunder what does this mean

@jplebreton tho I do like trying to imagine the far-off utopia where going to the bank (or whatever) is so pleasant and idyllic as a task that people welcome added friction to the experience just for the social joy of it.

@mapachin people will do anything to avoid having to do actual power analysis, it seems

eggnostic