Over the years I’ve written quite a few python utilities. Posted in Game Philosophy | Leave a reply Narrative Momentum and Manuverability Whether this is symmetrical or not, there must be a balance of forces or there is no need for contest. The player should compete against evenly matched foes.
Giving the player special powers makes them special, but also adds exceptional expectations which can often not be met. Reducing the player’s character to the level of other in-game characters is important for verisimilitude.
“Boss” characters are often meant as a game-play challenge, but as they are presented as characters, they often fail on that merit. It doesn’t mean anything to challenge a non-entity, nor does it signify to crush an inferior. The rise of multi-player direct competition games has illuminated this difficulty even more by demonstrating what happens when player characters to compete against each-other. There are several causes for this (not that it’s any excuse) all of which are more or less surmountable.Ĭharacter background is difficult to convey and generate. It’s just a challenge. Even the most difficult challenges, the “boss” foes, rarely have any out-of-plot motivation, duty, or even activity that they engage in. The player character has depth, while the foes are hardly characters at all. It isn’t even a challenger. Often, computer game challenges are against foes who have a noticeably different in-game status from the player character. Posted in Game Philosophy | Leave a reply QuestsĬonflict is only meaningful when the outcome is in question. Artificially limiting story progression by game performance is… well, artificial scarcity. At the limit, this ties back to the “win” button. Or to releasing all games into the public domain. For example, there is (effectively) no marginal cost to distributing DLC to all game owners. Mis-used in either direction can lead to story collapse.Īrtificial scarcity occurs a lot in games, but aside from people being familiar with this way of thinking, and as a tool for exploring true scarcity, I don’t see the advantage. Intrinsically artificial in reality (no reason the storyteller can’t solve scarcity by fiat), but percieved as true in context. Narrative Scarcity? Resources limited to form a cohesive story (fictional True Scarcity or contrived Artificial Scarcity). Can be marginally useful (currency), or deceptive (CCG). Mimics True Scarcity in order to reproduce its effects. People throw around “post-scarcity” as an achievable goal, but depending on how you draw the threshold it could have already happened, or it could never happen.Īrtificial Scarcity has to do with arbitrarily limited things, like CCGs, limited runs, and modern currencies. Resources are scarce, time, energy, materials, space, attention. I should begin, though, by an overview of True Scarcity, and its effects on our lives. I’d like to talk about artificial scarcity, and how I think it is generally a poor solution.