Thanks for that, Chris. There is major stupidity from the camps on both sides and the folks that end up getting hurt are mostly just awesome normal people that want to support and play PC games. The thing that absolutely kills me is how often people act like they're entitled ...
@Alex This isn't about children in the sense you seem to be thinking of. By Kohlberg's analysis, moral reasoning starts to move through stages in the late teens and through the 20s his long term study was subjects at age 10 and following them to age 30 . Re: your ...
@An I still think that having utterly unchanging linear stories can be problematic, I think we're both on the same page that having only a single solution to progression blocks in linear stories is more concerning. Having multiple possible outcomes to a single problem is a big step towards addressing ...
@An Heh, I think I had spaghetti the night I listened to Gladwell's talk the first time. It was likely not a coincidence. @Jason That's an absolutely fantastic observation and I completely agree. Nearly all academic HCI research is done with the participant in isolation and I think it's just ...
@Brendan I was having a very similar conversation with someone about this just today. The days of manuals are more or less gone, and I think this is a good thing. If a game requires an addition essay/article/whatever to explain how to play, it's failed to be intuitive. More sophisticated/complex ...
@Reid There's a number of ways to approach this. The key is to create mechanics that are predictable so they can give rise to interesting dynamics. The problem with adventure mechanics is that, unless the player is in tune with the designer's intent for the puzzle, they no absolutely no ...
@Geoff I've worked with engineers outside of the game industry that couldn't write a good resume based on their other writing . I wouldn't consider any of them good engineers for the reasons Lance gave. If anyone thinks engineering, or any other aspect of game production, is somehow absolved from ...
@An If people regarded these issues, games wouldn't have as many readability problems as they do, right Some studios have this down to a science literally , but far too many others do not. What I'm really calling for is more deliberateness. I think these issues are not regarded until ...
I did my Masters in Computer Science partially in Human-Computer Interaction and when I went into games post-graduation, I was a little shocked at how different user evaluation of games was. It doesn't seem to have the gravitas it does in HCI research, so it's enlivening to see folks like ...
