One rationality related message that I’ve long wanted to see incorporated into video games...
While it’s important to look for creative solutions to dilemmas, sometimes you really just have to shut up and multiply. I mostly follow RPGs, and both Eastern and Western types tend to reward idealism; whenever you’re given the option to refuse to make a sacrifice, or to accept anything less than perfect achievement of all your goals, the refusal leaves your characters better off, no matter how risky a plan it requires them to enact. Your characters are never punished for taking million to one chances to achieve more complete victory.
Of course, the ability to succeed against long odds is part of what makes heroes interesting, but this doesn’t mean reality will bend over backwards to accommodate you if you’re sufficiently heroic, so I’d like to create a scenario which gets the message across to players,
“No, there doesn’t Have To Be Another Way, reality was never obligated to provide you with a single way in the first place, so don’t be so quick to pass it up.”
Unfortunately, I’m not a programmer in any capacity, but my sister’s boyfriend is, and is studying to design games, and I’ve agreed to provide writing for a game in the event that we can find someone suitable who’s willing to do the graphics.
If anyone else wants my writing services, I’d be happy to provide them.
I think it’s a little more complicated than that: RPGs tend to reward tactical but not strategic optimization. Local cleverness and tradeoff management is always useful and often necessary, but past the immediate future (a specific battle, or at most a unit of time convenient for inventory management) strategy becomes dominated by idealism in scripted decisions (if a choice is given at all) and exploration of the game’s unscripted components.
Its roots seem partly accidental and partly didactic, but in practice I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this reward system caters to a certain cognitive style. In terms of Bartle type, at any rate, it’s straightforwardly going to attract exploratory/acquisitional players (spades or diamonds); Bartle was working with fairly restricted gameplay possibilities, though, so his typology might easily miss some important options. Perhaps conventional game design has missed a demographic it might exploit by encouraging more strategic thinkers?
I think my own play style would tend to fall towards the exploratory even in a game framework that allowed a greater emphasis on strategic elements, but I suspect you can reward pragmatism without alienating (most of) the exploratory and acquisitional demographic. I haven’t played it yet, but the premise of Radiant Historia seems like a good setup to allow players to explore the consequences of different actions throughout the course of a story, and reinforce a pragmatic approach through constant feedback.
Yeah, I like that message too. It’ll take a lot of skill to implement it while keeping the game fun and not frustrating, since you’ll be going very heavily against the grain.
Easiest way to do graphics is to find a freelancer. DeviantArt website is perfect for that.
One rationality related message that I’ve long wanted to see incorporated into video games...
While it’s important to look for creative solutions to dilemmas, sometimes you really just have to shut up and multiply. I mostly follow RPGs, and both Eastern and Western types tend to reward idealism; whenever you’re given the option to refuse to make a sacrifice, or to accept anything less than perfect achievement of all your goals, the refusal leaves your characters better off, no matter how risky a plan it requires them to enact. Your characters are never punished for taking million to one chances to achieve more complete victory.
Of course, the ability to succeed against long odds is part of what makes heroes interesting, but this doesn’t mean reality will bend over backwards to accommodate you if you’re sufficiently heroic, so I’d like to create a scenario which gets the message across to players, “No, there doesn’t Have To Be Another Way, reality was never obligated to provide you with a single way in the first place, so don’t be so quick to pass it up.”
Unfortunately, I’m not a programmer in any capacity, but my sister’s boyfriend is, and is studying to design games, and I’ve agreed to provide writing for a game in the event that we can find someone suitable who’s willing to do the graphics.
If anyone else wants my writing services, I’d be happy to provide them.
I think it’s a little more complicated than that: RPGs tend to reward tactical but not strategic optimization. Local cleverness and tradeoff management is always useful and often necessary, but past the immediate future (a specific battle, or at most a unit of time convenient for inventory management) strategy becomes dominated by idealism in scripted decisions (if a choice is given at all) and exploration of the game’s unscripted components.
Its roots seem partly accidental and partly didactic, but in practice I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this reward system caters to a certain cognitive style. In terms of Bartle type, at any rate, it’s straightforwardly going to attract exploratory/acquisitional players (spades or diamonds); Bartle was working with fairly restricted gameplay possibilities, though, so his typology might easily miss some important options. Perhaps conventional game design has missed a demographic it might exploit by encouraging more strategic thinkers?
I think my own play style would tend to fall towards the exploratory even in a game framework that allowed a greater emphasis on strategic elements, but I suspect you can reward pragmatism without alienating (most of) the exploratory and acquisitional demographic. I haven’t played it yet, but the premise of Radiant Historia seems like a good setup to allow players to explore the consequences of different actions throughout the course of a story, and reinforce a pragmatic approach through constant feedback.
Yeah, I like that message too. It’ll take a lot of skill to implement it while keeping the game fun and not frustrating, since you’ll be going very heavily against the grain.
Easiest way to do graphics is to find a freelancer. DeviantArt website is perfect for that.