Yo! Ingo! Wazzup? I was hoping you'd weigh in on this! Corresponding with you is one of the great pleasures of participating in the underground design community and I have missed it.
But not only do I get the tremendous pleasure of reading your thoughtful and even poetically composed opinions ("The personal tragedies, the hopes of people who followed charismatic leaders, the sadistic pleasure of warriors who considered themselves unstoppable, the suffering of suppressed populations... " whew! good stuff!) --- but I also get the pleasure of disagreeing with them!!!
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Quoted from Gordon:
Quote:
But things like paying tolls to use ferries, or buying food every 5 minutes, or receiving gold every time you kill a bad guy (all of them extremely clever trigger set-ups I've seen in some of AOKH's most successful scenarios)--- when we do this, we're altering the basic gameplay and saying, in effect, "I wish this were a different game than the one you guys at ES created."
There is no such message behind ferry triggers, buying slaves and food systems IMHO.
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Sorry, my friend, but I think there is. It's subtle. It's unconscious. But it's there... I mean, come on, if you want to play an RPG, why are you playing AoK????
Now let me make one thing clear: The trigger work that goes into these scenarios is jaw-droppingly brilliant. I am not for an instant saying otherwise, and the RPG scens that have 5.0 ratings (you know who you are!), well, I'd have given you that 5.0 myself in a heartbeat.
But I also think that a unique pleasure we get out of the scenarios done for the Blacksmith is seeing how various brilliant designers have actually bent the AoK engine around to do something unexpected and startling. Ahem, may I remind you Ingo, of the review of "The Quest" in Computer Gaming World that said, "How Ingo Van Thiel was able to bend the AOK engine to his will so effectively remains a mystery, but somehow he has created the most unique and gorgeous scenario we have played." Ahem. Ahem.
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Variety is the magical word. Variety keeps the fan design community alive and kicking
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I'm not contesting this idea for a second. But I think the fan design community also has rarified tastes that do not necessarily reflect what game creators are looking for in their quest for successful, over-the-counter games.
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Many professionals regard fan input as interesting and sometimes inspiring, rather than a threat or insult to
their work.
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Hmmm... there's that word "insult" again --- which I never used. Actually, it's pretty annoying to have people put words in my mouth that I never wrote, okay? What I said was: "We're in effect criticizing ES's design choices."
Where did I use the word "threat" or "insult"?
And I stand by what I wrote. We ARE criticizing. Criticizing is a good, valid and important process. It wakes up the professionals and makes them start thinking of new ideas for their next game. It is a vital part of that "inspiring" process you yourself mention. But the best criticisms will be jarring at first and will alienate the person being criticized at least for a little while. I just didn't think that a contest was the place to do that.
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And Gordon, didn’t you also get your job at SSS because they were interested in input from fan designers?
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That's right. I *criticized* (as it were) existing RTS games in my own fan designer work. They were inspired by my *criticisms.* And not just by mine, but by yours as well. But they also expected me to be able to deliver good scenarios within the parameters of the game they had created --- not to use the trigger system to make the game do things that flew in the face of the essential game dynamics.
And I truly believe that a lot of the fan designers at AOKH would like to know these things:
They want to know the difference between what AOKHers find exciting and what a game company expects from its designers. I'm just trying to shed some light on it.
[This message has been edited by SSSI_Gordon Farrell (edited 06-28-2001 @ 03:26 PM).]