Game theory discussion

[Captain Mostly]

People are too easy to offend round here. Really exciting debates and discussions can't happen here.

You accuse someone of being afraid to move on from a stagnant format and embrace even the slightest innovation, and they go running to the moderators. It'd never get off the ground.

This is not the right place. Here we are friendly, and friendly debate is almost a contradiction in terms.

[DGMacphee]

Perhaps we need to do something similar to the huge Monkey Island thread -- As in how we analysed Monkey Island to the point of 'What was Ron thinking?' and 'What is the REAL secret to Monkey Island?'

I'd like to start something similar with my Dada game and ask everyone what they think it all means -- I'm very interested to find out the various opinions and analyses. (Partially, because I don't really have one of my own -- ironic, since I made it.)

And each week we can discuss a different game to the point of analysing structure, character, meaning, themes, etc, etc

Not only that, we can also analyse the crap games to find exactly why such and such game is so damn terrible.

That way, it stays light, informative, semi-debatable, semi-analytical, and a little fun.

Sort of like a book club where everyone goes off, reads a particular book, all meet back to discuss it, and get drunk.

What do you think?

[Hobbes]

The "getting drunk" part holds special appeal.

I do like the idea though. Discussing MI and other games we see around here are fun to look at from an analytical perspective. Even from a critical perspective, for some.

This special "forum" should then host several topics at the same time, to accomodate the various things people would like to discuss, I think.

[Captain Mostly]

what if people really feel very strongly AGAINST a particular issue? I mean, if I were to voice my opinions of your Dada games, I'd get moderated. I'd probably get administratored.

And what about the people who made these "crap" games you mention DG... On the AGS forums, would you REALLY feel you could get away with singling out their works and picking apart (in front of everyone) exactly what it is about them that you think is so rubbish?

It's a great idea to have in depth talks about games that people are going to have a great difference of opinion on. But making it so that it's not TOTALLY open would be important so that newbies don't stumble in and get upset that a load of high-brow so-and-so's are ripping apart "Pimp Quest: Mystery of the missing lube"...

Only making it so that it's closed would be disasterous!

Perhaps whoever wants to do this should work an "invited types only" policy, so that only people they think won't get upset get in.

INDEED, perhaps it should be a secret forum, so that only invited people even know about it. That way no-one gets upset when they're not invited...

[RickJ]

Just an observation.....

I worked at General Electric in the 80s where they reorganized the engineering depeartments 4-5 times during my tenure there.  They added and deleted departments, changed the names of the departments and changed the names of the managers of those departments.  The funny thing is the work got done exactly the same way as it always had, with the same problems, ineffciencies, ect as before.  Nothing really changed.

IMHO, adding another forum won't change the behavior of the people who will use it.  Vicious personal attacks are what stiffle constructive debate.  Likely this won't change as long as there are people here who can't tolerate opinions differeing from their own, who can't logically defend their point of view, and who attempt to discredit the opposing opinion by launching personal attacks on the individual(s) how hold said opinions.

If we truly wanted to improve the AGS community/forums we should all look inward and examine our own behavior, motivations, aspirations, etc and ask ourselves what we can do individually to improve the neighborhood.

[DGMacphee]

I'm sure there's such a thing as constructive criticism.

And I'm open to any opinion/criticism you have on Dada:SIB, despite moderation.

In fact, I want criticism of it.

I think it there's a difference between "slagging a game" as opposed to "offering a critical opinion of a game".

And so far, I've welcomed both positive and negative feedback from various people.

(And if you want, you can tell me what you think of it via IM Capt -- I would really like to hear what you think)

(And that also goes for anyone else -- IM me your thoughts, even if you hated it)

Besides, when I mean "crap games", I actually mean commerical crap products, such as that piece-of-shit Phantasmagoria.

Not AGS games.

I think there's nothing wrong with criticising commercial garbage (and there's plenty of it).

[GarageGothic]

I strongly feel that the discussion should take place in the adventure talk and chat forum. I see the concept as one way of making the AGS forums more serious, and moving the discussion to somewhere else would REALLY undermine these forums. Remember that the competitions used to be in the chat forums, and still managed to be "special" threads. As long as the rules are specified along with the topic introduction each week. i.e. no two sentence posts etc. it should work.

And as much as I like the suggestion of a game "book club", I think it's difficult to be much more than descriptive (see Goldmunds post), when discussing single games. I think discussing topics (game design as well as game content) is much more valuable to us as designers.

[Las Naranjas]

It's no longer hard to be descriptive, or at least as hard, since we've been given the groundwork on how to pursue "affective responses" to adventures by Glood himself.
Much of what's in games exists already in other media, it's just interactivity that poses a problem.

[DGMacphee]

Bingo -- exactly my thoughts!

[Captain Mostly]

RickJ

All good points. But I wasn't suggesting we improve the AGS forums. I don't think we should change them at all. I'm all for a seperate place of discussion though.

And as for personal attacks, I think that they're an inevitable part of a discussion where people have strong opinions. The trick is to recognise that they're not the instrumental tools of debate, more like the chaff that's always got to be there, even if you simply have to leave it in the field (or make it into pig-feed)...
This is why it couldn't be an open forum, as there are people who would be able to keep this in mind, and there are people who use "3"'s instead of "E"'s.

[Bionic Bill]

My thoughts:

1)There should be a weekly or monthly or something intelligent discussion about adventure game design on the adventure-related talk section of the board. This increases seriousness and will hopefully elicit questions in designers' heads like, "Why am I doing this?"

2)There ought to also be a place somewhere that can support intelligent discussion about game theory in general. If I can't find one in the next couple weeks, I'm thinking I'll make one. This would probably start out as invitation only, and if things worked out, we might open it up. There would be a price of admission though, like submitting a thought-out essay on some facet of video games. It would probably come down to if I like it, then you get access to the boards. And continued access only comes from being apart of some good discussion. Anyways, all this is hypothetical of course, and no one will hear about it for a while even if it actually happens. Which it could very well not.

The discussion on these boards definitely needs to happen. It's probably better for it to be adventure-game-centric, as to keep people focused on the task at hand. If we have people questioning their theory of language because of the varied interpretation of the same hypertext, or something like that, no one's going to get around to making games.

[Trapezoid]

Look, if you want to start "intelligent discussion about game theory" then start it here. If nobody's posting it in the AGS-forums, then nobody will post it in the new forum.

[Las Naranjas]

It's not just Adventures though, and I think he's looking for a membership drawn from a faar larger base than AGS.

[2ma2]

Nostra: I am still here, I just don't post much. Does anyone know what happened to MonkeySpank?

Thread: There's a rather interesting issue here. First of all, which was very cleverly pointed out, the implemention interactivity into art. In a way, it's always been implemented, the interpretation of work is a process made by the receiver, not the artist himself. We trick, guide and use all kinds of sceamish techniques to deliver a message; the message we want them to receive. However, every interpretation is unique, but mainly, they revolve around the intended. This is the essence of adventures in a way, we force the player to do as we planned, and guide them through it. Also, there isn't always a message, rather than an observation or similar, neverthelss it's there to affect, provoce, whatever. I think this is highly possible to implement in gaming, and I would like, just as much as I like to drop every single bit of artsy fartsy intellectual ideas and blow of zombie heads for half an hour.

But to move to another forum? Only if it's widened past AGS, and it will probably be. These forums belong to the users and they'll be what we want them to be. I am confident these kind of discussions can take place here, seriously. Sure, people could drop in making a joke of it all, not taking it seriously or whatever, still why not just ignore them. Don't ask for moderation help to remove it, let it be. Or confront them. Sure, I miss the ezboard era, especially back in early 2001, it was like a whole different bond to the users, I knew them, they knew me. Now I don't know noone, and I more or less lost contact with the ones I knew. But that can't be avoided! It's a fact, and to wine about is the act of an old grumpy wo/man with nothing better to do. There's alot of so called newbies here that have a very rational attitude towards the community and AGS, and I sure enjoy their company.

These forums are AGS and adventure related. There's tons of adventure related forums. If these game theory discussions deal with alot more than AGS and the way it may be used, it may belong here in the gen gen or in another forum. It really doesn't matter. I don't think it would be elitist either, we're not, if I understood it correctly, shutting people out - nor would it be a gaven for oldbies. There's alot of oldbies that doesn't want to have these discussions either... still, it would be nice to have it here, in the community were it spawned.

[RickJ]

Captian: Regarding, personal attacks - I will be the first to admit that on ocassion I have posted while in a negative frame of mind, have lost patience, and was hard on some folks who really didn't desreve it.  I didn't realize/forgot how young and inexperienced some of the people on the forums are.  

Fortunately, when these things have happened to me, my colleagues and friends here, have brought these incidents to my attention so that I could make appropiate ammends.  

So I agree that these things happen and that we all have been guilty at one time or another.  The important thing is that we make the effort to improve ourselves.   When a debate slips into this kind of muck raking, there is usually very little of inspiration, enlightenment, enrichment, or anything of positive value to anyone expect for the person who is ranting.  I suppose he is a least geting some self-gratification out of it.  

I could go along with another category of discussions provided there is enough content to make it worth our while. IMHO, having too many categories would tend to dilute the discussions and make the situation worse instead of better.   I always thought things like game-theory and such could/should be discussed in the chit-chat forum.  I noticed recently it was re-titled "adventure-related" I suppose to cover more generic topics.

IMHO, Gen-gen is the round circular file of the forums.   It's purpose is to dispose of the chaff and keep the other categories clean.  As long it is consuming only a reasonable amount of resources, is not driving people away, and is not giving us a bad name/reputation then the content of the posts are not very important, rather it's more important  such content not find it's way into the other categotries.

If there is enough serious stuff that finds it's way into gen-gen because it is not appropiate in the other categories then I would support it.  If on the other hand it's being proposed as a way of not dealing with all the nutty gen-gen posts then I am not sure what purpose would be served by creating a gen-gen-plus.  

I guess all I am saying is, let's just be clear about why we need or want another forum category.  Let's be certain that we will not dilute too much the content in the other categories as well.

P.S. Sorry for being so long winded.  Hope it was worth it.

[Las Naranjas]

Monkeyspank still pops into #ags now and then.

[Captain Mostly]

listen, I'm not saying that muck-raking is the way to go! I'm just trying to articulate that while people are too afraid to get angry, nothing interesting will ever be said. endless "I see you point but blah de blah de blah" posts get no-where and conclude nothing. I don't want people to be flying off the handle all the time, but for an interesting debate people need to feel free to say what they're thinking, not the polite version.

Hell, I'm pretty sure none of you are gonna' get what I'm saying, so I think I'll leave this thread to the experts...

[DGMacphee]

I see your point but...

[Andail]

I think we've had many fierce debates here about philosophy as well as game-creation or whatever, without things getting out of hand. It's mostly when we discuss how to deal with newbies that people get upset beyond reason.

This is not a kindergarten; I think most people here can take a pretty harsh arguing without leaving the board with tears streaming.

Additionally, I don't see how game theory can be very provokative or personally offending. I plan to soon compile some writings about game creation theory myself.