tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14856978.post113412323193255996..comments2024-03-28T05:12:10.477-07:00Comments on Gone Gaming: The Dance of Theme and Mechanics in Games: A FantasyColdfoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11636345146138362966noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14856978.post-1135529219619781992005-12-25T08:46:00.000-08:002005-12-25T08:46:00.000-08:00First a minor nit. Three lines don't define a pla...First a minor nit. Three lines don't define a plane if they are colinear.<BR/><BR/>Next, a hearty thank you for a very interesting way to conceptualize the everpresent relationship of theme to mechanics.<BR/><BR/>I am a cake man myself and will admire the icing, but tend to ignore it completely while playing the game. No amount of icing will save a flawed game, but barely smeared on icing is appreciated if it will snare an unwary potential gamer in its grasp long enough for them to enjoy the cake.<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, this preference carries over to real life in that I gravitate towards cake with little or no icing. (Except for German Chocolate, must have lots of coconut!)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14856978.post-1135357250988153662005-12-23T09:00:00.000-08:002005-12-23T09:00:00.000-08:00Nice!Speaking of the Gipf Project and theme, I'm a...Nice!<BR/><BR/>Speaking of the Gipf Project and theme, I'm amazed at how these black-and-white abstracts each have their own distinct feel to them, for me perhaps more so than games which try harder to approximate a real-world experience. The way the different forces and pressures interact with each other within the games create six different gestalts. Gipf to me is studious but mysterious, with slow massings of forces and surprising outcomes, and the rhythm of the game is that of waves that build and break. Tamsk is like a prison escape, with stops and starts, sprints and hushed pauses, blind alleys and mad runs to freedom. Zertz is a nasty game of traps and trickery—not Othello but Iago. Dvonn is a game of subtle, indirect potentiality crystalizing into an outcome. Yinsh is wild and wooly yet somehow constricted, like a knife fight in a phone booth. Punct is a nonchalant creeping up to a shoving match, something like sumo wrestling where players try to get just that one extra bit of leverage to send their opponent toppling. <BR/><BR/>I think that within the circle there is a game for every personality type, and it's telling that if you ask a group of fans of the series which is their favorite game, the responses tend to be distributed evenly between five of the six (Tamsk gets a bum rap, I think).<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I think it's interesting that the more you try to make a game like real life, the more messy and unpredictable it must become.Joe Golahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07660986477477676629noreply@blogger.com