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Feb 22

Breaking the Fourth Wall: Why Tutorials Ruin Games

by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Lords of Midnight, Player v Avatar, Ultima IV
Note: This is an open letter to Jed Pressgrove at Game Bias. All replies are welcome. Dear Jed, I am responding to your article ‘Tutorialization as an Aesthetic Flaw in Games‘  which was in response to Chris Bateman’s article ‘The Aesthetic Flaw of Games.’ Your post got me thinking fondly and with some nostalgia about the role that non-game items like Manuals and Maps played in my past. I remember getting my first copy of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar which had a gorgeous cloth map and two manuals.     The first manual was about the game, while a second manual posed as a spell book (Book of Mystic Wisdom), giving you the feeling of learning the game without the need for a tutorial.     Another great memory, is from 1984 when I received The Lords of Midnight in the mail. A ZX Spectrum game, it came with a manual/story plus a map on the back of the game box. Boy, did I spend many a moment gazing on that map thinking about strategies to implement and places to explore.     Enough of my navel gazing, the real reason why I am writing is that I […]

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Feb 16

Aesthetics as Basis for Conflict Between Players

by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments
Note: This is an open letter to Chris Bateman at International Hobo. All replies are welcome. Dear Chris Bateman, Thank you for your post on the “The Aesthetic Flaws of Games“. I am writing to provide an exploratory response to the persistent conflict you refer to, noting that this was not the point of your article. In your first point about Aesthetic Ruptures, you explain how narrative and mechanical aesthetic modes can lead to player alienation because of their unskillful use. I agree with you, and believe that it is this very difference in aesthetic modes that is the reason why the conflict you refer to exists. You speak more to this in one of your earlier posts, ‘The Thin Play of Dear Esther“. I have learned through our past discussions on Twitter of your intention to reduce the sectarianism we see in games, particularly the conflict between the narrative vs mechanical tribes, which can be distracting and destructive. As you wisely told me, be careful of trying to own the term ‘Game’. But I am concerned that in seeking a ‘perennial philosophy’ of games we do a disservice to some of the evolutionary traits that games have developed. While […]

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Jan 25

Welcome to Gamestories

by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Introduction
Here is my first blog post on Gamestories, a website devoted to Game Design. Gamestories is a new general game theory written by Chris Billows. Gamestories recognizes that games may not share mechanics or themes, but they all share the need to tap the player’s senses. Games are different from cinema, literature, music, and other forms of entertainment & art because the senses they trigger are more extensive and they invite the practice of transformation. Instead of focusing on whether a game is fun, art, interactive, or challenging, Gamestories says that games are important because at their best they invite players to bring all of their senses to the medium. A player’s senses are triggered through the game’s events, become remembered, and then later shared with other players. The greatest meaning of a game is not that it tells the player a story, but that the player tells a story to others about the game. Player plays Game > Player transforms Game Events > Events resonates with Player > Player tells Stories about Game Gamestories can be summarized thus: “A game succeeds as a game when it taps the player’s full range of senses, triggering integration of game events, and […]
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