Something that the last few posts have reminded me of is that what I see as one of the biggest problems in current game design thought is the tendency towards absolute theories. Good games are like this. All games function like that. But theories are abstract, and games are specific. Perhaps that’s what I’m trying to argue for the most – not saying that my games are perfect or that everyone must love them, but saying you can make games like these. And you can make different games, too. In fact, forget about games in general and start looking at them individually.
We keep treating games like tools – it needs to have this feature and that feature and the other feature. But games are art, and are thus much more like people than like tools. What is annoying in one person is endearing in another. To put it another way: Gothic 2 is not the perfect RPG or the perfect game, but it’s pretty close to being the perfect Gothic. And I love it for that.
We need to look at games as themselves. There are many paths to take and all of them lead to places that are interesting. I post with critical and at times confrontational ideas because I think some of those paths need defending. Not as superior, but as equal.
