Been reading more of those comics I’m getting… it’s interesting, since I’ve been reading mostly graphic novels and not the superhero stuff, to see how dark the superhero stuff has gotten. It’s like every story is trying to be Watchmen.
misstmuse: Music Theory Fun!!! provides a truly groanworthy extended music pun.
A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. Continue reading »
As I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese edition of A Theory of Fun for Game Design is out now. Masaya Matsuura was kind enough to write a foreword for this edition, and I thought I’d share it here. I met Matsuura-san for the first time at GDC this year, where we were the joint presenters of the “First Penguin Award” — Matsuura-san because he was last year’s winner, and myself because I do this online game thing sometimes, and the winner was Dr. Richard Bartle.
Well, the Front Line Award winners have been announced, and A Theory of Fun lost out to Audio for Games: Planning, Process, and Production, by Alexander Brandon, which sounds like an eminently practical book, unlike mine. 🙂
I’ve seen a lot of folks argue against changing certain elements of how virtual worlds are made today on the grounds that the medium has evolved into a genre, on the grounds that because there’s now a strong trend of making these worlds in a particular way, that we should go with the flow. There have been comments made here on the blog, for example, saying,
Some irreversible choices have already been made. The people who are growing this genre are making interesting choices within the parameters of the genre. You, I submit, are not because you are too busy wondering “what if we had gone with silicon-based life instead?” That moment has come and gone. New irreversible choices are being made right now, and if you want to have any input in them you need to accept the ones that have been made in the past.
If there’s one thing that people often have trouble grasping, it’s that evolution isn’t about progress, it’s about adaptation. It is about maximizing survival under given conditions.
