I’ve always been interested in the idea of neutral or mutual enemy NPC forces in games.
I haven’t listened to the main bit yet, but I got shit to say:
You really gotta move in Beat Saber. You can’t take weak little swipes if you want a good score, because points for each note are based on how straight of a line you cut, but even moreso how wide of an arc you swung (both prior to note and follow-through). Notes come so fast that to do these big 180-degree swings, you are using near full force muscle sometimes.
Best Uno is 2006 Mets Uno
Nicole’s family plays Scrabble where the tile bonuses re-activate if you add onto a word. Wtffffff. I proved to them that this just incentivizes locking up the board in the corners. Played to win and it was the most miserable game ever. Will never play Scrabble with them again.
I think horses get the recognition because the owners want it that way. The payoff is on the stud rights, so they want horse name recognition. If you make the jockey popular, all that happens is some other rich dude steals away your jockey.
What was the name of the game @SkeleRym said he would rather play than Uno? Sounded something like shakell?
That’s part of the issue no doubt, but you’re also hitting on issues of consent and buy-in. Burning Wheel teaches us to be very open about exactly what we want to get from the experience, and from that build collaborative narrative.
There’s no reason not to port this concept to all social situations with games. 3 people want to play to play and 1 wants to play to win - the right answer is to talk about what you all want so that you can correctly couch expectations, or maybe so that 1 person can say “actually I think I’d rather play something else, you all have fun” without it becoming a Thing.
Also don’t play Catan because it’s garbage.
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Yes. This is a better way of framing what I was saying. They should not have played together in the first place. This is also why the video games need some sort of segregation. That way players can select the experience they consent to.
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This has come up as an issue in my Deadlands game my wife is running. She, and the rest of the party, really like to play morally grey stories to challenge morally grey player characters. I tend to play explicitly good characters, and like stories where to good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. We started with a module that came with the book just to learn the system and I loved it. When we moved on to my wife’s own content I was having less and less fun until we got to a point where we were chasing a bounty target, and the chaotic neutral bounty hunter PC then decided it was time to just murder the wounded target in cold blood because it would be easier to drag his body than wrangle a living person - after my doctor character had patched up the bounty and gotten information out of him peacefully. I didn’t make a fuss but I promptly left the game after that session. I wish now I had discussed it more with them before I agreed to play.
I somewhat miss the innocence of just playing a table-top game without all the baggage that comes with “knowing about games.” Like when I first sat down to play HeroQuest or DragonStrike I based more of my preconceptions on the commercial and included movie respectively.
I still know grown adults that are like that, my former roommate for example, where theme and how much they were into the art predicated a lot of their enjoyment of the medium. I see a lot more of it with D&D being in vogue a bit at the moment. Lots of people that don’t see the game within a game, or at least without context for it. They seem to end up reiterating a lot of the mistakes many of us made ages ago in the hobby, which is kinda funny to see as an outsider.
So to the point, while I agree completely that we should just openly discuss what our gaming “goals” are, I also kinda miss not doing those kinds of things. It was a bit neat to miss the forest for the trees at times.
I’m not sure I miss this, given my story above. I played too many games with murderhobos and minmaxers, to just run in again without having a session zero what do you want discussion. In hindsight that experience ought have made me think a bit harder about joining the Deadlands game but when friends and SO’s are involved you let your guard down a bit.
I think I get a bit of this. For me, it’s more that I’ve peeked behind the curtain enough that I can’t just play a fucking game, I have to analyze it. I have to think about what it’s doing well and what it’s not, and while that’s fun for me, it can also get in the way of experiencing what the game is supposed to be doing. And I have a hard time turning it off.
I am firmly against the ignorance is bliss, anti-intellectual attitude with regards to all things.
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Thankfully I’m not at the point I can’t just turn off my brain, not try too hard, and enjoy just taking part. Usually, anyway.
There are times when I find myself playing a game, not trying at all, but then find myself “getting it” at a level I didn’t intend to, and then feeling bad for the other players as I dominate the rest of the game.
This has happened to me in non-board game situations too. At a photography event, there was a prize draw, but the person who won one prize wasn’t there or had already left. The main photographer said “okay, whoever can answer this question can win it…” and before he even got to the question, my thought was “oh no, this is unfair on everyone else, because the rules have changed and now I’m obviously going to win”.
How arrogant is that?!?!? So I shout out the answer, not just first but the only one to respond, and win.
And then I felt bad about feeling bad about the other people there because I knew that once it was a trivia question about something related to the photographer, I was going to win. It didn’t even feel irrational, just obvious to me.
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I think I get what @PrinceRobot is saying, not that intellectual assessment is bad, but that like @thewhaleshark said that sometimes that overanalyzing intellectual assessment can get in the way of enjoyment. If I watch one of the Fast and Furious movies I’m not analyzing every character’s motivations and symbolism and shit, I just want to see cool people drive cool cars really fast and crash and blow up.
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That’s because there is not much to analyze in such low art. You’re not turning off your brain, you simply aren’t challenging it. You don’t have to push hard when you’re not going uphill.
So am I, but there’s a difference between intentionally curating one’s experience, and never thinking deeper about an experience.
My frustration is primarily that my brain operates in this one way only, and so I can’t consciously decide to simplify my experience. Sometimes, a simplified experience is good, because processing takes a lot of energy and I don’t always have that to give.
It’s like, most of the time I want to eat amazing food, but 10% of the time I want unchallenging garbage because I don’t have it in me to invest in the experience.
And yet my brain says “NO MUST THINK THINKY THOUGHTS” no matter what.
Stupid meat.
I meant to clarify that while I might not do that with a Fast and Furious movie it doesn’t mean you can’t. And in any case I don’t see a problem with coasting sometimes. Also the distinction between low vs high art is elitist and classist. All art has value, even dumb action movies.
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I can understand that low might imply low quality or low value, but I’m only using it here to suggest low challenge. Not sure what other word to use?
Something I have noticed is that I do enjoy less challenging works, like the tower defense game I play on my iPad every morning, I enjoy a lot less of them than other people. I also enjoy them less than other people. e.g: everyone losing their shit over superhero movies that I can’t stand.
My favorite works in all mediums of art tend to be the more abstract and surreal.
Ah I have always understood “low” art to be pejorative and imply it had lesser overall value, for example classically trained art professors shitting on comics and animation as “low art” and not “real” art. And I think that preference of games and art styles comes down to taste more than anything else.
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Had this problem since I was a kid. Can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Stupid meat.
I’m sure they were using it pejoratively, and I’m sure it is mostly used that way. I’m not, but I just don’t know what other words to use.
DnD is both the greatest and worst entry ttrpg for this reason. The popularity is great at getting people to sit down for shared enjoyment, but it’s such a bad game it practically forces you to evaluate how you’re having fun in spite of it.