An interesting take on the role of procedural rherotic (Gaming)

by electricpirate , Monday, November 04, 2013, 10:04 (4040 days ago) @ Xenos

I definitely fall into the praiser category, but yeah I completely agree with you. For example, any time someone brings up race as being the main point of the story I just stop reading. I think part of the problem with any game criticism (good or bad) is that people have trouble understanding how they feel about something as a whole so if they play a game and say "I'm disappointed" they often don't know why. This usually causes them to latch on to something they didn't like as the main reason. Sometimes the truth is you just didn't enjoy it. It goes the other way around too, but we are rarely upset with people liking things on an individual level.

This is so true, I'm getting deeper into game design and user feedback right now,and one of the golden rules of feedback is "9 times out 10 people know they don't like it, but have no idea why they don't like it."

Well put. I do want to highlight one thing though,

For example, any time someone brings up race as being the main point of the story I just stop reading.

This is true, but on the other hand, Race is a charged topic. If you are going to use it as a plot device in service of a larger point, you need to be careful, as it can overshadow a lot of subtler points. I think Infinite would be a better game if it just avoided that kind of take on race relations entirely, and found another way to focus on the metaphysical narrative, which was much stronger.