Smash that Unlike Buttin! (Destiny)

by Vortech , A Fourth Wheel, Sunday, January 03, 2021, 10:39 (1423 days ago) @ Cody Miller

How did you learn that you could bomb walls in the Legend of Zelda? There ARE clues that make figuring it out on your own possible… but likely you realized you could do this because someone else who played the game told you. Either they discovered it, or someone told THEM.

Never played Zelda.

There is a magic in having aspects of the game reveal themselves through social sharing or through discovery rather than be told to you through text or a tutorial. The joy of exploration.

Mankitten now knows about champions. Anyone else could similarly learn through the community.

Yeah, except what if I don't enjoy the community? What if I'm isolated from it? Yes, these scenarios enable communal discovery and that's something valuable but the opportunity cost is that folks outside of the community are left to struggle.

You don’t have to find THE community. Just A community. Even just a small group of friends. I played Cyberpunk along side 4 friends, and it was great bouncing things off each other. I played FF7 remake alongside one friend. The beauty of a well designed game is that you can have this experience with whatever community you choose. And if you can’t… well either the game is not for you, or the game does in fact lack discovery.

OK, but the reality is that "learning from the community" means being confused, and needing to watch a Youtube video that takes forever to get to the point and has irrelevant gameplay in the background. There's nothing magical there, just monetized.