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11 tweets,
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I have literally had a tab with this thread on it sitting open on my desktop for 24 hours, because I keep chewing over it and the things it points to.
I don't think there's anything controversial about the core idea that there are different potential emotional/chemical reward cycles in games. If it *is* contentious, it's demonstrable in about 4 hours at Games on Demand, or in 15 minutes of internet fights about tabletop.
Specifically, we've talked about some of this stuff under other guises, like Koster's Theory of Fun - but I *really* like the emphasis on cycles, and I *really really* like non exclusivity of the model.
(And I also like the specific model they focus on - tend/befriend is a great name, and a great idea)
A lot of the models we've floated for what people want out of play have been either explicitly exclusionary, or set up like personality types (rather than focused on behaviors and desired rewards). This has bugged me for a while.
As a GM, when dealign with actual people, y thought process is usually more about what these people *want* out of a game (and, note, it is almost never only one thing). That is what I try to figure out and keep in mind,
That has always seemed like an idea that could merit from some fruitful categorization, but the types of fun model never quite lined up for me in practice. I look forward to reading more on this to see if maybe this is the perspective I've lacked.
The ultimate trick, of course, is whether or not we can apply this thinking without implicit judgement. Historically, one element of almost every play categorization we've tried is that at least one category is the "bad" category.
Which has always been kind of bullshit, since it's demonstrated that we're more interested in the labeling than the discovery. We rarely use these categories to go "Well, ok, we think that's bad fun, but if that's true, why to people like it?".
(And our go to answer, "because they're jerks", doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny)
Anyway, so thank you to @briecode - I look forward to reading and thinking more. This is cool stuff.
