Game Design Perspective: Stardew Valley (2020)

My current approach to game design revolves around a three-stage process: find well-justified principles, set concrete success benchmarks based off the principles, and routinely do studies of specific elements to test the benchmarks. This is something that can be applied fractally, from the top level down into every last asset, and isn't really specific to games, but it lets me cross the boundaries between media, ask and answer detailed questions like "what form of music is most appropriate for this scene?" A question like that isn't adequately answered by personal taste, and really benefits from a principled framework starting from basic philosophy-of-truth questions about the concepts.

And this goes for stuff with the software and UX, too: requirements around stability, performance, ease of use and so forth appear in the success benchmarks and enforce a rough shape for the featureset.

When the game "doesn't work" despite meeting technical standards, it's usually because there's a conceptual issue where the ideas the game explores are presented incoherently, where features are added because "this feature appeared in another game and it was fun there" and the contradictions implied by the juxtaposition are ignored. When the game goes in that direction, it makes players throw up their hands and say, "I don't know what this game is about." It's also harder to make such a game, because you end up laboring to paper over those contradictions with complicated special casing.

I wasn't excited to watch it, because I don't find McFarlane funny (as a writer/showrunner and especially not as an actor), and because I think I've only ever enjoyed maybe one sci-fi parody ever. (2 if you count MST3K as "sci-fi"..?)

But my wife wanted to give it a shot because she's such a sci-fi nerd (even more than me), and you're right: they captured the utter essence of Star Trek so completely that I'm not entirely sure why he's not on a short list to do a serious Star Trek show/movie.

The qualities that make Star Trek so compelling (especially Next Generation and to a lesser extent DS9 and Voyager) are ever present in The Orville in spades. That it somehow manages to combine a very serious look at life in space with some pretty raunchy potty humor is nothing short of incredible.

I would fully support McFarlane (or whomever is responsible for that "essence" in Orville) doing a dramatic space opera, hands down, no question. That would be one hell of a show.

Not sure the market would bear it, unfortunately, though.

Yeah, his comedy's a bit much for me most of the time. He's got some funny stuff, but it's usually in between a whole lot of meh stuff.

I was honestly expecting family guy in space or something. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised and happy to be wrong.

>I would fully support McFarlane (or whomever is responsible for that "essence" in Orville) doing a dramatic space opera, hands down, no question. That would be one hell of a show.

I ended up looking up more about the show and to be fair, the show does actually have some long time star trek people involved. Johnathan Frakes(Riker), Robert Duncan Macneil(Tom Paris) and Brannon Braga(worked on Voyager and enterprise) directed a bunch of episodes. There were also a ton of cameos by star trek actors throughout the show. So there was definitely a bunch of people working on the show who had been involved in star trek.

Oddly enough, back to the video game world there's also a few examples of tribute games playing off nostalgia made by members of the original staff that don't hold up to the originals they're emulating, which also shows just having original staff members isn't all it takes to capture that old greatness.