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A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

blog.coltonbrown.com

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Re: A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

#21

Post by cbsks »

danparsonson wrote: post #20
tantalor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writing is easily confused: > The game that almost died The author meant: "The game my friends and I had to stop playing because of social distancing" To the reader sounds like: "The game that everybody in the world stopped playing" > my friends and I used to love playing a nameless pen-and-paper game Meant: "my friend and I did not use/know/have a name for this game, we just call it 'the game'" Sounds like: "thi…

Sure, everything sounds worse if you read it in a cynical frame of mind.

And that’s the main issue with comments on the Internet :)

Being cynical is much easier than being insightful.

Re: A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

#22

Post by tantalor »

danparsonson wrote: post #20
tantalor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writing is easily confused: > The game that almost died The author meant: "The game my friends and I had to stop playing because of social distancing" To the reader sounds like: "The game that everybody in the world stopped playing" > my friends and I used to love playing a nameless pen-and-paper game Meant: "my friend and I did not use/know/have a name for this game, we just call it 'the game'" Sounds like: "thi…

Sure, everything sounds worse if you read it in a cynical frame of mind.

It's about being a critical and alert reader, not cynical. That's how we protect ourselves from directly injecting nonsense into our brains. People don't do it enough.

The difference between good and bad writing is that good writing can anticipate and withstand a critical reading. Bad writing just falls apart and the point is lost.

Re: A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

#24

Post by danparsonson »

tantalor wrote: post #22
danparsonson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, everything sounds worse if you read it in a cynical frame of mind.

It's about being a critical and alert reader, not cynical. That's how we protect ourselves from directly injecting nonsense into our brains. People don't do it enough. The difference between good and bad writing is that good writing can anticipate and withstand a critical reading. Bad writing just falls apart and the point is lost.

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your original post - I agree with everything you've just written in your reply to me - but to pick up an example from the original:

>> I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet. (a)

>Meant: "I like building games and making a clone of this would be fun!" (b)

>Sounds like: "I did not bother to check google, so I had to build one myself." (c)

I don't know how you got from (a) to (c) if not through cynicism. How is that critical thinking? You appear to be painting a worst-case interpretation and adding your own detail to make it sounds worse. Let's try an alternative version of the same construction:

"I think building a table might be a good creative outlet"

Does that sound more like

"I like building things and making my own table would be fun"

or

"I did not bother to check , so I had to build one myself"

To me it's very clearly the former; how can you know whether I did or did not investigate alternatives from that sentence? I could do the same with

"None of my 'friends' told me I copied a well known game" - air quotes implies they're not really friends

"I am unaware this game already existed in many forms" - that sentence is a contradiction in terms, but if you mean 'I was...' then the original specifically mentions the game by name - therefore obviously his/her version of it which clearly did not previously exist

"this game has no name; nobody else in the whole world plays it" - how can anyone with any certainty ever assert that no-one else in the whole world does something?

I'm confused, have I totally misread you? What am I missing?

Re: A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

#25

Post by tantalor »

danparsonson wrote: post #24
tantalor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about being a critical and alert reader, not cynical. That's how we protect ourselves from directly injecting nonsense into our brains. People don't do it enough. The difference between good and bad writing is that good writing can anticipate and withstand a critical reading. Bad writing just falls apart and the point is lost.

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your original post - I agree with everything you've just written in your reply to me - but to pick up an example from the original: >> I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet. (a) >Meant: "I like building games and making a clone of this would be fun!" (b) >Sounds like: "I did not bother to check google, so I had to build one myself." (c) I don't know…

You're absolutely right, I was being cheeky, you are right to call me out. You have a good point: it's a risk of being overly critical that you fall into cynical ridicule.

Re: A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

#26

Post by cableshaft »

iainmerrick wrote: post #17
thiago_fm wrote: post #8

Everybody was playing GarticPhone while the author was developing "the game that almost died". Things developers are the worst at: 1. Market research

Hardly “everybody”, I for one hadn’t heard of Gartic until now.

So yeah, not everybody, but it's definitely not an unknown game.

747 viewers watching Twitch streamers play or playing along with the streamers right this moment. I've also seen it a lot higher than that. Pretty sure it's the most popular form of this game at the moment, besides the Telestrations board game. https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Gartic%20Phone

Re: A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

#27

Post by danparsonson »

tantalor wrote: post #25
danparsonson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your original post - I agree with everything you've just written in your reply to me - but to pick up an example from the original: >> I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet. (a) >Meant: "I like building games and making a clone of this would be fun!" (b) >Sounds like: "I did not bother to check google, so I had to build one myself." (c) I don't know…

You're absolutely right, I was being cheeky, you are right to call me out. You have a good point: it's a risk of being overly critical that you fall into cynical ridicule.

Ah... understood, thanks; I just came from reading several posts by, let's call them 'vaccine cynics' so I guess I was primed by that mode of discussion.

Re: A game that almost died during Covid and how I made it an app

#28

Post by esrauch »

KMnO4 wrote: post #15
m_eiman wrote: post #13

The comments here along the lines of "there's already a game like that" are a bit annoying. I'm pretty sure that you can say the same about just about any game created today, and somehow people still make new ones and sometimes they get lucky and have their game become popular. What's the point of dumping on someone's work like this?

There's something about the article that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it sounds too much like an ad, maybe it's the hyperbole, like the author is suggesting he single-handedly "saved" this game from "certain death". It's not hard to imagine the criticism if the situation were different. Imagine the headline "How my startup will save millions of companies on the brink of death by providing a way to have meeti…

I feel like the "I saved a silly game my friends play from certain death during the lockdown period" is just a priori such a fun and light hearted claim that it's ridiculous to respond to it the same way you'd respond to "I saved the global economy"
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