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Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

gamedeveloper.com

11–20 of 62 posts

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#11

I haven't played this game, but I'll definitely add it to my watchlist from this insightful conversation. I had an interesting experience with friction playing the Retro Bowl (football) and Retro Goal (soccer) games on my iPhone. I don't usually play sports titles, but they build an interesting feeling where you just can't win 'em all. If you are building a franchise, some matches will be impossible to win, so you ju…

> and roguelikes will bring you back to the beginning

I think the best roguelikes are the ones who let you fail and then proceed limping. Or maybe the best games in general, since I'm not sure if Rimworld counts as a roguelike. Either way, to start from the beginning in a good roguelike means to have made a chain of bad decisions.

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#13
post #9

The way he describes friction reminds of the book Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Good book with a giant obstacle of tons of made up vocabulary. I read that a long time ago, and now I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the story/characters and how much of it was just a different level of immersion and satisfaction from getting through the friction.

It took me about 3 years of off and on attempts to get past page 20 or so, but it was worth it when I finally did. Eventually the lingo clicks.

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#14

I haven't played this game, but I'll definitely add it to my watchlist from this insightful conversation. I had an interesting experience with friction playing the Retro Bowl (football) and Retro Goal (soccer) games on my iPhone. I don't usually play sports titles, but they build an interesting feeling where you just can't win 'em all. If you are building a franchise, some matches will be impossible to win, so you ju…

Maybe I’ve had good luck but I’ve run across more f2p games that have all the trappings of dark patterns and having to pay just to win and … they’re actually good games and skill wins over pay to win.

I wish there was a good way to classify a “f2p… but reasonably balanced “ game.

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#15

Is this headline one of those "trip up a Turing Test contestant" things? Because if it is I'm a confused app.

In this case, the capitalization of the words is very helpful in determining that there is a title in the middle of that title.

I was making a funny but yes ;-)

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#16
post #7

Is this headline one of those "trip up a Turing Test contestant" things? Because if it is I'm a confused app.

I read other postings as well, and maybe it's just quirky phrasing (of an admittedly odd topic) or ESOL, but there is a GPT ring to it.

Yep!

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#17
post #9

The way he describes friction reminds of the book Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Good book with a giant obstacle of tons of made up vocabulary. I read that a long time ago, and now I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the story/characters and how much of it was just a different level of immersion and satisfaction from getting through the friction.

If you liked Anathem, I'd recommend reading Gene Wolfe's series, The Book of the New Sun [1]. I didn't quite like it the first time, but decided to reread the series because I kept thinking about it a year later. The world is deep, and Wolfe does a great job of revealing parts of it, bit by bit.

The use of vocabulary in the series is so unique that someone produced a companion dictionary called the Lexicon Urthus [2]. There's also a great podcast called Alzabo Soup, that covers the series in depth, chapter by chapter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5970607-lexicon-urthu... [3] https://www.alzabosoup.com

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#18
post #3

Interestingly, the article is not about Star Sector.

When I read the title, I thought the article would be about Rimworld (perhaps the most efficient way to make money in that game)

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/search/?q=organ%20harvesti...

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#19
post #9

The way he describes friction reminds of the book Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Good book with a giant obstacle of tons of made up vocabulary. I read that a long time ago, and now I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the story/characters and how much of it was just a different level of immersion and satisfaction from getting through the friction.

I've never really heard it talked about explicitly so I don't have vocabulary for it but I think playing with this is a fairly common device in fiction. It also fills a similar role as throwing a bunch of languages/writing systems or fiction formats does at you does. I'm thinking of 'always coming home' and 'the last samurai.' Each kind of disorients you at first and obscures parts of the books, but then is rewarding as you learn them and reveal those elements.

Definitely notable when it's tweaked up really high like stephenson likes to do, but I think that's a knob a lot of authors twist to varying degrees.

Re: Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

#20

Since I care about memorable stories that emerge through play, convenience is not king. It’s a difficulty balance to strike, as we all have different frustration tolerance and different reasons for playing games in the first place. I’ve always been an explorer in games, and I used to care more about being powerful. Now what little free time I spend in games is less about the (illusion of the) end goal and more about…

>Since I care about memorable stories that emerge through play, convenience is not king.

As an example, I think the biggest mistake Blizzard made with World of Warcraft is a) adding flight, and b) making flying so easy.

a) devalues the hard work developers and artists put into gorgeous scenery, because those flying high overhead will miss much of it. b) destroys much of the gameplay when outdoors (where most flying occurs), because it's far too easy to (say) hover straight down near some item that needs collecting, grab it, then take off again VTOL-style.

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