Monday, August 30, 2004
Round and Round and Round we go
Some thoughts on game design. It's a hobby of mine; I consider myself fairly good at it. And I've been at it long enough to start making some meta-observations. One such came to me earlier today, having to do with cycles of thought.
This is prompted by the fact that I'm at a mild low ebb with regards to work on High Trader, and a slow but comforting increasing ebb of enthusiasm with regards to work on Heresy. And I'm learning to spot both trends, and to make some interesting hypotheses...
My current thought is that part of why game design is hard centers around two cycles. Linked, but separate. One is the cycle of enthusiasm; a given design moves from obsession to slog and back again, over (for me) a long timescale, on the order of six months or a year for a full cycle. So far, it's been the case that I end up needing to last through at least one of the slog periods, in which I'm just not interested enough to actually work on something, before it can even near publication. I understand this makes me a pain to work with. The second cycle is the cycle of ideas, those sparks which - in the right soil, to mix metaphors - catch, grow, and shape the wine of inspiration.
My realization this afternoon is that not only are these two distinct cycles, but they interact and interfere with one another as they go. I've had some really cool ideas in the last week or so which, if implemented, would brutally reshape the way Heresy is run; stuff like doing away with the dice (again) and so on. This is of course not a unique occurrence, I'm not claiming to be special in suffering this issue; rather the reverse. It hits everybody like this, from time to time. A design (or other project) hits an enthusiasm slump, and moves slower... and the idea train catches up, and jumps it like a demented hijacker. The alternate problem also exists; the enthusiasm cycle peaks, but the idea cycle is at low ebb, and you get stuck in a rut with one (possibly suboptimal) idea-set.
I think the latter happens less commonly, which implies to me that the idea cycle is dependent (in cycle time, peak height, maybe a DC offset... hard to measure and not worth force-fitting to those terms) on the enthusiasm cycle. Duh, right? I'm not so sure. The idea cycle is that spark of lightning, and while it may be that manipulating the enthusiasm cycle is helpful, it's not like jumping up and down with glee is automatically enough to seduce the Muse. Witness the efforts of thousands of gamer fanboys through the ages, among others. Another metaphor might be that enthusiasm provides a channel, a pathway, for ideas to pour down - if other conditions are right.
I seem to be rambling.
Certainly this all brings me back to the idea that enthusiasm itself, as a key quality, is one of the things which makes life really worthwhile. One of the things that distinguishes depression from fun. So how do we manipulate that cycle? Better living through chemistry? (Actually, that's not a bad way to express the intent of the actual better living through chemistry thought, cf. Timothy Leary et al, which I've always respected a lot while lacking any desire to emulate it directly.) What else? I'm not sure.
Long, hot showers seem to play a positive role. Childcare, alas, seems to play a negative one. But just identifying individual factors is a long way from giving me a technique... a way to manipulate what I care about, what I gush about and stay up late for, what I'm willing to injure myself over.
But that can wait.
This is prompted by the fact that I'm at a mild low ebb with regards to work on High Trader, and a slow but comforting increasing ebb of enthusiasm with regards to work on Heresy. And I'm learning to spot both trends, and to make some interesting hypotheses...
My current thought is that part of why game design is hard centers around two cycles. Linked, but separate. One is the cycle of enthusiasm; a given design moves from obsession to slog and back again, over (for me) a long timescale, on the order of six months or a year for a full cycle. So far, it's been the case that I end up needing to last through at least one of the slog periods, in which I'm just not interested enough to actually work on something, before it can even near publication. I understand this makes me a pain to work with. The second cycle is the cycle of ideas, those sparks which - in the right soil, to mix metaphors - catch, grow, and shape the wine of inspiration.
My realization this afternoon is that not only are these two distinct cycles, but they interact and interfere with one another as they go. I've had some really cool ideas in the last week or so which, if implemented, would brutally reshape the way Heresy is run; stuff like doing away with the dice (again) and so on. This is of course not a unique occurrence, I'm not claiming to be special in suffering this issue; rather the reverse. It hits everybody like this, from time to time. A design (or other project) hits an enthusiasm slump, and moves slower... and the idea train catches up, and jumps it like a demented hijacker. The alternate problem also exists; the enthusiasm cycle peaks, but the idea cycle is at low ebb, and you get stuck in a rut with one (possibly suboptimal) idea-set.
I think the latter happens less commonly, which implies to me that the idea cycle is dependent (in cycle time, peak height, maybe a DC offset... hard to measure and not worth force-fitting to those terms) on the enthusiasm cycle. Duh, right? I'm not so sure. The idea cycle is that spark of lightning, and while it may be that manipulating the enthusiasm cycle is helpful, it's not like jumping up and down with glee is automatically enough to seduce the Muse. Witness the efforts of thousands of gamer fanboys through the ages, among others. Another metaphor might be that enthusiasm provides a channel, a pathway, for ideas to pour down - if other conditions are right.
I seem to be rambling.
Certainly this all brings me back to the idea that enthusiasm itself, as a key quality, is one of the things which makes life really worthwhile. One of the things that distinguishes depression from fun. So how do we manipulate that cycle? Better living through chemistry? (Actually, that's not a bad way to express the intent of the actual better living through chemistry thought, cf. Timothy Leary et al, which I've always respected a lot while lacking any desire to emulate it directly.) What else? I'm not sure.
Long, hot showers seem to play a positive role. Childcare, alas, seems to play a negative one. But just identifying individual factors is a long way from giving me a technique... a way to manipulate what I care about, what I gush about and stay up late for, what I'm willing to injure myself over.
But that can wait.
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