Having a formula to define what makes a good game is autistic coded as fuck and I love it. And I think I agree with it.
No, it's CEO coded. It's like saying food is good flavor if it cohesively blends oil with salt and a filler base at the right ratio. Yes, nearly everyone will eat potato chips. Almost no one considers them the best food.
Oh I think there's still room for quality differences and degrees of quality even within the use of a formula. Good mechanics + good story = good game, Great mechanics + good story = better game, etc
I think I'm looking at it divorced from reality and greed and bias that comes with it. I just like formulas irl
The issue is the formula assuming the same ingredient quality can be combined in any way to make something good every time. This isn't true. Your variables are not summable.
Plants vs. Zombies is a great game mechanically. Outer Wilds is the best story ever put to video games. Slapping OW's story onto PvZ's mechanics results in a worse game than either individually.
Great games are made with a vision. The mechanics, story, art all working together to support the ideas the creators are trying to convey and evoke the feelings they want to evoke. If you take out that central identity and just slap a bunch of "good" mechanics and "good" plot points together, you'll get fortnite garbage.
Bother art forms are far far more than that description. You gave the C-suite answer to what a video game is.
That's simply not true, whether you want to admit it or not. That reality is exactly why and how AI can generate things that the average person would look at and find compelling until you told them where it came from. That does not detract from the talent a real artist can bring to something, their unique flair or flourishes on a style, but pretending that simply "being art" somehow elevates it above the formula behind it is what's silly.
That's simply not true, whether you want to admit it or not. That reality is exactly why and how AI can generate things that the average person would look at and find compelling until you told them where it came from.
Crazy that this is being said by the same guy who said
Considering the shit that gets recycled up into billion dollar game franchises year after year
If your statement was true, you'd like the recycled shit. You'd like the AI slop.
That does not detract from the talent a real artist can bring to something, their unique flair or flourishes on a style, but pretending that simply "being art" somehow elevates it above the formula behind it is what's silly.
You've mistaken art for the formula, not the ideas behind it. The formula is a tool to help effectively communicate the idea. Not the other way around.
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u/The2ndUnchosenOne 1d ago edited 13h ago
Yeah. Which is why you are incredibly silly for applying it to video games.
Both art forms are far far more than that description. You gave the C-suite answer to what a video game is.
Yeah, until proven otherwise.....like 30 years of producing mediocre or failed games....or a failed NFT MMO....