The language of games, and inessential weirdnesses

[magistrate]

I just watched this video, on what games are like to people who don't play games, which was a much less-clickbaity and much more thoughtful video than I expected it to be. It basically focused on invisible conventions in game design, how they influence the ways that experienced gamers approach games, and how alienating they can be to people who don't come in with that user-interface vocabulary.

It put me in mind of Sumana Harihareswara's post on inessential weirdnesses in communities – that being, those things which are foreign to people outside that community, but which are not in and of themselves things that help to define a community's common purpose.

Two angles on the same general topic, I think.

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That's it. That's the post.

Comments

[sholio]

I read a really interesting article awhile back, talking about how early computer games of the Atari/Gameboy/early computer era were usually fairly accessible to new players (you didn't need a high level of skill and a specialized knowledge set to engage with them on a beginner level), but most modern games aren't -- you need a certain level of familiarity with gaming interface and a certain level of skill to make them playable and fun, or else you face an incredibly steep learning curve. So it's much harder than it used to be for new or casual players to get into gaming. But the exception are phone games, which are frequently designed for beginners, and this is one reason why so many phone games go viral, especially with non-gamer demographics like, say, middle-aged women and old people. It was really fascinating, because I had never thought about it before.

[scioscribe]

That first video was really fascinating to me, and it illuminated some of my experiences as a very casual/intermittent gamer--there are definitely whole conventions and systems that I've never learned to deal with, and I've absolutely run into that "why can't I do this?" feeling of trying to mistakenly apply real-world logic to a situation more habitual gamers would automatically understand on its own terms.

[brainwane]

Oh hey, glad my talk from a few years ago was useful to you! (I'm Sumana Harihareswara.) Thanks for mentioning it. I hope to watch that video when I have time; thanks for the link.