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[Schoq]

"Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity"

basically if you want to know how not to write look up that penny arcade guy's blog posts

by now he probably developed a thesaurus script to save time

[Nillo]

basically if you want to know how not to write look up that penny arcade guy's blog posts

Ha, I feel entirely the opposite. Jerry's so damn good at what he does that he could write about the sandwich he just ate and I would still enjoy reading the post.

[Schoq]

his readers not caring at all about the content could explain a lot actually

[Nillo]

Yeah, I think he writes his posts largely for entertainment value, not to make himself understood. I think that's fine; it's not like people depend on him for gaming news. They go to his site to be entertained so that is the main purpose.

[Schoq]

a bad drawing will have entertainment value to some while still being a useful example of how not to draw

[gimymblert]

"Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity"

basically if you want to know how not to write look up that penny arcade guy's blog posts

by now he probably developed a thesaurus script to save time

Clarity really depend on the audience, you will be more clear if you use words they know. The problem is to know which one. While I'm talking to people outside of video game I don't use "gameplay" I use "the game experience" (at least in french as I don't get to speak to people who don't know game), but it would have more specific connotation if it were a discussion among gamer and even more specific among game designer, so it could confuse things further to not just use it.

And word are not everything, the problem is the concept expressed by the word as seen with the problem I have with "hair", clarity isn't just about the use of big word but to convey the concept behind them. And then there is social assumption, certain very clear word are deem unworthy because they are "pedant", so using them distract from the meaning toward social posturing, but that's stupid because it has nothing to do with the actual message.

[Dragonmaw]

This isn't about social posturing. It's about truly understanding what you say. And, as Schoq's quote says, the true measure of knowledge is being able to express that knowledge clearly.

Jargon serves a specific purpose within the recesses of insular academic circles. But this isn't an insular academic circle; it's TIGsource. Using complicated sentence structures and academic terminology (often inappropriately) serves no purpose except to posture yourself as an intellectual. It's ironic to accuse others of social posturing while doing the same yourself.

There's no need to put on airs. We're all equals here.  

[gimymblert]

You contradict yourselfs a bit here, you say it's not about social posturing and then you end up about not being "put on air".

Who talk about put on air? People use the word they are exposed to, if they don't know better they will use it. If they want to express new idea they found through specialized channel and want to share make people discover it, they will use it.

Mastery isn't necessary to express idea because expressing them also lead to mastery. I mean when you have a vague idea you still talk about it, and you refine either through discussion or through time, practice also help mastery but you often need to talk about it before achieving it, going through assumption and refining.

I mean why is there is an assumption of other trying to be smart instead of being passionate. The brutal enforcement of this rules is only saying me that someone is trying to assert authority on discussion by disqualifying other based on simple subjective assessment who might or might not be true, the ambiguousness make it the perfect political tool. Especially on TIG where most people are ESL and use whatever word they are exposed to, especially in a field where most documentation are in english and you do whatever you can to express idea.

I mean look at my problem with "hair", I tried to use "curly, wooly, coarse, kinky" none correctly expressed the concept of "crépu" and using "4C" which is the correct terminology but make SOME people who are "ignorant" of hair texture even more bullish for unknown reason.

I finally landed on "afro hair" but even that is too broad and overlap with hairstyle which is confusing, but is a shortcut as I give up on sharing about "crépu" which mean no collaboration, no enlightment, discussion is effectively dead and I assume the other is ignorant about the subject by default. I mean who is "put on airs" when the suspicion is clearly an excuse to bullish behavior and social disqualification (something I have suspiciously more frequently since I start working explicitly on black character with more care that it used to be put onto that subject).

It does not promote discussion nor exploration. Its just use to shutdown discussion and assert social control based on feign feeling, it use "equality" to make some more equal than other. Assumption is never good. I mean I had a person tell me that "AAA", which is a financial rating, originate from gamer's slang, when in fact it was a publisher's rating co opted by gamer later.

[gimymblert]

I'm not fond of my wording above, posted too early

[Dragonmaw]

Gimmy, I suggest you use Hemingway (http://www.hemingwayapp.com/) to judge the readability of your posts. It's a great tool, and I use it all the time when writing.

Aim for a "Grade" of 13 or lower. I average around 11, mostly because I'm verbose and like to write long clause-filled sentences.

As for what you said: this isn't about politics, or social posturing (at least on the part of others), it's about conveying yourself in a way that all can understand.

Paul Eres, for all his pedantry, is supremely understandable, because he strives to be understood. I think you could learn a lot from that.

Or don't, and continue being needlessly obscure and jargon-obsessed. Up to you, I guess. But I'm pretty much done with this discussion.

Ah, I see what you mean. Is pace the same as pacing? I sort of see pacing as the regular interval of actions, which is just one possible ingredient to incite Flow.

Yeah, pace/pacing are the same thing. It's the actionable version of flow; good pace leads to flow state.

But at the same time, I think a big issue with game design is it's lack of well defined terms. While 'ludology' and 'kinaesthetics' sound pretty pretentious, I like them a lot more than 'theory of play' and 'game feel'.

Although on the other hand, one thing I love about game design is that players can jump in to the discussion without facing a wall of vernacular. Perhaps a balance is in order?

I think that, as in all things, there's a balance to be struck depending on the company you are in. I'm not really one for "kinaesthetics" though, it's too broad.

[s0]

Paul Eres, for all his pedantry, is supremely understandable, because he strives to be understood. I think you could learn a lot from that.

Or don't, and continue being needlessly obscure and jargon-obsessed. Up to you, I guess. But I'm pretty much done with this discussion.

but gimmy is not needlessly obscure at all. i understand 99% of his posts perfectly well now that his english is decent. there are/were definitely pretentious people on tig (i won't name names) but gimmy is not one of them imo.

[gimymblert]

@dragonmaw
Thanks that's useful!

Being "ESL" I don't have the minute understanding like a native speaker like Paul Eres. nor the cultural context of word (Which one is a jargon? they all look English to me). Especially when my primary exposition of English is technical talk. None are casual talk. Framing me as jargon obsess is a misunderstanding of the situation.

That does not address the situation with hair, it's not even jargon.

[Dragonmaw]

@dragonmaw
Thanks that's useful!

Being "ESL" I don't have the minute understanding like a native speaker like Paul Eres. nor the cultural context of word (Which one is a jargon? they all look English to me). Especially when my primary exposition of English is technical talk. None are casual talk. Framing me as jargon obsess is a misunderstanding of the situation.

That does not address the situation with hair, it's not even jargon.

I'm not really touching the situation with hair because it's not something I'm comfortable sharing an opinion on.

As for the rest, I understand. That's why I recommended Hemingway. It'll help you re-evaluate your writing to make it easier to understand and less jargon-filled.

I also recommend reading, of all things, pulp novels and other popular English books, especially old science fiction, thrillers, and young adult novels. Clive Cussler, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, J.K. Rowling, etc. It'll give you a good idea for what sort of writing is most readable, since those books are aimed at average English literacy.

Also, Sinclair is ESL and his posts are super readable, so that's another good resource to read right here on this very forum.

[JWK5]

Like Sinclair said, most of the time I find Gimmy to be pretty understandable, and when I don't I usually ask him to elaborate or explain using different wording.

I get that it can be pretty frustrating for you to have to sort out what Gimmy is saying but it is probably pretty frustrating for him too to have to juggle with words in order for you to understand him. Really that is just the price you pay for conversation. Communication is a collaborative effort, one that often takes patience. In the end, as long as you understand what someone means the words are just words (within reason and obviously unless we are talking professional literary works or something of that nature).

Learning better writing skills is never a bad thing, of course.

[Dragonmaw]

It's mostly just irritation that this is an environment for all of us to engage in normal everyday casual conversation, so running face-first into a wall of jargon and large words (that, admittedly, I usually understand) is annoying.

Doubly so when they are used either inappropriately.

[JWK5]

From now on just respond to them with half-naked pictures of washed up actors. Either he'll change his vocabulary or he'll develop a profound appreciation for David Hasselhoff. Either way you've dealt his psyche a vicious blow.

[s0]

the first CD i ever owned was david hasselhoff's greatest hits. true story.

[s0]

http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

what the heck is this app's beef with adverbs. that is extremely bafflingly weirdly strange.

[Dragonmaw]

i generally ignore the adverb/adjective marker lol (prob why i average around 11-12 for my public writing). but the beef is that adverbs usually don't add anything to a sentence, so if you use one, you better be sure it's necessary.

[Drof]

I think that, as in all things, there's a balance to be struck depending on the company you are in. I'm not really one for "kinaesthetics" though, it's too broad.

I can't say there's a situation I'd use it instead of 'game feel', but I think the point is that it's a bit broader. It's just not immediately understood by everyone reading it so I feel like it's sudo-jargon. The fact that there is a strong difference between 'game juice' and 'game feel' annoys me because you can never know if a layman is using the right one. Especially when I think that difference can be difficult to detect.

i generally ignore the adverb/adjective marker lol (prob why i average around 11-12 for my public writing). but the beef is that adverbs usually don't add anything to a sentence, so if you use one, you better be sure it's necessary.

That makes me sad. While I agree that functionally they do not add much or anything to a message, they can also be ignored / not understood and still have a clear message.

Your audience understanding you might be more important, but there's something to be said for writing in an engaging style.