can it has be indie pie time now please

Also where is the love for cake 

All the trackmania games. Assuming you like tripping balls.

It isn't really until you get the count that the real fun begins, with lots of crazy demands, restricting the trade of socks just as the caravans start leaving with all the narrow silk socks you traded with them, and the hammerer that lays out Dwarven justice by bashing in the fisherdwarf's skull for not making a pair of shell amulets.

My brother had a fortress that was like sin city. It had previously been prosperous, but then he got a morale problem, and the crime rate went through the roof. He ended up with a legendary sherrif.

Probably my favorite example of the crap that was going on was when one of the convicts went berserk and ripped a set of iron manacles out of the wall, and started rampaging around. As soon as that sherrif stepped in the room, the berserk dwarf escaped through the back door. Eventually, the sherrif cornered him in a tomb, and punched him in the chest so hard it collapsed both lungs and his heart. Then he just picked him up and put him in an open casket nearby. Falcon punch + james bond one liner = awesome.

I love how the whole thing is written in his peculiar dialect of marketey-buzzword-lawyerspeak.

Fixed. I've had two interviews since April. This with an honors degree, even. So depressing.

Fixed indeed. Manhugs for capitalism. It must feel rough to fail so badly so fast.

What if one of us sucks at the game and the player gets killed?

Eh, the other thing I've seen is to resume from a previous version of the fort if one player fails for whatever reason, then keep on going wit tha next dude.

Hell yes, this sounds like fun.

Also, I think part of the reason the really successful threads have done well was the players keeping pretty detailed journals of the goings on to entertain with. Boatmurdered did that a lot.

Still, how do things really resonate with a player? These kinds of problems have already been diagnosed and over diagnosed in other media, with thousands of books on all the different ways certain pieces of art speak to humanity. I guess my question might be what makes gameplay - or whatever it is that makes a game a game - truly resonate with a person. How is it that Mother 3, Today I Die, Monkey Island, and Halo 3 all resonate with people, yet all of these games are wildly different form one another? What is the base element that makes these all Games?

Well, I've never played mother 3 or monkey island, but I would speculate that today I die describes hope, which is why it meant so much the first time I saw it.

Halo 3 on the other hand has nothing new to say, but it fulfils the needs of exploration and simple agression. If you don't want to travel to a new place and shoot interesting people, I don't think halo 3 would do much for you. On the other hand, the multiplayer serves the need to be competitive, but not the other two that the single player game does. I think this is why there are people who only play singleplayer, or only play multiplayer.

Basically, if the game fails to provide what you want or need, it will not be fun. If it satisfies that need, it will be fun.
I suppose you could make it more general by replacing 'fun' with 'engaging'.

A good example of a failure at this for most people was spore. Spore was not fun to me, because when I saw the trailers, I was expecting a lifesim(nurturing, exploration), but when I played it it turned out to be popcap style timesinks(one-upmanship, accomplishment) and a star control styled mining sim(strategy).

Conversely, the creature creator was fun for awhile, because it was a novelty, and it filled a need for new things. 30 or 40 pointless creatures later, and it had sort of worn out its welcome with me, because I had pretty much exhausted the depth of what I wanted to do with it, so it was no longer a new thing.

I actually have a totally clear, concise, almost objective definition of "fun" in the context of video games. It's measured by how long I can play without thinking of something else, like what time it is or remembering stuff I need to get done today. Fun is all about saturating my attention without overloading it. I guess it's a bit like "flow", but less ambiguous. I find it's useful to define "fun" in this way, although there are certainly other useful definitions to be found in the context of video games.

I don't know. I would say flow is currently better defined than fun. Have a look at drawing on the right side of the brain. That book sort of defines a state of flow as a state of complete instinctual focus on a single subject. You can see some athletes doing it during Time Warp clips. I don't think it's a designer's job to influence that state.

I think the best metric of fun is simply how well the game fills a need. If you don't need the game for whatever reason, it will not be fun. I know this is a bit general. It's sort of a half formed observation at this point, but I'll show you where I'm coming from.

People find art games fun when the art game tells them something they need to hear. An art game without an intended message is just a game, and if it's lacking in gameplay, it will be panned as such. A really good example is Daniel Benmergui. Today I die is fantastic to me, because the first time I played it, I was into some hard times, and I found it incredibly uplifting. However, I think Story Teller is crappy to me because it has absolutely nothing to say to me. Similarily I don't like passage because what it has to say means nothing to me, despite having a far stronger message than StoryTeller.

Conversely, traditional competitive games are more fun for other reasons, more due to the function rather than the form, but still because they satisfy a need. For instance, Unreal tournament satisfies my need to unwind, because it caters to my desire to break things when I am frustrated. TA Spring is fun when I need to think clearly, because it has the same micromanagement and deception as starcraft, except huge. Recently I've found that games that offer accomplishment at one thing or another to be no fun, because I feel that I accomplish far more when programming or doing something more creative.

I'm not sure how clear that was, but my basic observation is that games are fun when they resonate with you personally, and they resonate best when they let you do something you need to do, or hear something you need to hear.

Also, I feel that game designs are stronger when they refine their delivery to a single need. I have less evidence to back this up, but as a player I find that the less focused a design is, the more it directs me towards things I don't want to do. With a cleaner design, it is up to the player. I think 'hybrid' is a dangerous term because it is typically bandied about by people who think designing something better means adding more things to it. Hybrids are not necessarily a death sentence, however. On this very board, Spelunky is a hybrid with a terrifically focused design.

I have taken a crapton of time writing this and a bunch of stuff has been posted by now, so I'll end it here. Looking at what has been posted apparently I missed something important because game design = drama

Mad manhugs to any poor bastards trying to find a job in Vancouver this summer.

Now it's kinda getting douchy. 

eh, maybe I'm just jaded. The cameraguy is definitely an asshole though.

There was an update to the srs bsns world of warcraft video today. Also squirrelmanbaby.

"Hmm, look at all of these suits...this guy is a cash cow. I wish I were his lawyer."

This?

Also mrfredman is winning it. I had almost forgotten the exact scope of the dude's douchery. It's pretty spiffy that he's picked fights with all of those major companies. As soon as they have a means, I hope they get all up in his business too.

I cooked homemade frenchfries today.

Then I ate them all myself.

Sometimes I fucking love living on my own.

Everyone needs to read the somnambulist. That book is some fun.

Also, I like Terry Pratchett because his writing is funny in a really smart way. If only that goddamn christmas special hadn't been made. GOD that movie ruined the book for me.

...but you can't have sex with Catholics or Brazilians 

Sure can. I herd the pope has skills.

Someone should make a game called EDGE EDGE EDGE EDGE AN EDGY GAME ALSO TROLLBAIT if langdell ever gets shut down, just to rub it in. Then release it on Itunes.

YES

 

every single story has some kind of conflict at it's core, it's necessary and unavoidable.

There are, however nonviolent conflicts.  And they can still make perfectly good stories and/or games.  World of Goo, for example, definitely has a conflict (you against gravity) but is not terribly violent.  Conflict doesn't HAVE to mean "an antagonist that gets hurt physically".

I have a notes file with a whole ton of random game concepts I want to keep around incase I get the time to work on them. One of them was for a roguelike where you play as a halfling lawyer who has been thrown down a well by a loan shark, and have to brave the sewers and dungeons to get back out. The scheme was to make the game kill you with an amusing message for initiating combat at all, since the hero is such a weakling. You would have to move through the dungeon carefully, avoiding fights and negotiating with the monsters. That sort of thing. I wrote some madness about a tutorial level where you have to become the king of rats.

Nonviolent game concepts are not that hard, but making a lot of traditional genres that way is a challenge, because I think you lose a lot of the visceral nature. I dunno. It doesn't quite feel the same navigating dialog trees in old RPGs now that I've played UT3 at double speed with super berserk and titan mode with 31 bots 

Regarding Xcom vs Xcom fights, etc. There is a game called ufo2000 which covers tactical multiplayer combat of squads chosen with points. Although I haven't played much and can't say much more. But making the same for my game would be redundant I think. So im sticking only with full campaing mode and only xcom vs alien.

That's probably a safer project anyways, and doesn't diminish the concept at all.

I've played ufo2k quite a lot at lan parties, and it isn't X-com exactly, since it has a lot of weapon mod packs (missile launcher minigun lololol). It's more of a SWAT tactics game, since the aliens are not significantly different from the humans in the same ways they were in the game. IE chrysallid + melee != zombeh tiem, but the floater and etherial can still fly.

Also they overhauled the armor system a little. I think it allows for spam to eventually overwhelm armor, but don't quote me on that.