Jophiel wrote:
I'd be more upset by Jaffe's thing if I could find a hint of a point within his stream of consciousness babbling.
That's a large portion of the problem. I'd find a point to harp on, then reread his speech and find that he contradicted himself just a few minutes later.
"Games are a terrible medium for telling stories..."
(Two paragraphs later)
"Now, I'm not saying that games shouldn't tell stories. I've played some games that tell some great stories."
Etc. etc. I think that I'm partly annoyed by the fact that I'm having to translate his own argument for him before I can even begin the rebuttal. Not a good way to start an editorial.
If you run it through some filters, it seems like you can distill his point down to saying that "if a designer's only goal at the onset of the design process is to tell linear narrative, then he should just write a book."
Dunno if I agree with that. I've been led to believe that the design process can be fluid and unpredictable from my arch. education. You can do your damndest to make something that achieves a particular goal, but have it succeed for entirely different ones, sometimes by no more than happy accident.
That's only one of the angles that I could take. Trying to sort out all the particulars got rather overwhelming. I feel like I could write volumes about this stuff, but it's all overkill for the hypothetical article. I'm having trouble focusing.
Probably best to let it marinate.
Edited, Feb 20th 2012 2:20am by Eske