Quote from: Sacrosanct;580942As much as we like to think it does?

Game mechanics are aesthetics of play, and nothing - absolutely nothing - more. A well designed system that conforms to one's own personal antithetical preferences is going to be more pleasing on that level.

That's not to say it's not important - aesthetics are, in fact, quite important in pleasure-based activities, after all an aesthetically unpleasant meal is going to be immensely unsatisfying even if perfectly nutritious - but they don't have anywhere near the importance they're ascribed as having.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;581466I dont know that parsing over these details is going to get us very far as we are getting into very pedantic points, but just to respond to this. the issue is people cant agree what constitutes good design.

And this is a good example: you can't pin down "good game design" since "good game design" is a question of aesthetics, and aesthetics are subjective.

And this is why there will never be a consensus on any given edition of a game, or any particular game's suitability for any given genre, because there's no objective measure to hold up to an RPG system and say "this system is a good system".

It's very much a "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (and not the D&D kind) situation.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;581473How is that baiting?  You said you could design a glove, and you said that if it meets your goals, it's a good design.

So I'm asking you, tell me what your goals are for designing a glove.  If you have any conviction in your arguments, I'm sure this is a pretty easy thing to do.  I mean, we're talking about a glove here, not a car.

It is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.  Picking nits out of other arguments is far safer than constructing your own argument.  Even when the whole Denner crew was active, they weren't about to risk presenting their own arguments.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;581466If you set out to make a giant death ray of the earth, and your design goals have nothing to do with earthly destruction...then that is bad design.

If you set goals unrelated to destroying earth, you aren't going to make a doomsday weapon. You're going to make something else. A hair dryer maybe.

Closest thing I have to an area of expertise right now is art, and in some cases you really do have to separate the process from the product when thinking about it.

Fun and popularity are each fuzzy in their relation to their product (fun is hugely subjective, where popularity can be swayed pretty heavily by things like distribution and price) but are also pretty far divorced from the actual process. No process will guarantee a fun game, or we'd have a hell of a lot fewer duds on that front. Same goes for popularity.

Now, if we're judging a game, it's almost pointless to judge the process by which it was designed because there's really no way to know. We can only judge the product against its purpose as defined by ourselves.

QuoteI do agree with others that this thread has gotten a bit weird, and I am at least partly responsible for it going down that course, so i will leave this as my final point on the design goal part of the debate (and i am starting to repeat myself which isnever a good sign

It's funny. I expected an argument over the value of balance or something. Then things got all about semantics.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;581472This is true of what we call the pilot phase, where it goes out to a limited group of users.  But my role is included in the design process because the process isn't finalized until they get my sign off, and I'm included in working with the other two groups around redesign.

It would be like if I was part of alpha D&D playtesting before it was released to everyone else, and had an equal say in what rules should be implemented and which should be changed or removed.

When it gets to iteration things get fuzzier, and market research and design can become more closely linked in some phases. I just like clearer terms in discussions. Playtesting is playtesting. Rules design is rules design. Layout is layout. And so on.

___________________

To get back to the original topic, good rule design is trumped by:

Good core concepts (dungeon crawling will never die no matter how many mechanical facelifts it gets)
Good formatting and writing (an easy to use book gets used)
Distribution and price (an accessible game gets found and played)
Fads and luck (sadly difficult to replicate)

Just off the top of my head.

But really just because other things are more important doesn't mean the rules aren't important. Like so many other factors, if the rules are good enough they may just be a neutral factor, but if you fuck them up bad enough you can make an unusable or unfun game.

Quote from: beejazz;581494It's funny. I expected an argument over the value of balance or something. Then things got all about semantics.



.

True, and when things get overly semantic, I think that is usually an indication people (myself included) are simply digging in their heels and trying to "win" the debate rather than have a real discussion. It also usually means people have lost site of the original point.

Actually I haven't been trying to "win" the debate over whether good design really "matters" because I feel this is people once again talking about "fun" and "enjoyment" which can occur no matter what the actual thing you're doing is. It is pointless to debate over something as highly subjective as either of those things. I was responding to an assertion that there is no objective measure of "good design" which is something I reject because if what you design does everything you want and avoids what you don't want then your design was good (at least good enough to accomplish whatever it is you set out to do).

This is great! It explains perfectly why my games don't sell more - they are just far too well designed! I don't have to bother putting a solid system together any more! I can just shovel a bunch of crap together and sell it and make a mint! Pure awesome!

-clash

Quote from: MGuy;581504I was responding to an assertion that there is no objective measure of "good design" which is something I reject because if what you design does everything you want and avoids what you don't want then your design was good (at least good enough to accomplish whatever it is you set out to do).

And this is false.  Since you refuse to describe your design goals for your glove, I suggest you read this site:

http://www.goodexperience.com/tib/archives/product_design/

You will find several products that were built according to how they were designed and met all of their design goals.  By your logic, they are well-designed.  Obviously they are not.

Quote from: flyingmice;581507This is great! It explains perfectly why my games don't sell more - they are just far too well designed! I don't have to bother putting a solid system together any more! I can just shovel a bunch of crap together and sell it and make a mint! Pure awesome!

-clash

Your games are pretty damn good from what little I've seen actually. Like I said upthread though, distribution matters. I only know your games exist 'cause I'm here. Outside here and the Pundit's blog, I haven't even run into a reference to them.

If some of your games were on all kinds of store shelves, or you had lots of advertising in all the right places? I think it would have a bigger impact on your sales than your system. But if you gave that kind of support to a totally crap system the thing would still develop a bad reputation and eventually sink.

IME that's the influence of system on success: it doesn't matter if your system just works or if it's a masterpiece, but if it's actually bad it can be a dealbreaker.

Quote from: flyingmice;581507This is great! It explains perfectly why my games don't sell more - they are just far too well designed! I don't have to bother putting a solid system together any more! I can just shovel a bunch of crap together and sell it and make a mint! Pure awesome!

-clash

Nah, it's just The Man tryin' to hold you back.  If everyone knew about Better Mousetrap Games, the rest of the industry would be out of business!  

Quote from: beejazz;581510IME that's the influence of system on success: it doesn't matter if your system just works or if it's a masterpiece, but if it's actually bad it can be a dealbreaker.

There's a rather interesting thought:  what is the minimum level of design people will accept?  And is there a point where 'even better' doesn't actually matter anymore?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;581509And this is false.  Since you refuse to describe your design goals for your glove, I suggest you read this site:

http://www.goodexperience.com/tib/archives/product_design/

You will find several products that were built according to how they were designed and met all of their design goals.  By your logic, they are well-designed.  Obviously they are not.

The AC controls were meant to be visible. They weren't.

The message was meant to communicate something. It didn't.

Is a typo really based on a design goal? Anyway, the joke was meant to be funny. It wasn't.

In general, I'm pretty sure these things were actually supposed to function. As in: that was the goal.

The examples really don't illustrate your point at all.

Quote from: StormBringer;581512There's a rather interesting thought:  what is the minimum level of design people will accept?

The internet says RIFTS. I really wouldn't know except that I'm willing to put up with a lot from 3x. It's mostly stuff I didn't notice when I started that was easy to fix when I noticed it. Does that seem like a good rule of thumb for tolerable problems?

QuoteAnd is there a point where 'even better' doesn't actually matter anymore?

Better than okay but before really good...

...it's hard to quantify this stuff in any meaningful way, unfortunately.

To answer the original question: yes, good game design actually matters if what you are after is to provide a consistent reward in terms of entertainment value to your customers. What good game design does is make sure that all the moving parts of a game work together towards some specific result or results, i.e. intents on the part of the designer.

Game design is all about creating by design such subjective experiences as "fun" on the part of the user. It's something of a dichotomy, but just as much of a dichotomy as trying to understand psychological behaviors and what the triggers to these behaviors are to then derive some general understanding of the workings of the mind would be to the psychologist. I actually think that the inherent opposition there is between the goals of a game designer who tries to create a consistent game experience and the nature of role playing games which implies that the actual users actually tweak and change the product to suit their own needs, thus themselves taking part in the realization of the actual, final product, which is the game play experience itself, plays into that apparent contradiction in ways that are productive for the health of the hobby in general.

So designing a role playing game experience in particular, whether we are talking of an actual base/core game, or modules and supplements, is something of a balancing act for the game designer who needs to understand how his stuff might get used by people other than him/herself (hence research, playtesting blah blah) to create a product that maximizes its entertainment value at varying game tables, and at the same time needs to incorporate that chaotic, human element into the design itself so that it lets its users come to "own" and play the product on their own terms, and no one else's.

It's fascinating, to me.

Quote from: beejazz;581513The AC controls were meant to be visible. They weren't.

No, they were designed to function with a blue led light.  And it met that design because they worked as they were designed.  You're making an assumption that they had a design goal of, "Brightly visible in all light conditions and contrasts well against any reflections that may occur."  Obviously they did not have that goal, otherwise it wouldn't have passed user acceptance testing.  

QuoteThe message was meant to communicate something. It didn't.

It did, just horribly.

QuoteIn general, I'm pretty sure these things were actually supposed to function. As in: that was the goal.

"Work well" is never a design goal.  It's way too vague.  Design goals are a list of very specific requirements.  It's Quality Control 101 to eliminate any vague goals or requirements.  And "Work well" is about as vague as you can get.  Sure, you want it to work well, but the design goals and requirements should tell you exactly how that is going to be accomplished.

QuoteThe examples really don't illustrate your point at all.

They illustrate my point perfectly.  That is, you can have a list of design goals, and you can meet all of those goals, but that doesn't mean you have a well designed product because you forgot to account for various scenarios that may impact design.