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Tynan Sylvester (creator of Rimworld, and author of "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences") has some great thoughts on this in the early part of

Tynan Sylvester (creator of Rimworld, and author of "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences") has some great thoughts on this in the early part of his GDC talk on building a 'story generator' rather than a game. He talks about 'apophenia' - the propensity of players to ascribe narrative meaning to events - and the way in Rimworld they strive to create simulation systems that facilitate that kind of player-provided narrative reasoning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE

PenguinCoder 5y ago
First game I thought of and glad it was mentioned in the article. It's a brutally fun game, full of sadness and triumph.
hoseja 5y ago
And the gameplay suffers greatly for it. If he strove to build a good game first, the stories would eventually be much more robust.
- p1necone 5y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with this, I had a great time playing Rimworld. It might not be to your taste, but it doesn't feel like there's any objective sacrifice to gameplay just for the sake of making the stories better - are there particular design choices you're thinking of?. Although I do get a nagging feeling that I would get more out of playing Dwarf Fortress instead every time I play Rimworld, and usually end up binging that for much longer.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    Say, the forced attacks even in the most inaccessible places whose size is directly determined by "colony wealth".
    - p1necone 5y ago
      True, I guess I never really associated that with the storytelling aspect - it just feels like a poor design decision.
      - hoseja 5y ago
        A decision to cause storytelling drama. The whole storyteller concept just throws random events at you without any deeper connection to any other systems, just to force strife for the sake of a "story".
Werewolf255 5y ago
Tynan is a great example, as well, of how your own biases will influence the emergent properties of the game. This aspect may have been changed, but when it was first implemented, male colonists were either exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual (straight or gay) while female colonists were inherently bisexual. In addition, there was a ten year biological age band where no colonist would pursue a romantic relationship with somebody who was ten years their senior/junior. It's a great game otherwise, and I'm absolutely plugging it for a recommendation, but like with the systems that cause attacks and assaults only based on colony wealth at that time (and at times encompassing visiting trader wealth too), the emergent systems are a product of the author's ideas and biases, like any other creative work.

PenguinCoder 5y ago

First game I thought of and glad it was mentioned in the article. It's a brutally fun game, full of sadness and triumph.

hoseja 5y ago

And the gameplay suffers greatly for it. If he strove to build a good game first, the stories would eventually be much more robust.

p1necone 5y ago
I'm not sure I agree with this, I had a great time playing Rimworld. It might not be to your taste, but it doesn't feel like there's any objective sacrifice to gameplay just for the sake of making the stories better - are there particular design choices you're thinking of?. Although I do get a nagging feeling that I would get more out of playing Dwarf Fortress instead every time I play Rimworld, and usually end up binging that for much longer.
- hoseja 5y ago
  Say, the forced attacks even in the most inaccessible places whose size is directly determined by "colony wealth".
  - p1necone 5y ago
    True, I guess I never really associated that with the storytelling aspect - it just feels like a poor design decision.
    - hoseja 5y ago
      A decision to cause storytelling drama. The whole storyteller concept just throws random events at you without any deeper connection to any other systems, just to force strife for the sake of a "story".

Werewolf255 5y ago

Tynan is a great example, as well, of how your own biases will influence the emergent properties of the game. This aspect may have been changed, but when it was first implemented, male colonists were either exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual (straight or gay) while female colonists were inherently bisexual. In addition, there was a ten year biological age band where no colonist would pursue a romantic relationship with somebody who was ten years their senior/junior. It's a great game otherwise, and I'm absolutely plugging it for a recommendation, but like with the systems that cause attacks and assaults only based on colony wealth at that time (and at times encompassing visiting trader wealth too), the emergent systems are a product of the author's ideas and biases, like any other creative work.