9 ms·

Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

101 points by bpierre 5y ago

bulek 5y ago
Interestingly, the article is not about Star Sector.
- austinl 5y ago
  When I read the title, I thought the article would be about Rimworld (perhaps the most efficient way to make money in that game) https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/search/?q=organ%20harvesting https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/search/?q=organ%20harvesti...
meristohm 5y ago
Since I care about memorable stories that emerge through play, convenience is not king. It’s a difficulty balance to strike, as we all have different frustration tolerance and different reasons for playing games in the first place. I’ve always been an explorer in games, and I used to care more about being powerful. Now what little free time I spend in games is less about the (illusion of the) end goal and more about the escape into a low/no-stakes arena where the journey matters most and I don’t much care if this moment is the last I’ll ever spend in this game. I’m trading time and some light decision-making practice for memories, both solo and with friends.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >Since I care about memorable stories that emerge through play, convenience is not king. As an example, I think the biggest mistake Blizzard made with World of Warcraft is a) adding flight, and b) making flying so easy. a) devalues the hard work developers and artists put into gorgeous scenery, because those flying high overhead will miss much of it. b) destroys much of the gameplay when outdoors (where most flying occurs), because it's far too easy to (say) hover straight down near some item that needs collecting, grab it, then take off again VTOL-style.
  - soared 5y ago
    On the other hand, I quit new world because it turned into a walking simulator.
  - MaxikCZ 5y ago
    Imo the original WoW flight paths were the best. Allowed you to travel far within reasonable time, while not giving you a drop point in nevery nook and cranny. You had to actively think about which way to choose to get from anywhere to anywhere: "Is it faster if I go a little back and fly closer to my destination, walking the rest? Or do I run directly?". I think it was Cataclysm that placed gryphon masters everywhere, what a shame that was..
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Is this headline one of those "trip up a Turing Test contestant" things? Because if it is I'm a confused app.
- harblcat 5y ago
  The game's name is "Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator"
- kurthr 5y ago
  I read other postings as well, and maybe it's just quirky phrasing (of an admittedly odd topic) or ESOL, but there is a GPT ring to it.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Yep!
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  In this case, the capitalization of the words is very helpful in determining that there is a title in the middle of that title.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    I was making a funny but yes ;-)
- tasha0663 5y ago
  The italics in the title were lost
schnevets 5y ago
I haven't played this game, but I'll definitely add it to my watchlist from this insightful conversation. I had an interesting experience with friction playing the Retro Bowl (football) and Retro Goal (soccer) games on my iPhone. I don't usually play sports titles, but they build an interesting feeling where you just can't win 'em all. If you are building a franchise, some matches will be impossible to win, so you just need to try your damndest to lose less. While action games will warp you to a checkpoint when you die and roguelikes will bring you back to the beginning, these games give you a penalty and let you proceed. It's a fun procedural narrative when you have an abyssal record, pissed off investors/fans, and a team with great potential, but low morale. Unfortunately, these games are single player but F2P, so there is a tempting micro-transaction of spending $2/$5/$10+ to get a morale boost or funds. I appreciate the design decisions, but it does make me think the game traps you into failure until you spend some cash. I had to admit that I spent real money in Retro Goal. I actually justified it by pretending I had to take Qatari funding to keep my Premier League team afloat.
- LightG 5y ago
  Last line, hilarious.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  > and roguelikes will bring you back to the beginning I think the best roguelikes are the ones who let you fail and then proceed limping. Or maybe the best games in general, since I'm not sure if Rimworld counts as a roguelike. Either way, to start from the beginning in a good roguelike means to have made a chain of bad decisions.
  - brimble 5y ago
    That's more a quality of the "rogue lite" subgenre, no? Which I do personally prefer to the traditional kind. Though "fail but keep going" can go very wrong, in the case of something like FTL, where you can easily have "lost" by the end of the first or second area due to a bad roll, but still manage to limp all the way to the end (with no hope whatsoever of winning). An early "game over" would be preferable there to keep new players from wasting their time on doomed-in-the-first-15-minutes attempts that won't even be good for learning purposes (the way you have to play when you're already dead but don't know it yet and are just trying to maintain forward movement, is very different from what you do when you're on anything resembling the path to victory, in that game).
sidibe 5y ago
The way he describes friction reminds of the book Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Good book with a giant obstacle of tons of made up vocabulary. I read that a long time ago, and now I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the story/characters and how much of it was just a different level of immersion and satisfaction from getting through the friction.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  It took me about 3 years of off and on attempts to get past page 20 or so, but it was worth it when I finally did. Eventually the lingo clicks.
- austinl 5y ago
  If you liked Anathem, I'd recommend reading Gene Wolfe's series, The Book of the New Sun [1]. I didn't quite like it the first time, but decided to reread the series because I kept thinking about it a year later. The world is deep, and Wolfe does a great job of revealing parts of it, bit by bit. The use of vocabulary in the series is so unique that someone produced a companion dictionary called the Lexicon Urthus [2]. There's also a great podcast called Alzabo Soup, that covers the series in depth, chapter by chapter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5970607-lexicon-urthus https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5970607-lexicon-urthu... [3] https://www.alzabosoup.com https://www.alzabosoup.com
  - pickettd 5y ago
    As an additional data point - I've read Anathem multiple times and have loved it every time but I read The Book of the New Sun series and really disliked it (though to be fair, I only read TBotNS series once). But I know that TBotNS gets great reviews. So as always with books, your mileage may vary.
    - svachalek 5y ago
      Gene Wolfe (the author of TBotNS) loves unreliable narrators. His books are almost like a game of trying to figure out how exactly he is lying to you, with only the flaws in the narration as your guide. They don't come to a satisfying conclusion where all is revealed to you; you may never even realize you've been tricked. It's another example of friction, you have to realize the game you have entered, and be willing to figure out a novel (or in this case trilogy) sized puzzle, where the puzzle pieces are buried in perfectly ordinary prose. If it sounds like fun, and you're up for the challenge, his books can be a unique pleasure. If not, you will miss out on a lot of the more interesting things that are happening between the lines. If you're interested in the concept I recommend Fifth Head of Cerberus as a better entry point into Wolfe's writing. It's a collection of 3 novellas set on the same planet. They are inter-related but each is basically its own story-puzzle, in a much more digestible size than New Sun.
hoseja 5y ago
I thought this was gonna be about Rimworld.
- cpjreynolds 5y ago
  I'm so glad it wasn't just me.
- Arrath 5y ago
  You are not alone.
bentcorner 5y ago
Reminds me of the intentional friction in Red Dead Redemption 2. When you go through a house to take things, you have to literally see your character pick things up before it can be placed in your inventory. There is no auto-collection in this game. The result is a slower-paced game where you really feel like some guy in the outdoors cooking skinned rabbits on a stove and picking your way through an abandoned cottage in the countryside. R* could have easily not designed this friction into the game but it adds to the ambiance. To contrast this would feel very out of place in GTA, which thrives on a frenetic, chaotic experience.
- indigochill 5y ago
  Another example of intentional friction is all the fiddliness of walking and generally antagonistic terrain in Death Stranding. Since a primary way the player interacts with the game is laying down roads and lines and stuff that generally eases the pain of getting from Point A to Point B (and moreover, asynchronously cooperating with other players to construct useful routes), the initial process needs to be painful in order for the construction to feel cathartic.
the_af 5y ago
Some thoughts; note it's not my intention if some sound mildly antagonistic: What other examples of "friction" are there in this game besides that some organs in your inventory may eat other organs? That's just a single example but I don't see anything else mentioned. What's the difference between "friction" and just challenges in a game (or good old plain "difficulty"). I understand many casual click-and-wait games in the last decade essentially autoplay, and there's no way to lose: you just click, and wait (or expedite the wait by making a micropayment), and that's all there is to them. Has this become so much the norm that the concept of a game that can be difficult, or requires skill, or where you can lose, is surprising? Are UI limitations themselves a sort of friction? That's a concept I can get behind: one of my absolute favorite games is "Papers, Please!", which effectively deploys cumbersome UI as a gameplay element. You are bureaucrat and most of your game area is your desktop, which is tiny, and you must shuffle papers and overlapping game elements in that limited space under stress and with a time limit -- and the experience is great, if frustrating. So if friction is this -- a conscious way to limit the player's interaction with the game, in ways that enhance and add challenge to the gameplay experience -- then I'm ok with the term!
- andy_andy_ 5y ago
  Here’s a twitter thread from Xalavier Nelson Jr. about this in more detail: https://twitter.com/WritNelson/status/1470118973580664834?s=20&t=ZhF_W35mSquCp8re7WnQDA https://twitter.com/WritNelson/status/1470118973580664834?s=...
  - the_af 5y ago
    Thanks, it indeed adds more detail! I'm not convinced every bit of frustrating UI is good "friction". The author mentions many old games, but to be honest, even as a retrogamer I find going back to some clunky UI decisions of old games so frustrating it impedes my enjoyment of those games. I think some "friction" is indeed useful, and that the convenience of a modern UI is sometimes detrimental to the gameplay experience. To name another example, also from Lukas Pope (hey, fanboy here!) in "Return of the Obra Dinn", the player is an insurance inspector unravelling the mystery of a merchant ship that returned without crew. There is no way of teleporting between spots in the ship, even if it would be a modern and convenient UI: the author has said he wanted to recreate the feeling of walking inside a medium size ship, and teleporting would have destroyed that feeling. However, the extreme of "sometimes the UI makes you misclick or doesn't respond accurately" would be frustrating for no good gameplay role. It seems the issue described in that twitter thread, of clicking on an item but it got sold so it got swapped with another one at the last second, and you end up buying the wrong one, is borderline frustrating for no good reason. A player could accuse the author of being lazy, e.g. "you just didn't think this through and now you want to claim bugs are features", whereas the limited UI in a game like "Papers, Please!" -- like it or hate it -- is evidently intentional, and there's no mistaking that.
vanderZwan 5y ago
By the way, this game made the rounds recently for actually having Kinect 2.0 support[0]. And of course within a month someone actually recently beat the game this way[1]. Much to the surprise of the developers who did not at all design the game around it and basically hacked the support together in the span of five hours. [0] https://steamcommunity.com/app/1507780/discussions/0/3192486000805884901/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/1507780/discussions/0/3192486... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTZOLbW6XNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTZOLbW6XNU
airstrike 5y ago
> What sorts of shortcomings do you feel may be integral to a work? That can be removed? > > If you had infinite time and budget to make a game, I believe it’s still entirely fair for you, as an artist, to choose the limitations that define your work. Or for your work to, in some way, be compromised! You're a flawed human being, making a flawed execution of a flawed creative vision. The word ‘flaw’ in itself, when applied to art, is not an inherent detriment. It is instead an acknowledgement that we are communicating to each other in the limited way that we can given our limited time and perspective in this universe, and that this is in fact what makes those words exceptional. > > My point isn't that things should not be fun, but that so-called ‘shortcomings’ can be a critical part of making them fun, especially when intentionally chosen. With that context, it's been kind of jarring to play critical pieces of game canon for the first time and see imaginary Steam reviews pop up in my head. If Silent Hill 2 was released for the first time today, I’m fairly sure it would have negative Steam reviews for how foggy it was. Are those theoretical reviews correct? Yes. And are all of those theoretical reviews also wrong? Undoubtedly. This is such a interesting take, particularly that first paragraph which alone probably made the article worth reading and sharing.
Apocryphon 5y ago
For a second I thought the title was a joke about the indie game Starsector.
dkbrk 5y ago
I think friction works best when it's not completely out of the player's control. That way it's an opportunity for the player to exert their agency. If the player can't exert any control over friction though, if it's a fixed cost they have to repeatedly pay and can't do anything about, then it's just drudgery. As an example, in Papers, Please, the UI is a significant source of friction. But the player can compensate for it by figuring out the best way to organize their workspace and the best "route" to go through all the pieces of information they have to check, and then implementing that consistently. Figuring out the best way to do things is a substantial part of the gameplay. Also, in general with cases where there's no fast travel and travel is used as a source of friction, the player may still have many ways of reducing its cost. They can choose more efficient routes, find shortcuts, or obtain faster ways of traveling. An extreme case is Morrowind, where, by the middle of the game, most players will have memorized the network of various overlapping travel options and/or found or created a magic item that will allow them to zip around at ludicrous speed. I haven't played Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, but if organs eat each other, I wonder if there are any mechanics that allow the player to compensate for that, such as being able to re-arrange them as they're loaded to keep organs likely to eat one another far apart.

101 points by bpierre 5y ago

bulek 5y ago

Interestingly, the article is not about Star Sector.

austinl 5y ago
When I read the title, I thought the article would be about Rimworld (perhaps the most efficient way to make money in that game) https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/search/?q=organ%20harvesting https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/search/?q=organ%20harvesti...

meristohm 5y ago

Since I care about memorable stories that emerge through play, convenience is not king. It’s a difficulty balance to strike, as we all have different frustration tolerance and different reasons for playing games in the first place. I’ve always been an explorer in games, and I used to care more about being powerful. Now what little free time I spend in games is less about the (illusion of the) end goal and more about the escape into a low/no-stakes arena where the journey matters most and I don’t much care if this moment is the last I’ll ever spend in this game. I’m trading time and some light decision-making practice for memories, both solo and with friends.

TMWNN 5y ago
>Since I care about memorable stories that emerge through play, convenience is not king. As an example, I think the biggest mistake Blizzard made with World of Warcraft is a) adding flight, and b) making flying so easy. a) devalues the hard work developers and artists put into gorgeous scenery, because those flying high overhead will miss much of it. b) destroys much of the gameplay when outdoors (where most flying occurs), because it's far too easy to (say) hover straight down near some item that needs collecting, grab it, then take off again VTOL-style.
- soared 5y ago
  On the other hand, I quit new world because it turned into a walking simulator.
- MaxikCZ 5y ago
  Imo the original WoW flight paths were the best. Allowed you to travel far within reasonable time, while not giving you a drop point in nevery nook and cranny. You had to actively think about which way to choose to get from anywhere to anywhere: "Is it faster if I go a little back and fly closer to my destination, walking the rest? Or do I run directly?". I think it was Cataclysm that placed gryphon masters everywhere, what a shame that was..

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

Is this headline one of those "trip up a Turing Test contestant" things? Because if it is I'm a confused app.

harblcat 5y ago
The game's name is "Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator"
kurthr 5y ago
I read other postings as well, and maybe it's just quirky phrasing (of an admittedly odd topic) or ESOL, but there is a GPT ring to it.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Yep!
MauranKilom 5y ago
In this case, the capitalization of the words is very helpful in determining that there is a title in the middle of that title.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  I was making a funny but yes ;-)
tasha0663 5y ago
The italics in the title were lost

schnevets 5y ago

I haven't played this game, but I'll definitely add it to my watchlist from this insightful conversation. I had an interesting experience with friction playing the Retro Bowl (football) and Retro Goal (soccer) games on my iPhone. I don't usually play sports titles, but they build an interesting feeling where you just can't win 'em all. If you are building a franchise, some matches will be impossible to win, so you just need to try your damndest to lose less. While action games will warp you to a checkpoint when you die and roguelikes will bring you back to the beginning, these games give you a penalty and let you proceed. It's a fun procedural narrative when you have an abyssal record, pissed off investors/fans, and a team with great potential, but low morale. Unfortunately, these games are single player but F2P, so there is a tempting micro-transaction of spending $2/$5/$10+ to get a morale boost or funds. I appreciate the design decisions, but it does make me think the game traps you into failure until you spend some cash. I had to admit that I spent real money in Retro Goal. I actually justified it by pretending I had to take Qatari funding to keep my Premier League team afloat.

LightG 5y ago
Last line, hilarious.
rhn_mk1 5y ago
> and roguelikes will bring you back to the beginning I think the best roguelikes are the ones who let you fail and then proceed limping. Or maybe the best games in general, since I'm not sure if Rimworld counts as a roguelike. Either way, to start from the beginning in a good roguelike means to have made a chain of bad decisions.
- brimble 5y ago
  That's more a quality of the "rogue lite" subgenre, no? Which I do personally prefer to the traditional kind. Though "fail but keep going" can go very wrong, in the case of something like FTL, where you can easily have "lost" by the end of the first or second area due to a bad roll, but still manage to limp all the way to the end (with no hope whatsoever of winning). An early "game over" would be preferable there to keep new players from wasting their time on doomed-in-the-first-15-minutes attempts that won't even be good for learning purposes (the way you have to play when you're already dead but don't know it yet and are just trying to maintain forward movement, is very different from what you do when you're on anything resembling the path to victory, in that game).

sidibe 5y ago

The way he describes friction reminds of the book Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Good book with a giant obstacle of tons of made up vocabulary. I read that a long time ago, and now I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the story/characters and how much of it was just a different level of immersion and satisfaction from getting through the friction.

gameswithgo 5y ago
It took me about 3 years of off and on attempts to get past page 20 or so, but it was worth it when I finally did. Eventually the lingo clicks.
austinl 5y ago
If you liked Anathem, I'd recommend reading Gene Wolfe's series, The Book of the New Sun [1]. I didn't quite like it the first time, but decided to reread the series because I kept thinking about it a year later. The world is deep, and Wolfe does a great job of revealing parts of it, bit by bit. The use of vocabulary in the series is so unique that someone produced a companion dictionary called the Lexicon Urthus [2]. There's also a great podcast called Alzabo Soup, that covers the series in depth, chapter by chapter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5970607-lexicon-urthus https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5970607-lexicon-urthu... [3] https://www.alzabosoup.com https://www.alzabosoup.com
- pickettd 5y ago
  As an additional data point - I've read Anathem multiple times and have loved it every time but I read The Book of the New Sun series and really disliked it (though to be fair, I only read TBotNS series once). But I know that TBotNS gets great reviews. So as always with books, your mileage may vary.
  - svachalek 5y ago
    Gene Wolfe (the author of TBotNS) loves unreliable narrators. His books are almost like a game of trying to figure out how exactly he is lying to you, with only the flaws in the narration as your guide. They don't come to a satisfying conclusion where all is revealed to you; you may never even realize you've been tricked. It's another example of friction, you have to realize the game you have entered, and be willing to figure out a novel (or in this case trilogy) sized puzzle, where the puzzle pieces are buried in perfectly ordinary prose. If it sounds like fun, and you're up for the challenge, his books can be a unique pleasure. If not, you will miss out on a lot of the more interesting things that are happening between the lines. If you're interested in the concept I recommend Fifth Head of Cerberus as a better entry point into Wolfe's writing. It's a collection of 3 novellas set on the same planet. They are inter-related but each is basically its own story-puzzle, in a much more digestible size than New Sun.

hoseja 5y ago

I thought this was gonna be about Rimworld.

cpjreynolds 5y ago
I'm so glad it wasn't just me.
Arrath 5y ago
You are not alone.

bentcorner 5y ago

Reminds me of the intentional friction in Red Dead Redemption 2. When you go through a house to take things, you have to literally see your character pick things up before it can be placed in your inventory. There is no auto-collection in this game. The result is a slower-paced game where you really feel like some guy in the outdoors cooking skinned rabbits on a stove and picking your way through an abandoned cottage in the countryside. R* could have easily not designed this friction into the game but it adds to the ambiance. To contrast this would feel very out of place in GTA, which thrives on a frenetic, chaotic experience.

indigochill 5y ago
Another example of intentional friction is all the fiddliness of walking and generally antagonistic terrain in Death Stranding. Since a primary way the player interacts with the game is laying down roads and lines and stuff that generally eases the pain of getting from Point A to Point B (and moreover, asynchronously cooperating with other players to construct useful routes), the initial process needs to be painful in order for the construction to feel cathartic.

the_af 5y ago

Some thoughts; note it's not my intention if some sound mildly antagonistic: What other examples of "friction" are there in this game besides that some organs in your inventory may eat other organs? That's just a single example but I don't see anything else mentioned. What's the difference between "friction" and just challenges in a game (or good old plain "difficulty"). I understand many casual click-and-wait games in the last decade essentially autoplay, and there's no way to lose: you just click, and wait (or expedite the wait by making a micropayment), and that's all there is to them. Has this become so much the norm that the concept of a game that can be difficult, or requires skill, or where you can lose, is surprising? Are UI limitations themselves a sort of friction? That's a concept I can get behind: one of my absolute favorite games is "Papers, Please!", which effectively deploys cumbersome UI as a gameplay element. You are bureaucrat and most of your game area is your desktop, which is tiny, and you must shuffle papers and overlapping game elements in that limited space under stress and with a time limit -- and the experience is great, if frustrating. So if friction is this -- a conscious way to limit the player's interaction with the game, in ways that enhance and add challenge to the gameplay experience -- then I'm ok with the term!

andy_andy_ 5y ago
Here’s a twitter thread from Xalavier Nelson Jr. about this in more detail: https://twitter.com/WritNelson/status/1470118973580664834?s=20&t=ZhF_W35mSquCp8re7WnQDA https://twitter.com/WritNelson/status/1470118973580664834?s=...
- the_af 5y ago
  Thanks, it indeed adds more detail! I'm not convinced every bit of frustrating UI is good "friction". The author mentions many old games, but to be honest, even as a retrogamer I find going back to some clunky UI decisions of old games so frustrating it impedes my enjoyment of those games. I think some "friction" is indeed useful, and that the convenience of a modern UI is sometimes detrimental to the gameplay experience. To name another example, also from Lukas Pope (hey, fanboy here!) in "Return of the Obra Dinn", the player is an insurance inspector unravelling the mystery of a merchant ship that returned without crew. There is no way of teleporting between spots in the ship, even if it would be a modern and convenient UI: the author has said he wanted to recreate the feeling of walking inside a medium size ship, and teleporting would have destroyed that feeling. However, the extreme of "sometimes the UI makes you misclick or doesn't respond accurately" would be frustrating for no good gameplay role. It seems the issue described in that twitter thread, of clicking on an item but it got sold so it got swapped with another one at the last second, and you end up buying the wrong one, is borderline frustrating for no good reason. A player could accuse the author of being lazy, e.g. "you just didn't think this through and now you want to claim bugs are features", whereas the limited UI in a game like "Papers, Please!" -- like it or hate it -- is evidently intentional, and there's no mistaking that.

vanderZwan 5y ago

By the way, this game made the rounds recently for actually having Kinect 2.0 support[0]. And of course within a month someone actually recently beat the game this way[1]. Much to the surprise of the developers who did not at all design the game around it and basically hacked the support together in the span of five hours. [0] https://steamcommunity.com/app/1507780/discussions/0/3192486000805884901/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/1507780/discussions/0/3192486... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTZOLbW6XNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTZOLbW6XNU

airstrike 5y ago

> What sorts of shortcomings do you feel may be integral to a work? That can be removed? > > If you had infinite time and budget to make a game, I believe it’s still entirely fair for you, as an artist, to choose the limitations that define your work. Or for your work to, in some way, be compromised! You're a flawed human being, making a flawed execution of a flawed creative vision. The word ‘flaw’ in itself, when applied to art, is not an inherent detriment. It is instead an acknowledgement that we are communicating to each other in the limited way that we can given our limited time and perspective in this universe, and that this is in fact what makes those words exceptional. > > My point isn't that things should not be fun, but that so-called ‘shortcomings’ can be a critical part of making them fun, especially when intentionally chosen. With that context, it's been kind of jarring to play critical pieces of game canon for the first time and see imaginary Steam reviews pop up in my head. If Silent Hill 2 was released for the first time today, I’m fairly sure it would have negative Steam reviews for how foggy it was. Are those theoretical reviews correct? Yes. And are all of those theoretical reviews also wrong? Undoubtedly. This is such a interesting take, particularly that first paragraph which alone probably made the article worth reading and sharing.

Apocryphon 5y ago

For a second I thought the title was a joke about the indie game Starsector.

dkbrk 5y ago

I think friction works best when it's not completely out of the player's control. That way it's an opportunity for the player to exert their agency. If the player can't exert any control over friction though, if it's a fixed cost they have to repeatedly pay and can't do anything about, then it's just drudgery. As an example, in Papers, Please, the UI is a significant source of friction. But the player can compensate for it by figuring out the best way to organize their workspace and the best "route" to go through all the pieces of information they have to check, and then implementing that consistently. Figuring out the best way to do things is a substantial part of the gameplay. Also, in general with cases where there's no fast travel and travel is used as a source of friction, the player may still have many ways of reducing its cost. They can choose more efficient routes, find shortcuts, or obtain faster ways of traveling. An extreme case is Morrowind, where, by the middle of the game, most players will have memorized the network of various overlapping travel options and/or found or created a magic item that will allow them to zip around at ludicrous speed. I haven't played Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, but if organs eat each other, I wonder if there are any mechanics that allow the player to compensate for that, such as being able to re-arrange them as they're loaded to keep organs likely to eat one another far apart.