Not that that’s a bad thing. As Raph Koster suggests, the march of technology has perhaps opened too many doors and thus paralyzed the creativity of the game industry. Faced with an infinite sea of possibilities, people tend to stick with what they know. If they know FPSes, that’s what they’ll make. If they know a notational system of actions, risks, and rewards, maybe they’ll use that to create interesting gameplay.

I’m very impressed, Danc. I’m definitely going to give this a try.

One thing I was curious about though: what are those long low purple bumps in the New Level and High Score channels? (Maybe I should ask that in the Lost Garden comments)

It must be said that any reductionist compression of an inherently emotional artistic medium will not be perfect. Even musical notation cannot capture a musical performance in all it’s subtle detail.

What I’ve been surprised by is how much of even a nuanced RPG *can* be captured by a system like this. It is quite shocking when put into action. The next time you play a game, keep track of the rewards and flow of the game play. It isn’t the only possible view of the experiance, but it provides powerful insight into exactly the complex interelations between design that you describe. Our brain is an amazing analysis tool. By giving it nicely sorted, visual information, it discovers all sorts of interesting patterns that we are otherwise left to merely ‘feel’.

Fun stuff. :-)

take care
Danc.