Edd

You guys are all making rad things

@ Gaizokubanou: I gotta say, I think I disagree on almost every point, except possibly RTS / 4X style games - which admittedly, I don't have an awful lot of experience with. Re: stealth & driving - I think if you were to plot the engagement curve of a particular level, or the difficulty curve of the levels through the campaign / story or whatever you'd find pretty much the same 'wriggly liine trending upwards'. I can sort of see a case for stealth, due to the required patience, but also stealth levels often seem to have bottlenecks of difficulty with relatively safe zones between them, to create that curve? Re: 4X / RTS - I have literally no experience of true 4X games (never played Civ properly, could never get into it :/), do Total War games sort of count? Both of this type seems to go for high starting excitement / busy-ness, then with a sort resource gathering / minor expansion lull before real enemy skirmishes kick in? I would say that both these types suffer from interminable endings. Do you have some examples of the kinds of RTS's you're thinking of? I't possible I am not thinking old-school enough xx edd

Something like The Tree of Life is spot on. While it doesn't exactly do this, Synechdoche, New York in my mind sort of qualifies, it always seemed to me to have an uncommonly long-tail of an ending, though I suspect that achieved more with affect than running time. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (in this crowd at least ) Infinite Jest very much qualifies. Parabolic intensity re: MMOs is super interesting to me (especially in the sense that people quit because of it). This seems like the effect of unsustainable pacing curve collapsing on itself, rather than something carefully planned, I wonder how different those two things would feel to play? I'm also wondering if disconnect is required for this to work in games? The only current gamic examples I can think of are the kind of things that people argue aren't really games, like Mountain, or things totally intended to create a kind of harmonious zen-ness such as that one about fixing broken pots. Also re juv3nal: That link is totaly rad, thank you

That, is a helpful and insightful reply, thank you! It seems that maybe there is a kind of continuum, with games that adhere to the pacing curve fractally (from top to bottom, narrative to mechnics) at one end and those which have a player-defined top (narrative) layer, like Minecraft. I guess what's interesting me at the moment is this: Partly because this is the recieved wisdom, and therefore I am inherently distrustful of it I feel like there must surely be some games that subvert this kind of pacing in a purposeful & succesful way? And if not whay not? There are plenty of examples in other media that play with pacing in unusual ways, is it just that games haven't got there yet or there a real reason why games are less (or seem less) forgiving on changes to that peak/trough structure? Sorry that's a lot of questions, they are not supposed to interregatory Just kind of musing out loud, but on the internet. xx Edd

Hi folks, I am new at this here board, but the Idle Thumbs team always seem to go on abouthow rad the forums are, so I thought I'd check it out! Anyway, I'm writing / trying to write a wee blog about unusual narrative arcs i.e. ones which aren't three-act structure and the tension / excitement goes up over time in a wiggly line. In my experience / off the top of my head there aren't really any games that play with this structure in any particularly progressive way (temporal tricks don't count!). SO I was wondering if maybe you nice people could help me out? If you've any ideas for where I might *start* looking for games of this uncommon variety, I would be mighty grateful xx Edd p.s this extra credits video probably provides a better description than wiggly upwards lines: