Designer Notes 17: Ananda Gupta

[Soren Johnson]

In this episode, Soren interviews game designer Ananda Gupta, best known as the co-designer of Twilight Struggle and the lead designer of XCOM: Enemy Within. They discuss why DC has no fort in For the People, whether Labyrinth's neocon design is intentional, and should Twilight Struggle use dice to resolve conflicts. They also assume quite incorrectly that Command & Conquer: Generals was released before 9/11. Who knew?!?

 

Games Discussed: Lode Runner, Ancient Art of War, Diplomacy, Risk series, Paths of Glory, Twilight Struggle, History of the World, Labyrinth, A Distant Plain, Sept. 12th, Civ 3: Conquests, A Force More Powerful, X-COM, XCOM

 

https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/ananda-gupta

[cornchip]

Good interview. Was this recorded awhile ago? I was hoping to hear a bit about Ananda's work at Riot but he was talking like he'd left Firaxis but couldn't say where he was going yet.

 

And yes, Generals dropped after the Iraq war was underway. I remember because one of the USA tanks would occasionally say, "enemies of the free world," which I assumed to be commentary but probably was referring to the target I'd set for it.

[tberton]

Man, I think this was the best episode yet! The whole discussion about simulation vs. evocation was fascinating. I loved the sabermetric discussion too, since I was thinking of something similar (although I'll note that ground-ball rates vs. fly-ball rates is something that a pitcher has control over and does affect BABIP).

 

Great job to both of you!

[osmosisch]

Lovely discussion. Thanks!

 

Are there any women coming on soon? The sausagefest is beginning to bother me a bit.

[Forderz]

Interviews like this are the perfect counter towards arguments that political statements and such have no place in gaming. What a rich and provoking discussion!

[billt721]

I certainly never expected to hear Voros McCracken and/or DIPS brought up on an Idle Thumbs podcast!

 

Really interesting discussion, especially seeing how many of the things discussed in relation to XCOM: EU/EW made it into XCOM 2.

[SamS]

Great show. On the topic of making the player think like their historical counterpart I would recommend R.G Collingwood's The Idea of History, that sets out his theory that the job of the historian is the 'recreation of an historical thought'.

 

 

How, or on what conditions, can the historian know the past ?In considering this question, the first point to notice is that the past is never a given fact which he can apprehend empirically by perception. Ex hypothesi, the historian is not an eyewitness of the facts he desires to know. Nor does the historian fancy that he is ; he knows quite well that his only possible knowledge of the past is mediate or inferential or indirect, never empirical. The second point is that this mediation cannot be effected by testimony. The historian does not know the past by simply believing a witness who saw the events in question and has left his evidence on record. That kind of mediation would give at most not knowledge but belief, and very ill-founded and improbable belief. And the historian, once more, knows very well that this is not the way in which he proceeds ; he is aware that what he does to his so-called authorities is not to believe them but to criticize them. If then the historian has no direct or empirical knowledge of his facts, and no transmitted or testimoniary knowledge of them, what kind of knowledge has he: in other words, what must the historian do in order that he may know them?

My historical review of the idea of history has resulted in the emergence of an answer to this question : namely, that the historian must re-enact the past in his own mind. What we must now do is to look more closely at this idea, an see what it means in itself and what further consequences it implies.

In a general way, the meaning of the conception is easily understood. When a man thinks historically, he has before him certain documents or relics of the past. His business is to discover what the past was which has left these relics behind it, For example, the relics are certain written words ; and in that case he has to discover what the person who wrote those words meant by them. This means discovering the thought (in the widest sense of that word : we shall look into its preciser meaning which he expressed by them. To discover what this thought was, the historian must think it again for himself.

Suppose, for example, he is reading the Theodosian Code, and has before him a certain edict of an emperor. Merely reading the words and being able to translate them does not amount to knowing their historical significance. In order to do that he must envisage the situation with which the emperor was trying to deal, and he must envisage it as that emperor envisaged it. Then he must see for himself, just as if the emperor's situation were his own, how such a situation might be dealt with ; he must see the possible alternatives, and the reasons for choosing one rather than another ; and thus he must go through the process which the emperor went through in deciding on this particular course. Thus he is re-enacting in his own mind the experience of the emperor ; and only in so far as he does this has he any historical knowledge, as distinct from a merely philological knowledge, of the meaning of the edict.

Or again, suppose he is reading a passage of an ancient philosopher. Once more, he must know the language in a philological sense and be able to construe ; but by doing that he has not yet understood the passage as an historian of philosophy must understand it. In order to do that, he must see what the philosophical problem was, of which his author is here stating his solution. He must think that problem out for himself, see what possible solutions of it might be offered, and see why this particular philosopher chose that solution instead of another. This means re-thinking for himself the thought of his author, and nothing short of that will make him the historian of that author's philosophy.