I'm sorry, I think you're under too much subjectivist influence... which is culturally understandable.
Fortunately for me - what you said is self-defeating.

At first I thought this was joke, but you seem to go along with it way too far for it to be funny.
BTW - you can't make such statements if you assume that there is no answer, because they'd be as meaningless of an opinion as liking strawberries.

Well... duh. Still - even though the definition of philosophy is something every philosopher has to personally discover, it's usually an activity of the MIND, so it's hard to tie it to almost strictly practical term of "populism". I'd be inclined to drop this topic altogether. The idea of pie might not exclude the idea of ham but it's pretty pointless to analyze their relation in vacuum.

It must've went over my head then. Would you care to explain ?

I don't know... They can simply laugh and shrug ;).

Yeah, especially since not only are political categories (and stereotypes) in my country different but I don't actually define myself in such terms.
Actually - I don't seriously define myself in anyway. I sometimes say I'm a gamer or philosopher but such terms are just labels and it's not really fitting for a free man to hide behind such things ;P.

Oh, I most certainly agree. Complexity should be in the mind of the gamer, not the goals of the creator.
However - you must also refine the notion of "interestingness". If you discard it with "it's subjective, different people like different things" - you have no criteria. If you rely on yourself - others may disagree. If you rely on "what the majority of people thinks is interesting"... you can still make something unappealing because people may be mistaken in their opinion (which is an argument in favor of its lack of subjectivity. If a person can truthfully say "I thought x was interesting but I was wrong", there's been a change of mind based on external conditions).

I'm just guessing now, but I THINK a single simple idea, an elusive vibe that you want the game to give the player, a feeling and experience you want to impart upon him is what lies at the core of a gaming masterpiece. Obviously - you have to use content (the more the better, the more varied the better) for it to emerge...
Bah - I need to get into aesthetics more ;P.

Not really. It just makes sense.

Try to make a good argument that the manual should not be included to someone who doesn't understand a game... you'll be arguing a long time.

Try to convince an actor that he should have been a mathematician or vice versa...

Try to convince someone who is a consummate monogamist that polygamy is the model to follow or try to convince someone who has always been in an open relationship that monogamy is the path to follow...

I read Plato and it was ok, but I thought he had it backwards.

He thought that reality is made of human understandable concepts that are out there waiting for us to discover and in the human centric era he was in, it probably made sense.

I've worked with human models my entire life. I did science in college. I did computer sciences and then mathematics and statistics in university. Believe me, human models are good, but ultimately, reality out there and reality in your head are 2 very different things.

A philosopher looking at the model from the outside may think the models are infallible, but someone working with the models intimately will become keenly aware of their limitations. In a way, that's why I like statistics. They are less presumptuous in that they acknowledge we won't be able to make a perfectly accurate prediction.

If you don't know the answer (and there might be none), you might as well pay attention to what other people want.

As I said, if you think you got it all figured out and you know better than other people what is best for them, good for you.

I don't make such assumptions so I think it's important to listen to what other people have to say about what they want and why.

It's a paradox if you make a game aimed at hardcore gamers, yet acknowledge that a non-hardcore gamer might want to take a stab at it and provide him with the added facilities that will allow him to do so.


Well, maybe if you are a supra being, but as a limited human being, you must use some terminology to communicate, as imperfect as it is.


That's the thing. There is no single good definition for "interesting". It's too subjective.

You can come up with a "good" model for interesting (that will appeal to a critical mass of people), but don't expect to come up with a foolproof definition of interesting, it's too subjective.

Truth be told, the personal definition of interesting some people have is contradictory, hence defeating the notion of a centralized universal concept.

At the core, the best I can come up with is: Original, not too foreign (yes, a paradox right there), of sufficient complexity, but not overwhelming (another paradox), not like reality, but still with some ties to reality so that the gamer connects (yet, another paradox). Something that will challenge the gamer in the right way (yes, it's very vague).