Love the radar graph! But I'm interested in some limitations to it. Because I'm pretty sure you can just max out on the entire graph. How much I can't, though? And what are the conclusions starting from this point?
But that just means the game is versatile enough that it touches on many aspects of understanding video games. I re-read my own piece this week and I buried the conclusion a little: this gives us a way to think and talk about video games that is broader than specific games, but perhaps more useful than genre classifications.
It's a way to understand that video game genres that seem very far apart (FPS vs souls-like vs metroidvanias) may have more commonalities than meets the eye. But there are still dimensions of these games that are totally different from each other (i.e., the cultural context).
And I think that these ways of slicing and dicing video games helps us understand the benefits and risks of these games on us. You might think you like FPS games when in reality what you might like is the competitive nature of the game (so in theory, you could like Souls-likes and metroidvanias too). This thinking could be reversed to help people avoid games that might cause them trouble.
Versatility being a good thing, and perhaps possible in many games. But when I see this radar graphs it reminds me of the Project Management Triangle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle) and the usual interpretation ("You can freeze two values"). Hence my conclusion, you can max out on everything, but should you? When maxing out on one spectrum will lead to getting small on a second?
Secondly, I'd like that this grading was a little less intuitive. Low-Mid-High seem intuitive in simple, but when do you switch from Low to Mid? Or from Mid to High? You can use it great when comparing games, but when building games (which is my aim in the end) it's not that clear.
Love this approach over genre classification, as designers should not think only in terms of "Our rivals have this feature, and so should we" but rather in "how does this feature serve the goal of role-playing/sensory/competition/chance". Genre expectations is one thing, but more important is to make the game good by design.
To your point, this framework is better thought of as a relative one, instead of an absolute. And maybe the categorizations change slightly depending on the library of games you're comparing?
So a game might score one way when compared against the entire gaming category but score slightly differently in your library, if that makes sense?
Since it is relative, maybe there'll be less opportunity for maxing out to happen -- if you compare the four categories against each other within a game, there's bound to be one or two categories that stand out from the others? So those get "high" but others get "mid" or "low". You could introduce numbering within the labels (0-3 for LOW, 4-7 for MID, and 8-10 for HIGH) that allows you further ordering within the category...but I hesitate to introduce numbers as they make things seem more absolute than this framework can offer.
But yeah, I don't really have an answer for how this framework would apply when you're building a game. Maybe it can be a guidepost, for the direction you're going in rather than the categorization at the end?
> a game might score one way when compared against the entire gaming category but score slightly differently in your library, if that makes sense?
I think that would tell more about me as a gamer than the game itself.
Numbering (although not explicitly stated) is already present. You just have to count the circles. Perhaps at some point, reference games on the radar might be more helpful than numbers.
Love the radar graph! But I'm interested in some limitations to it. Because I'm pretty sure you can just max out on the entire graph. How much I can't, though? And what are the conclusions starting from this point?
You can definitely max out on the radar graph!
But that just means the game is versatile enough that it touches on many aspects of understanding video games. I re-read my own piece this week and I buried the conclusion a little: this gives us a way to think and talk about video games that is broader than specific games, but perhaps more useful than genre classifications.
It's a way to understand that video game genres that seem very far apart (FPS vs souls-like vs metroidvanias) may have more commonalities than meets the eye. But there are still dimensions of these games that are totally different from each other (i.e., the cultural context).
And I think that these ways of slicing and dicing video games helps us understand the benefits and risks of these games on us. You might think you like FPS games when in reality what you might like is the competitive nature of the game (so in theory, you could like Souls-likes and metroidvanias too). This thinking could be reversed to help people avoid games that might cause them trouble.
Does that make sense?
I agree with all the things you said.
Still...
Versatility being a good thing, and perhaps possible in many games. But when I see this radar graphs it reminds me of the Project Management Triangle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle) and the usual interpretation ("You can freeze two values"). Hence my conclusion, you can max out on everything, but should you? When maxing out on one spectrum will lead to getting small on a second?
Secondly, I'd like that this grading was a little less intuitive. Low-Mid-High seem intuitive in simple, but when do you switch from Low to Mid? Or from Mid to High? You can use it great when comparing games, but when building games (which is my aim in the end) it's not that clear.
Love this approach over genre classification, as designers should not think only in terms of "Our rivals have this feature, and so should we" but rather in "how does this feature serve the goal of role-playing/sensory/competition/chance". Genre expectations is one thing, but more important is to make the game good by design.
To your point, this framework is better thought of as a relative one, instead of an absolute. And maybe the categorizations change slightly depending on the library of games you're comparing?
So a game might score one way when compared against the entire gaming category but score slightly differently in your library, if that makes sense?
Since it is relative, maybe there'll be less opportunity for maxing out to happen -- if you compare the four categories against each other within a game, there's bound to be one or two categories that stand out from the others? So those get "high" but others get "mid" or "low". You could introduce numbering within the labels (0-3 for LOW, 4-7 for MID, and 8-10 for HIGH) that allows you further ordering within the category...but I hesitate to introduce numbers as they make things seem more absolute than this framework can offer.
But yeah, I don't really have an answer for how this framework would apply when you're building a game. Maybe it can be a guidepost, for the direction you're going in rather than the categorization at the end?
> a game might score one way when compared against the entire gaming category but score slightly differently in your library, if that makes sense?
I think that would tell more about me as a gamer than the game itself.
Numbering (although not explicitly stated) is already present. You just have to count the circles. Perhaps at some point, reference games on the radar might be more helpful than numbers.
Btw. you might find that interesting: https://x.com/kwisc_/status/1708759214066184693 (although you need to translate it to English).