I think the important part of discovery is that it requires something from you in order for it to happen, that way you can have some sort of ownership or personal attachment to whatever you have encountered. Even minor interactions, like deciding the pace, can provide it, though they may not do so to enough of an extend that you really notice it.

This can happen in film too. For example if a film is difficult to follow, dense and/or complex or if it is very open to interpretation then it will often require some effort from the viewer to put together their own interpretation of the film, to me at least this provides a very similar sense of discovery to that of games. Just as you can discover the mechanics, world and narrative of a game you can discover the narrative of a  film from what is shown, though I do think that videogames have more scope for this and are more often engaging in this way.

As for whether it is universally human, I would like to think that everyone feels it a bit, but I have seen people get very angry when their stories aren't spelled out to them in the simplest and most direct of terms, or when their game isn't "properly" tutorialised and they didn't bother to try and figure any of it out for themselves, sooo..... at best it matters to different people different amounts.

Cool, if I re-install it I'll give that a try.

So, I finally got around to playing this a bit and I thought it was good. I especially liked the playable intro sequence, that was really cool - I can't believe other games haven't done that.

I also thought that keeping it simple with the interactions, only having one interaction type per person, worked pretty well. It created variety whilst maintaining a low level of complexity.

The main issue I had was actually a technical one: the performance is really bad on my laptop - especially where the torch is involved. I don't think I'm going to be able progress any further since the low framerate I'm getting renders the game unplayable (especially in the jumping bits), which is a shame as I am quite interested to see where the story goes.

That potato game was more interesting than I initially thought it would be.


One game people should play is my entry, I just finished working on the updated version last night.


Some others that I have found are Dream Fishing which looks fantastic (in my eyes) and is generally very well designed.

Chez Angelo, which is a Thirty Flights of Loving-ish first-person story game.

And finally, Depletion, a running and hiding game. This one actually has some game elements and I suspect would have had more if the author had had more time to work on it.

Hello 

Similarly to axcho I have played the first few levels of Spider, but I haven't found the time to really get into it. From what little I played I did like how the movement felt very "spidery" and the graphics were nice too.

Perhaps I could invite Jake Elliot to be a part of this community?

I think it would be really interesting if he joined the conversation!

I'm fairly sure he is a member, but just hasn't posted for a long time.

I would take a game full of "interesting mistakes" over one that has been polished into nothingness any day  . I'll try and find some time to play it when it's released.

Live as in for free? I would love to see that talk.

Probably not free

That's a shame, your previous talk was released for free and was very good.

I guess I'll have to do this the old fashioned way (i.e. reading).

I would say that you're right in thinking that aggressive interaction and challenge go hand in hand and thus traditional videogames will tend to be more aggressive than notgames, but I do think that it is possible to have notgames that are aggressive.

I'm actually quite interested in notgames that have interactions that are, not necessarily aggressive, but more visceral/tangible and less ambient. I tried to do this to some extent in this prototype thing I made for a ludum dare a while back, I'm not sure if it's the sort of thing you mean?

Welcome. It's looking good so far.

Congratulations  . I was internetless for the online meetups but I've played a little by myself and I am interested to play some more with it.

Don't take my word for it. The former Creative Director of Gears of War Judgment, Bulletstorm and Painkiller has seen the light!

Soon everyone shall agree...    (Although I think it depends on what's meant by "kill" and "gameplay", it seems like what he's saying is about right.)

I find it interesting how he uses the verb "kill".

It does seem to have become part of the videogame vernacular, in that people use it a lot when talking about videogames even when there's no explicit death and I don't even find it unusual (most of the time) except when I hear my younger brothers (or other people much younger than myself) say it, at which point I think "wait, what?!?"

I saw this today which I thought was pretty funny. The way they look at it is somewhat reflective of how I look at review scores which is why I've started mostly playing games based on recommendations of people whose opinions I respect, from developers whose game's I've liked previously and then just at random or for inconsequential reasons.

It looks like the sort of thing I might like, but according to their steam greenlight page my computer is under the minimum requirements, does anyone know if they are actually accurate? (the fact that they list win 7 as a requirement seems a bit weird and makes me suspect that the other requirements might not be strict).

I don't know about more emotional or spiritual ways of defining interaction but I think whether you would consider moving in a game world interaction is to do with the distinction between the player interacting with the game and the in-game character interacting with the world around them. In the first case movement is clearly interaction since when you move your character the screen displays a different output - the character and/or the camera has moved - while there isn't necessarily any in-game interaction occurring from the movement since often NPCs and the game-world don't respond to player movement.