Oh, excellent!

Looks great!

I can help, just email more info. Slightly unrelated: a friend recently suggested reading Duras (in a book circle) and was very fascinated by the idea of a game based on it, so I'll show it to her when it's done

Inspiring! Thank you.

You should have said that you live in the same city as I do! Welcome indeed!

Doesn't it have to do with repetition but with different results each time? A single note played in exactly the same way repeatedly is annoying. Add some variation (as simple as changing the volume) and it suddenly gets a lot more interesting. It doesn't really explain why kids love to re-watch the same thing over and over though. But maybe they see new things each time because they are not as avid watchers?

Anyway, my point is that repetition in games always comes with some variation. It happens both on a big scale where the winner of the game is uncertain and at a lower level with for example different combinations of cards in a card game. Poker and bridge are both extremely repetitious but the new combinations that come up keep people interested.

Sorry, I didn't try to make a point, I just was too lazy to write anything about it! It has something to do with 3d tools at least =)

http://rhondaforever.com/

Just started reading this: http://yaxu.org/thesis/

I've been thinking about serious games too, they certainly have a fair share of overlap with notgames when it comes to reasons why people dislike them!

I guess it's hard to bring things back from the LARPs into video games. I haven't played any MMORPG:s but in a perfect world those would be able to recreate it somewhat. In the end maybe we have to ask ourselves if it's worth trying to bring the LARP-experience into the computer when we could just have come to it instead?

I have been thinking about getting my iOS game (or not?!) "Kometen" out to more people. I kind of want to add this thing called "Game Center" to it since then friends of a person who bought the game will be able to see it and perhaps try it out. I think you have to have some achievements in the game for it to be Game Center worthy though... so that's my problem.
Since the idea with the game is that people should explore it's world and not think too much about if they have found "everything" this feels wrong. I'm pretty sure it would make the experience more goal oriented and less focused on the moment, even if it was just for travelling to different parts of the game world.

Does anyone else have any experiences to share of making this design choice? Or maybe of playing a game that was supposed to be "notgamey" but added some kind of achievements? Maybe I could add some weird, random things that are hard to achieve through "gaming" but easy to get if you don't play? Or maybe game center is worthless for making people know about your game and I should just forget it...

So to not totally take over the Skyrim thread, let's talk about LARPs here instead

The two LARPs I went to where both primarily played by people between 15-20 years old so they were not super serious. In both games we had received a little bit of information about our roles (name and some kind of diffuse goal). What happened pretty quickly was that no one I met cared much about their goal and instead just existed in the world. Especially in the first one which was a fantasy themed one you could just go out into the forest and explore. There was a lot of camps with weird creatures (orcs, elves, etc) all around the forest that you could find. I would say that that part worked pretty well, even though you had no sense whatsoever of what was happening in the overarching storyline. There was also rules for how you died but it didn't happen that much... and I think you got a new role then. The thing lasted for a couple of days. I was only 14 years old, so for me it was an awesome experience... dunno how it would feel to got there now

The other time the LARP was arranged by our highschool so people were definitely not experienced at roleplaying. It was weighed up by the preparation/reality of it though. We were playing refugees and was taken by armed men out into the forest and had to stay in tents, constantly supervised and somewhat harassed. In the night it was freezing cold and there was sounds of shooting all around us in the forest (at those moments we had to lay on the ground to avoid bullets...). All we got to eat was some potato/leek soup which I couldn't have for a year afterwards, just because of the association.

I don't know really what to make out of my experiences relating to videogames/notgames. Both events were very strong and memorable, though simplistic and with a lot of "out of character" moments. The reality of the situation (it was really cold, etc) kind of helped to keep it interesting anyway. I'll think more about it...

I never really played role playing games but I've heard from many play-groups how they gradually stopped using the rulebook and just started improvising.

This thread + walking around a mountain today made me think of LARPs (which I have tried participating in twice) and how they succeed in so many ways where videogames (including our not-kind) fail, almost without even trying. Nowadays there are even more mature themes (not only elves and vampires) that can be quite amazing and possibly life-changing. One of my experiences was as a war refugee, sleeping a whole night in a tent with guards around us. Of course it's also very much work to arrange and play, but it's a very neat solution for making a game with awesome graphics, control-system, AI and level design

Hi, looks awesome!
What's the system requirements? (is it Windows only?)

What a dream job! I might know someone... will it be possible to work remotely?