Thought For The Day

I know, I know, I'm behind on my blogging.

Do you know how many good games are coming out at the moment?

Anyway, to get the ball rolling on a bigger piece I want to post up a quick thought. And by thought, I mean something I read in a book and want to repeat.

Success and failure is the satisfaction or frustration of desire.

When applied to games it helps to frame the recent trend in games that some call accessibility and some call dumbing down. For the record (and this is a longer post for the future) I don't agree with the dumbing down statement.

What I will say as a way to spark a train of thought in my head that will lead to a proper post on the subject, in many modern games success is not winning at a game but rather having fun through personal expression (there is no way to 'die' in DJ Hero). Failure is the frustration of not being able to express yourself and have fun because of circumstances outside of your control (inconsistencies between vulnerability and invulnerability between enemy and player animations) .