Metaphors in Games (2016)(medium.com)

23 pointsby fserb5 years ago5 comments

Metaphors in Games (2016)

https://medium.com/@fserb/metaphors-in-games-21ee033ad260

5 comments

For a while, I've been meaning to write about how Catherine is an absolutely amazing game. The raw mechanics of it give me a sense of intellectual delight comparable to Go (the game, not the language) and the core ideas of Lisp or Scheme. All of them share a relatively small ruleset that results in surprising power or complexity. But what sets Catherine apart is that is has a metaphor (a human traversing and manipulating large blocks) that totally works! (There's also a storyline that is pretty good but irrelevant to the primary metaphor.)

If we ever meet intelligent aliens, I won't be surprised if they have their own Lisp-like language or Go-like game, but they probably won't have Catherine. But to me, Catherine feels just as fundamental as Lisp or Go. And I call that very impressive game design.

psychomugs5 years ago

This is next in my backlog, intentionally kept smaller because I think games are among the most insidious mediums of entertainment. It's crazy to think how much time can be spent on an RPG or a few campaigns of a multi-player game; I almost get uneasy thinking about how much time I spent on games as a teen, sharpening skills that don't generalize beyond twiddling my thumbs. Among my favorites are the Bioshocks and Zelda, self-contained stories that express ideas and aesthetics and don't rely on cheap dopamine shots to stuck more money out of your pocket.

reidjs5 years ago

I'm confused, are you talking about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_(video_game)

default-kramer5 years ago

Yes.

mdbauman5 years ago

Thank you for the recommendation. I didn’t really understand why I should care about the game from videos/screenshots/marketing text, but after reading this description it was an instant purchase.