The game I love the most is football. Let's not get hung up about the sport/game distinction, come on. And I think I love it for quite a few reasons.
First of all, it's the sport of the people. You need a ball. That's it.
Secondly, it remains unchanged. Peps have come and gone by, route 1s, long ball plays, Messis, Zidanes, Ronaldos (the proper one), but the actual game never changes. Kick a ball. Preferably, towards there/that/them. Profit.
Thirdly, with quite a fair amount of mental gymnastics, for our level of playing, the ones that played until high school, were O K A Y and never had any hopes of making it pro, in its core, it remains a play-pretend. Since our childhood when play-pretend is crucial to the personal and social development of the child, football is more about "holy fuck did you see what I did, did you see?" and the natural "oooooh niiiiiice" response that followed from the choir. In reality, you've done nothing. But it feels so much more than nothing. For this sorry ass glimpse in time, you were Pirlo, Juninho, Ronaldinho. You conjured something up, channeled their force through your inspiration, fuck it up because you're actually shit, but had tons of fun trying it.
For fuck's sake, I'm seriously welling up. I fucking love football.
SO.
Questions about nostalgia arise naturally. Do you view it like this because it's been more than a year since you last played? Do you think WoW was better in 2008 because you were playing with your friends and had no care? Do you absolutely adore 4e because it came out in 2008 and scratched your developing skirmish cortex? Is L5R's 4e actually the best and more complete RPG ever just because you were living in Crete when it came out? Do you think Ray Lewis was the best d-man ever because he actually was and this is not an actual question?
No. What changed is that we no longer play for fun.
What's worse, we don't design for fun.
We design for engagement, balance, optimisation, progression feels; we even design for "good design's" sake, the most ridiculous PoMo shit I've heard in the field.
Look at WoW, and look at 5e. Then look at 3.5.
It's been 18 years since we logged in for the first time, waiting for each cinematic, each queue pop, each announcement. We ached when Metzen left, we were going for walks with my mates just to discuss arena strategies or gossip about guildmates from afar, we were historically analysing why Garrosh did nothing wrong - he didn't. And it's not that's it's all gone, but it's definitely not the same. Nor it should be.
But it should remain a game. I miss our Horde having a point besides perpetuating the biases of the western/white morons inside Blizzard. I miss good writing, not needing redemption arcs for everyone, not going for empty, liberal agendas - tho I get it, it's not like you can offer up any actual commentary when 1.you're a US leftist and 2.you gotta be dull, mute, and transparent, lest your commentary upsets your right/far-right fanbase. Useless rhetoriquing and blackwashing it is.
I miss the split fanbase, the investment, the feeling of belonging into wars. I miss liking and hating characters, caring about my class and feeling good if I was playing it good because that meant I actually knew and sensed it one step beyond what other people were sensing it.
This of course, applies verbatim to 5e. Albeit with a little less split fanbase and wars, and a bit more blackwashing and war wheelchairs (because why actually speak about systemic racism or ableism when you can... sell dice about it).
I wanna equate 3.5 to the TBC era tho. When optimisation and minmaxing were things of the players, not systemically built in the game. It's not that game design was impeccable; it's that it was discreet enough to let you define "fun".
Let's not downplay the role that technological limitations played. You needed to make choices. Not all PDFs were available, Internet was borderline non-existent so you had to choose how you'd spend your time over PSTN lines, Ventrillo was there but it was a guild thing, so you probably needed to meet up after your arena matches to discuss tacts, and there definitely was no roll20 or VTT. Which I admire, but I hate. And GGG will never be on these platforms, I'd rather die broke.
Yah, I sound like a grognard. Games were built to be games.
Even narratively, gaming has gone full-on modelisation mode. To make people invest, you need stakes upon stakes upon stakes. But what happens when stakes end? You need characters too, people identify with characters. But you haven't built those, because you were building stakes. And now if you lower the stakes, the characters seem mundane because the PCs have conquered everything. So you need to offer up drama. But drama without identification inside a world where the PCs do not belong is empty. So you need to up the stakes for the PCs to fit under, and then build the characters. But the PCs need a drive and they need to conquer the new stakes while the characters are being built and they won't be built before the PCs up the stakes again and OH MY FUCKING GOD THE WORLD IS ENDING. again. snooze.
For some reason, the storytelling industry decided that higher=high. All threats are universe-ending, continent-razing, world-shattering. And the players rush to save and rush to save and rush to save. Groundhog day for dice and face rollers.
Stakes just need to be higher, not high. Return the worlds to the players, give them the scopes that fit their identification processes (since you wanna go so hard for identification and not for actually good writing), make your mechanics interface and interact with the scale of your worlds, low, shrink, diminish. You wanna go full on slice-of-life? Do so, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that very few, if any, campaigns should focus on fucking up Orcus.
Games are designed to be games, or at least, that's what's supposed to happen. A game already has its audience, it does not need to pander to a caricature reduction of it. It's a matter of recognising that audience and reaching it. As much as all video-gamers are Monster-chugging, Razer-addicted speed freaks that crave flashes and punches to remain sated, that much are all RPGers neckbeards and pink-haired non-binary people that have no political clue, will eat up all edginess and empty critiques to the status quo.
We know for a fact that quite a few industries function and produce with a core premise that the audience is an absolute idiot. We let them be right.
Football needs a ball. RPGs need dice. They both can create stories and this process of creation is what makes games resonate and stick. Design for pleasure, play for fun.
PS: to be fair, WoW has gone down the path of no return. Metzen cannot save it - money changes you. And DnD is so completely polluted that if you are so hell-bent on rolling d20s you're much better off picking up any older version, just to kick those 5e-ers away from your table.
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