Three Subjects Meme
Jun. 12th, 2019 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gullwhackerThe hour is late, the house goes quiet, and I'm continuing a trend and passing it on.
Reply here and I'll give you 3 subjects I don't think you know or care much about. Then you talk about those subjects in your journal. It's interesting to see who knows what about what.
I replied toalexseanchai and got the following.
Assuming that this is the same category as idle games, I've played a few. Played Cookie Clicker through a few resets. I had more interest in Universal Paperclips, and got well into the second act - that one stood out for the message it was trying to send about progress for progress's sake. I'll poke at others here and there, but while it's possible to catch my interest for a week or so I generally get bored with either the waiting or the frequency of resetting fairly quickly.
No real objections to the genre on principle, and from a design standpoint they can be kind of interesting. What does it mean to have a game whose core loop can be automated - and at what point does optimizing strategy itself become the game? Cookie Clicker seemed to have a pretty good balance between 'meaningful idle progress' and 'active action is worth taking', but it's a genre where the numbers are unforgiving. It's easy to make progress take too long - and also easy to make the game too easy to break.
Fun design choices are hard in general, and it's kind of neat to realize how much depth there is to something simple-looking.
Ah, gardening. Something I kind of want to be better at but hesitate to commit to. Any day that's nice enough for me to try making progress on a garden is one where I'm tempted to just run off and play with the kids. Or one where I'm stuck doing something else until I don't have the drive any more.
It doesn't help that my green thumb is pitch-black. I know a few things about pruning (mostly regarding apple trees due to growing up around an orchard) and soil composition, but nowhere near enough on either front. So generally, I'm fumbling in the dark. Badly.
Long story short I have killed mint plants that I was trying to keep alive. If that doesn't speak to 'bad at gardening' I don't know what does. It's a shame - I'd like to have more flowers and herbs and vegetables around, I'm just bad at committing to a plan to make those happen.
Over my life, I've read a lot of science fiction. Anthologies, my parents' collections, whatever. I was a voracious reader - and still am, I just consume a lot more fanfic now. Back then, though, two authors stood out for me.
Larry Niven, for stories of world-building and considering 'hey, what might the consequences of this be. Spider Robinson, for using fantastical elements as backdrop for stories of humanity and treating different people as people. I'm not sure either qualify as 'hard' science fiction - even if Niven worked out some of the math for a Ringworld - but neither are they really space opera. Just indicative of what I was into back then.
I did, however, read Star Wars books, and those probably qualify. So might the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi that I started at one point.
So, space opera. A grand drama that could perhaps play out on land or sea, but that gets elevated to the stars. That's the genre as I kind of see it, and it's sometimes something that appeals to me. A sometimes food, like military drama or spy thrillers. It's usually more interesting to me if there's a message, a purpose to having the characters in space besides space being cool - but that's the appeal that dances with the border of science fiction.
And besides, sometimes 'what if...IN SPACE' is worth it on its own. Treasure Planet was a great movie. So...I guess my thoughts are that space operas are fun, and maybe that they work best when they're aware that they exist to have fun.
So those are my thoughts. Reply with a request for writing prompts, and I'll do my best to come up with a few. If you'd rather just reply to ask more questions about any of what I put here, that's fine too.
Reply here and I'll give you 3 subjects I don't think you know or care much about. Then you talk about those subjects in your journal. It's interesting to see who knows what about what.
I replied to
alexseanchai and got the following.clicky games
Assuming that this is the same category as idle games, I've played a few. Played Cookie Clicker through a few resets. I had more interest in Universal Paperclips, and got well into the second act - that one stood out for the message it was trying to send about progress for progress's sake. I'll poke at others here and there, but while it's possible to catch my interest for a week or so I generally get bored with either the waiting or the frequency of resetting fairly quickly.
No real objections to the genre on principle, and from a design standpoint they can be kind of interesting. What does it mean to have a game whose core loop can be automated - and at what point does optimizing strategy itself become the game? Cookie Clicker seemed to have a pretty good balance between 'meaningful idle progress' and 'active action is worth taking', but it's a genre where the numbers are unforgiving. It's easy to make progress take too long - and also easy to make the game too easy to break.
Fun design choices are hard in general, and it's kind of neat to realize how much depth there is to something simple-looking.
gardening
Ah, gardening. Something I kind of want to be better at but hesitate to commit to. Any day that's nice enough for me to try making progress on a garden is one where I'm tempted to just run off and play with the kids. Or one where I'm stuck doing something else until I don't have the drive any more.
It doesn't help that my green thumb is pitch-black. I know a few things about pruning (mostly regarding apple trees due to growing up around an orchard) and soil composition, but nowhere near enough on either front. So generally, I'm fumbling in the dark. Badly.
Long story short I have killed mint plants that I was trying to keep alive. If that doesn't speak to 'bad at gardening' I don't know what does. It's a shame - I'd like to have more flowers and herbs and vegetables around, I'm just bad at committing to a plan to make those happen.
space opera
Over my life, I've read a lot of science fiction. Anthologies, my parents' collections, whatever. I was a voracious reader - and still am, I just consume a lot more fanfic now. Back then, though, two authors stood out for me.
Larry Niven, for stories of world-building and considering 'hey, what might the consequences of this be. Spider Robinson, for using fantastical elements as backdrop for stories of humanity and treating different people as people. I'm not sure either qualify as 'hard' science fiction - even if Niven worked out some of the math for a Ringworld - but neither are they really space opera. Just indicative of what I was into back then.
I did, however, read Star Wars books, and those probably qualify. So might the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi that I started at one point.
So, space opera. A grand drama that could perhaps play out on land or sea, but that gets elevated to the stars. That's the genre as I kind of see it, and it's sometimes something that appeals to me. A sometimes food, like military drama or spy thrillers. It's usually more interesting to me if there's a message, a purpose to having the characters in space besides space being cool - but that's the appeal that dances with the border of science fiction.
And besides, sometimes 'what if...IN SPACE' is worth it on its own. Treasure Planet was a great movie. So...I guess my thoughts are that space operas are fun, and maybe that they work best when they're aware that they exist to have fun.
So those are my thoughts. Reply with a request for writing prompts, and I'll do my best to come up with a few. If you'd rather just reply to ask more questions about any of what I put here, that's fine too.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-12 04:14 am (UTC)someday I should probably watch Treasure Planet?
no subject
Date: 2019-06-12 04:23 am (UTC)Treasure Planet is basically Treasure Island IN SPAAAAACE, but it commits to the aesthetic and Long John Silver comes across fairly sympathetic. Fun ride.