User:Oportet/The Meaning of Games

The Meaning Of Games

Hey, guys, check out this cool quote I found!

     Quote from Pathologickickstarter pitch:

“	Any human being longs to be more. We all desperately look for a world that’s bigger, fuller, more complex than the real one. And it’s games that provide the best medium to create interactive, immersive places; it’s games that seem like the best doorway to the aforementioned bigger, more complex world. They give us unrivalled freedom; they give us abilities impossible in reality. Yet, again and again the miracle turns mundane. We get impossibly big swords, impossibly intricate strategies, impossibly stunning landscapes. But more often than not they don’t change us for the better. Well, we don’t like that. Can you name a game that’s left a bigger impact on you than your favourite book? Perhaps you can. Still, that’s not what mainstream gaming tries to achieve—its goal is entertainment. Our goals are ideas and values. We want to make a game that would reach deep into your soul and leave an impact—like books, and songs, and movies do. We think it’s boring to: 1. make someone fight monsters made of pixels and polygons; 2. lie that a supervillain is the root of all evil; 3. lie that you can save the world.	”
—Ice Pick Lodge

     Games aren't "just" games. They're more than that, whether we know it or not. Games are media; they impact us, shape the way we view the world. Dungeons and Dragons, while moving in the right direction, wants to be "just" a game. The three pillars of adventure includes socialization as a key component of D&D; yet it has no benchmarks for determining meaningful socialization. True, when your DM knows their stuff, D&D is a ton of fun. It's a fantastic, flexible system for making lessons approachable, using the pillars to support the work's message. After all, if your game isn't fun to play, no one's going to stick around for the story. But in D&D, there isn't any message. Monsters are "just" monsters, the setting is "just" a setting, adventurers are "just" adventurers. I've read too much official content that lies about how the world works, and I'm not talking about science. My homebrew content aims to correct this.