First, a quote from Frank for context (since his post gives a nice summary without reference to other conversations in that thread):
And now I'll respond to a later post by Crissa:Frank wrote:Leress wrote:
PL: What's GNS?
Gamist
Narrativist
Simulationist
The idea is that game theory can be described by three distinct poles, and that the quality of a game depends upon how well they approach those three poles, with the added hand wavery that different people value approaches towards those poles differently such that different games have different subjective quality to different people.
It sounds very even handed, but essentially as PL points out it solves nothing and describes nothing and is therefore useless as a theory. GNS theory doesn't actually make any predictions about what you should do when designing or playing a game, and is thus made of FAIL.
The core problem is that GNS design goals aren't defined in a consistent fashion. What makes something simulationist? Every game takes inputs (fixed and random in nature) and gives you outputs. Thus, every game perfectly simulates something. So there's no real way to make a game better or worse in a simulationist sense unless you are concerned with simulating a specific narrative or having a more interesting and entertaining game played while running the simulator - which are apparently Narrativist or Gamist concerns, right? For that matter, a better game can be defined as one which is fairer, or one which is more skill dependent (which is interestingly the opposite of fair in many cases), or one which holds your interest for longer or one which is faster to play. And yes, narrativist demands are similarly inconstant with people wanting a more immersive or more malleable story to narrate. Oh snap!
In short, those three goal posts aren't fixed. And while you can go ahead and rant about how the different goals are valued differently by different players, the fact remains that the goals don't even mean anything so even that statement is essentially meaningless.
GNS theory tells us nothing about what will succeed or fail, and is therefore always fail and never succeed.
-Username17
I agree that it has a grain of truth. That's what makes it so easy to use to define other people's behavior in message board threads. On reflection, I think the problem is that, while the three poles of GNS theory describe areas of concern for gamers and designers, they're all too broad to encompass all the conflicts that players may have. Gamists will argue about what kinds of tactics the game should encourage. Narrativists will argue about what kinds of stories they want the game to tell. Simulationists will argue about what kind of world they're trying to simulate.Crissa wrote:A crazy rumor doesn't gain traction if it doesn't have a grain of truth, though. If Joe is all about fucking with his friends, and he gets his enjoyment out of making everyone deal with his interruptions, then he will definitely screw up a game where everyone else was all up on the idea of getting into character voices and motives. He'll be playing off of the players while everyone else is trying to play off of imaginary characters, and it probably won't mesh.
Your examples point to the one problem I initially noticed with the theory. It takes three things any game should do well to some extent (work as a game, tell a good story, and simulate a world) and makes you pick one to the exclusion of the other two. Even if all three poles were well defined, this would be a problem. After all, your analysis of problem computer gamers reveals that people obsessed with only one of these areas of concern tend to be assholes.That's how the Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist theory got translated into computer games... Completely in a different way. Gamist are people looking to gain an advantage in the system; they don't care how their character looks or acts, they just want the best advantage. A small number of these guys just want to fuck with people. Narrativist don't care how badly their character sucks, just as long as they get to see the story. They'll use game advantages to gain access to things they haven't done or seen, and they'll attempt to anything to make a story about something. You screw up the text, you've lost these guys. They'll burn up anything to get to a new book or special outfit. Simulationist are all about the world. They want to know what's behind the screen. They get into areas they aren't supposed to, only to test the bounds of the world - not to take advantage of it, like the first group. They'll do things like drop twenty gnomes down a mine shaft just to see what happens, and will gladly burn through all their resources to access different mechanics in the game.
Guess what all these have in common? They're all people who screw up the game! Group one uses hacks. Group two rides the story or playerbase to death. Group three makes hacks! And while Group two and three won't kill an online game - tho they have - group one is not the most common type of griefer.
So the grain of truth is that yeah, if players aren't expecting the same game, it fucks things up. Which is why it's important to give a game that needs the fewest tweaks by the GM to fit those players - else they'll ditch it to find something simpler for the GM to run.
-Crissa