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Or would disruption only be considered a black swan if both had sailing ships and one of them had radar?

I have some trouble discerning what is sufficiently disruptive as to constitute a black swan that is discontinuous.

@JP, even if it’s only unconsciously, the way that a player interacts with a game like Passage or Mirror’s Edge is basically to absorb the mathematically model and apply it. It doesn’t matter if the reason they’re doing this is for the aesthetics, the only actions they can take have to do with the model, so in order for them to do anything at all, they need to be taking the model into account. Even if the model is really simple and easy to master and the greater purpose is the aesthetic layer, if you were to remove the math you’d have nothing at all.

So at the core, it’s about math. Anything else is layered on top. Aesthetic gives meaning to the math, and meaning is perhaps more important than the underlaying model. But it still exists as a function of the math.

What I was saying is, they’re only “about math” to game designers, and some kinds of players. Many kinds of modern games (Passage, Mirror’s Edge, to grab two random examples) invite players to engage first and foremost with their aesthetic layer. Many players of those games take that offer.

Again, I’m not arguing that any game cannot be dealt with as being “about math”… I’m saying that many aren’t in practice.

I agree that everyone applies a model (to everything!), but calling it mathematical even if the viewer/player/listener experiences it as highly sensational/emotional/sequential sounds like it’s coming more from the perspective of an outside observer than some fundamental truth of how people engage with things.

The issue isn’t how they engage with things in general — it is how they engage with games in specific. And at their core, games are about math. This doesn’t mean the aesthetic layer isn’t incredibly important — it is! — but you can have the game with minimal aesthetics, and call it a game, and the reverse is not true.

Eolirin, you could, but if it happens simply narratively, you are not necessarily teaching the underlying lesson about black swans… you’re once again displaying a linear evolution rather than a discontinuous one.

You wouldn’t necessarily want to do this by denying access to existing verbs or skills the players have developed, but by changing the way those verbs or skills are applied, and making the previous method of application no longer valid. Could be kinda tricky to make the feedback for this look natural enough, but it could promote more creative uses of abilities while demonstrating that sometimes things change abruptly.

I agree that everyone applies a model (to everything!), but calling it mathematical even if the viewer/player/listener experiences it as highly sensational/emotional/sequential sounds like it’s coming more from the perspective of an outside observer than some fundamental truth of how people engage with things. Obviously as a game designer you have to assume players will apply a “mathematical model”, especially with the Sisyphean balancing task of an MMO. I just don’t feel like that’s a very descriptive model for what’s going on in peoples’ heads when they play most kinds of games. Even something as formalist as the MDA framework acknowledges an aesthetic layer that is no less central than the mechanical.

In short I think saying games are “just math” is akin to saying music is “just sound” or books are “just words”. Assuming prejudices or perspective limitations of the audience based on that seems harmfully reductionist.

The conventional wisdom that says good game design has strong perceivable consequence, which you’re totally right in pointing out sits in tension with the desire to force players to deal with the unpredictable, is just that, conventional wisdom – a rule waiting to be broken for artistic effect rather than some immutable limitation of our medium. I’d love to see more working examples of that idea.