Ahey, 🙂
Here’s Simon:
Is there scope for asking people to do things that may not come naturally to them, that might make them uncomfortable, but that you think they might come to love?
How much can you ask someone to stretch themselves? Should play always be easy?
And here’s Vincent’s reply:
Is there scope? Of course!
How much? Well. You get to design your game to be as demanding as you like, but your audience gets to choose whether to try it and whether to stick with it. That’s how you find out whether you’ve judged them well – if they do the unnatural thing you ask them to, then you have. If they don’t, then you’ve misjudged them.
Should I underline that? Maybe I should. If your audience doesn’t seize upon the game you’ve designed for them, you have a choice. You can reevaluate your own judgment, or else you can throw blame. Blame your audience for failing to live up to your ideals, blame cliques and status-attention in the scene, blame me for monopolizing their attention, whatever. My suspicion is that reevaluating your own judgment will give you the most fruitful way forward.
There’s smart people out there in the world, and they can teach you things. 🙂
Cheers,
J.