I'm taking simple aim at apps and games, but the concepts and ideas are similar for how to support and implement a backend for any game I make. Goodbye yellow brick road sounds like its playing, yah, odd, but appropriate, and then what do I write about? This cloud thing, hmm, could it lead to VR games supported? Gamers won't want to move around, would physically exhaust themselves playing and games would need to be easier. Games need to be easier with VR. You are going to have your hardcores who can keep up and then the rest of us who would quickly burn out, so ah, that means a decision on core audience.
Why appeal to all gamers when you can appeal to a group of most likely players? A niche for everything in games, create the content, the game, then look for who to play, because games I think are a limited subset of experience and the public on the internet so vast they will consume anything and everything and come back asking for more. This unfortunately allows scammers and hacks (as in writing hacks) to thrive but more together developers to have an audience for their work whatever that work is. And the time to roll out is short and fast paced.
VR then should have an audience and a roll out. Similar to Google finding small 3 line ads are advertising success someone may find something that works in VR. Almost anything can get an audience and interested people to go about consuming whatever content there is. Meaningful content may be hard to come by but some of the stuff that passes for meaning is trite, trivial, and unfulfilling. There may be a chance for serious developers to create something meaningful with VR. There are probably as many layers of meaning for a game as there are for a book, movie or other work of art. To create a game that is a serious work of art.
That leads me to ask a question, what is a meaningful game? There is a book I picked up recently on game design. I was intending to sell it but now might make a pass through to see if I can create something with the book's rulesets. The meaning of things may derive from value and the emotions provoked and invoked and evoked by something. With games the emotion evoked is that of winning however defined and a player winning. In winning getting an edge up in competitive play, player versus player, or overcoming an environment in player versus environment play, is the goal. And the feelings that go with playing a game are the end all be all of a game or the players wont play. If the game is fun and evokes enough of an emotional connection however that goes I would consider that game a success.
That then leads me to ask what does an exponential mindset applied to gaming look like? Most games are an incremental piece by piece moves and countermoves. Mostly aheads, because players need progress to know how they are doing in the game environment. Exponentials worked into a game would make a game that has the number markers of the game spiraling up on some stats and way far down on others. Exponential growth versus exponential decay. A game needs exponential growths for a sense of progress. Keeping up with the numbers might include players accumulate enough numbers, then move into a different representation of the numbers. That leads to symbols replacing numbers to show progress. Players accumulate enough numbers. Go to an exponential progress and step into the accumulation of symbols tuned similar to numbers but different in that they represent much larger amounts. Now for many games, the accumulation is represented by items and item sets. To go past numerical representations into other symbol representations can act as a sort of gate to higher level play. Where some other level of math representations could find play such as vector math, algebraic topography, geometric complications, econometrics and so on, on up.
Would it be possible to design an exponential game that relies on complex mathematics and would it find an audience and take them from algebra to calculus and beyond without taxing the play to the point of unplayability. What does the audience look like when calculus concepts are made accessible and key to winning a game?
And a key being, anyone can play, be lead along in progress and be changed by the game and find meaning to the game?
So with those random ideas thrown together, I hope there is something to generate some more thought and even a game or two at the end.
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