Comment by protocolture

>good game design

There are plenty of good or even great games that dont give a shit about "good game design". And developing in the direction of "good game design" is sort of like Carcinization, AAA games have been tending towards a single unified structure. Its great for mass media but its terrible for art.

I learned Dwarf Fort through a mate of mine. We both played separately, and we would have phone calls discussing how we were able to achieve x or y outcome. Eventually we determined an ideal set of bootstraps to achieve a plateau of semi functional Dwarf society.

And then they dropped the dwarf economy update, and everything went to shit and we got to relearn how to pick ourselves up all over again.

Then Bees, then Taverns and Travellers. Then Danger Rooms started causing more serious wounds.

You are welcome to limit yourself to AAA games and yellow paint but thats you deciding to artificially limit what experiences you participate in. It doesnt cast a single shadow on people tooling around and experiencing the art of games.