Ludus Novus 024: Decision Point

Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 024: Decision Point
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This podcast is supported in part by my Patreon. You can help support it by pledging a monthly donation.

In this episode of the Ludus Novus podcast, I discuss the decisions we make as game designers and developers and how we are responsible for every aspect of the games we make. I touch on polishing, social justice, and emergent aspects of games.

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The taxonomy of decisionmaking I propose in the podcast follows, from most deliberate to least deliberate:

  1. Intentional decisions: “I chose this for a reason.”
    • “This was part of my vision for the game.”
    • “I received feedback that led me to decide this was a good change to make.”
  2. Heuristic decisions: “I chose this because I judged it the best option.”
    • “I used math or reasoning to make this decision in order to balance the game.”
    • “I polished the game by making a series of small decisions to improve it by addressing imperfections.”
  3. Inspired decisions: “I chose this and I don’t know why.”
    • “I made this decision because something unknown inside me encouraged me to do so.”
    • “I made this decision because my society made it seem like the right one.”
  4. Emergent decisions: “I chose this indirectly as the result of other decisions.”
    • “I didn’t notice this aspect of the game because I decided not to spend the time or attention to discover it.”
    • “This aspect of the game was an accident, but I decided not to eliminate it.”

The music for this episode is the instrumental version of “Lafayette” by Josh Woodward and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Please share any feedback or suggestions in the comments.

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One thought on “Ludus Novus 024: Decision Point

  1. I love your podcasts, wish there were more of them! It’s been a loong time since you’ve done a False Narrativism, I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with 5 years after your last.

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