Games are a sequence of delightful interactions

[Xilef]

John Carmack posted something on Facebook that boils down how I feel about games perfectly.

"Games are different, and many can almost be viewed as essentially just a sequence of delightful interactions."

I would go further than that and say that all good games are just a sequence of delightful interactions. Some of my favourite games were built around ideas of "it would be cool if this happened".
I know that most games were written this way in the past (and many probably still are); the design is built around a series of awesome ideas and then it is all pulled together with the writing (which needs to be good for the user's experience) and a story is thought up to justify all these interactions.

 

[coyotecraft]

In context to virtual reality though, I don't think "game" should be ascribed to mere interaction. This is getting into why Visual Novel aren't games. It's already difficult to talk to people on RMweb about gameplay because so many people believe ~anything~ can be a game and they naturally assume that any action performed in a game is gameplay.
When I toss the idea at them that gameplay is what constitutes it being game in the first place, and that's where genres come from, it's like tossing tree branch into a bicycle wheel causing a huge pileup. In their mind it was always a game because they said it was a game. A lot of skinned knees and bruised egos.

 

[Alsup]

I tend to agree with you, Xilef. Delightful interactions, as you put it, is often times the difference between good and bad games, one way or another.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

The reason I try my best to write my games and especially, my characters, so well- is to give a sense of belonging and feels to events that happen throughout the game and to the characters. I constantly dwell on things that eventually get resolved. For instance, now in Fantasia the girls are embarking upon the quest to find a bunch of people to string them together for what is called the VAHNUS PROPHECY, it's not so much a prophecy as a plan and it stems largely from my love of gravity falls, in that the Zodiac was used as a means to contain the ultra-evil insane triangle bill cipher. It's probably clear if you pay even a little mind to the designs and environments and especially symbology that Fantasia is obsessed with triangles, and makes constant reference to illuminati-like watching, in fact before she was properly fleshed out Yi Hellrider, the stories more impactful antagonist, was based largely on Bill, down to a creepy two-line poem that has immense similarity to the poem about Cipher- "When Gravity Falls and Earth become Sky, beware the demon with just one eye."

Compared to the less cryptic but still ominous tagline of Fantasia

"When Sun Shrinks in Distant Skies, beware the Demon with Triangle Eyes."

A lot of the theming in fantasia bases itself of the gravity Falls formula.

To get back to my current hurdle, it's a little difficult to justify all the goings on past Disk 1, and so as it stands the motivation for the characters to risk life and limb for what they are doing. Truthfully, i suppose the threat of cosmic endangerment would tempt anyone to do whatever they can, but while the characters may feel the stakes, I feel like the players may not.

It's a hurdle, but like several before, I will find a way to overcome it. In Disk 0 I had a lot of difficulty overcoming some of the hurdles it presented, but when the demo was actually released, the general feeling despite the lack of gameplay, was that it was incredibly well written, and that in some part- the writing largely carried it. Perhaps I'll find that it's because I personally can't get into the stakes, despite them being two of the things I fear the most, bodily possession and complete nullification of being. I'm sure for most who play the game, the cause they are fighting will feel very real, but the tone does get a bit unerious for the sake of letting the player indulge themselves in finding hidden easter eggs, I'm thinking perhaps it'd be best to do what i did during Day Five of Disk 0, and make the search for tristy and the recovery of the file containing all of her research one big linear arc. Not only will it have at least 3 bosses during, but a lot of highly anticipated scenes.as well as a very ominous ending to the first disk and what is essentially Demo 2.

Either way, Fantasia has delightful interactions just about everywhere, and caters to a variety of different delights, for example, one who enjoys dark unfettered existentialism will be right at home with Fantasia, but those who like emotional heartstring-tuggers or happy-goodtime family moments will have a surplus of enjoyment to be had as well.