>>32641803This is somewhat tangential, but i really dislike this tendency amongst people who got into games after the year 2004 to call all interesting interactions in a game 'bugs'.
One of the worst feelings there is in a gameplay experience is feeling like the game and or developer is trying to 'fight you' in your endeavor to master it. By this we don't mean in a direct sense like it presenting you with challenges you need to figure out, but in a more meta sense, where there is nothing *too* figure out; where every interesting possibility seems to be preemptively closed off, or, where you think you have figured something out, and suddenly it is snatched out of your hands after the fact.
Contrapositively, one of the best feelings in the world when it comes to playing a game is that feeling of figuring out some clever tech and doing something cool with it, taking your play to a higher level. Did you know that in the original Street Fighter II, combo attacks were not a planned feature by the developers? It was a quirk of mechanics discovered by arcade players after release. Something so basically foundational to the popular concept of fighting games, and it arose by complete accident, being consciously elaborated on as a feature in later installments. That is felicity right there.
In later days, what one so often sees is that the moment someone figures out some advantageous tech, a dev team comes in to 'patch' it (because all games are 'always online' nowadays, too). As almost like a knee-jerk, autonomous reflex even, without any conscious thought as to what ultimate purpose is being served thereby, which is often unclear. The ethic that is *implied* by the behavior seems to be either, that nothing not preconcepted by the devteam is allowed, or, that nothing that can give a player an advantage in playing the game is allowed, or some combination thereof. I can hardly think of a term to describe this bent, it is like some kind of spiritual sickness, or unconscious socio-politcal tendency. Like a demented gardener who takes a weedwhacker to any plants that grow up above a certain line; nothing outstanding allowed.
Over time, this process leaves one with a property that feels lifeless, empty, and sterile; learned helplessness, with no special effort to figure out tech because any time you do it'll all get changed anyways; a bubble-wrapped meandering through beige mediocrity; where no particular actions are particular impactful, and you are closer to a stage-actor moving along the carefully choreographed lines of a set-piece, than a player making the world of the game yours.
