Monthly Archives: March 2006

Dance, Smed, dance

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I distilled a few interesting parts from the flood of posts from Smed on the SWG boards. Now that I’m gone through it I think I should have organized it better, dividing the general considerations from the discussion about the specific changes. This is what I have right now:

Our communication has been terrific. I can’t say you neccessarily like what we’ve been saying, but I think our community people and our devs have been much more active than before. I never liked that system of correspondents before (they did a great job..don’t get me wrong) but I prefer direct communication.

—
The truth is the community morale won’t improve until the game does. Communication can’t fix this. Improvements to the game can. The fact is our communication has improved.. people don’t neccessarily like the message is all. I get that. So do our community folks. My preference is that all the posts in the gameplay forum are discussing gameplay balance.. and in-game issues.. but they won’t until we get the game to a baseline fun level. We’re not there yet. We know that. We’re working to fix it. There is no other answer.

—
The SWG community has been voting with it’s feet since the NGE came about. Either we end up being right about our ability to turn the ship around and make a game that’s BETTER than it was before, or we were wrong and we fail. Either way we were losing subs before the NGE and believe it or not, we are losing them at a slower rate than before. I’m not going to pretend we didn’t lose a bunch of subs from this. We did. And I don’t think the game is where it needs to be yet to aquire new subs. But it’s getting there with each and every publish.

At the end of the day there are a lot of people in this community that wonder why we did this? Why did we “deliberately” try and piss people off. Obviously that wasn’t our intent. This is a business and we needed to improve the results of the business. Did we make a mistake? Maybe.. but only time is going to tell on that one. One thing is certain. We made a mistake with how we presented it to the community, and for that I’m sorry. I still think it was a needed thing though. It’s not as simple as “you should have just fixed the things we were complaining about”. That doesn’t address the very real fact that what we had was a hardcore game that wasn’t going to attract the mass audience that the Star Wars IP brings to the table.

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I respectfully disagree with your position on this. The profession system had fundemental flaws that couldn’t be corrected and still be able to both balance the game and add meaningful content that made each profession really matter and be differentiated from the others. Was crafting absolutely the most amazing part of the game? Probably IMO. Can it still be a major part of the game? Hell yes.. and it will be. BUT that needs to be balanced with the fact that adventuring and killing things needed to have meaningful rewards as well to reach a more mainstream audience. I really hope you can see this point even if you don’t agree with it.

—
Allow me to respectfully disagree with your point here – Star Wars as an IP is every bit as capable of delivering a WoW level audience. The reason it isn’t is the game needs to be that good. No, not the SAME game.. but it needs to be that good and polished. Everyone thinks we are trying to make SWG like WoW or EQ2. That’s completely not the case. Yes, we’re going to a more rigid class based system and are doing more linear content.. but that’s where the similarities end IMO. In theory we still have an incredibly deep and rich system based MMO that can deliver some world class gameplay once we live up to your expectations.

—
SWG never attracted the size audience that the Star Wars license delivered in the first place. One of those reasons was combat wasn’t exciting enough. We have done enough research on the people who quit or people that didn’t purchase the game to know this is a hard, brutal cold fact. Could we have gone a different direction with the combat? Yes. Could we in the future change this direction? Yes. Do I think we will? No. Why? Because I don’t believe that this will be an issue if we solve the other half of the equation – making the professions feel different… and making the content really exciting.

—
Let’s get this out of the way right now – SWG in no way has a low sub base. That’s just not the fact. The truth is it’s still the #4 game in North America (WoW, EQ2, EQ, SWG). I’m sure this will bring the naysayers out of the woodwork, but it’s just a fact.

I also totally disagree with our assertion that we can’t make this game the biggest and best MMO out there. We still have a full dev-team on this game and we’re going to absolutely push ourselves until we achieve our goals. Noone is going into coasting mode on this game. Period.

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The only answer I can give you on trust is that we have to earn that trust by continuing to make forward progress. That’s it. We know that.

—
What exactly was the difference between most of the combat professions? There really wasn’t one unfortunately. Adding meaningful content for over 30 professions just wasn’t something we were capable of. We bit off more than we could chew. Also, the fact that a person who had seen the movies won’t know what most of those professions were presented a real problem for aquisition.

—
You will never hear me saying the people that are complaining aren’t passionate about wanting things to be like they were before. In fact, if there is one big lesson I’ve learned from all of this it’s how NOT to go about making big changes in a game

—
I don’t like trying to pass the buck. I may say stuff you disagree with, but I don’t want to try to imply something that’s not true. You may all believe that early on with the NGE we were just “spinning” things. We weren’t.. we honestly believed (and still do) that we could make the game better and convince you all that this was the right direction.

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I actually think this is something that will make things a lot better. I’m not sure where it is in the pipeline of things to do, but I think having mobs not all bunch up will fix a lot of what people complain about. Unfortunately this is not a simple technical problem to solve. It sounds like it is, but on the server side the single biggest frame rate killer is collisions for a lot of reasons I won’t get into. We need to solve this problem. I don’t have an ETA yet though.

—
we’ve lost some dev team members. A lot of new companies have sprung up in Austin and we lost some key people… new people take time to ramp up. Simple as that. NCsoft and others are losing people too. This is a competitive job market. Seriously competitive.

Not from Smed:

We recognize that the current profession system doesn’t allow for any real level of character differentiation. As such, we’re currently working on an “Expertise” system, that grants the players “points” to spend on specialization. The expertise system gives the profession system a similar feel to what we had pre-nge as far as character customization goes. The tech for this system is being developed for the next publish (this won’t be visible to you guys). The publish after that, we’re looking at pushing out the first two professions’s worth of expertise trees, with two professions targeted for every publish after that. Generally speaking, we’ll have three trees for each profession to choose from, including a GCW tree and a “path” tree that will hold things like “dark” and “light” side powers for Jedi, for instance (or droid specializtion, vs poisons for Bounty hunters – for instance).

—
(about the respec NPCs that will be added)
Starts 100k credits and goes up to 25 million i think.

—
Lots of talk about the “secret” project which really isn’t a secret anymore. We are doing a playable demo for E3 and Swede is working on the team that is putting that together. The project is actually going to be larger then just the demo and become a new themepark with a GCW theme (lots of Rebels v. Imperials) to it, which will be put into the game in publish 29.

The intention of this themepark is to cover our bases with E3 and develope a new set of repeatable, high end content for all of you.

The expansion team, which is no more, is now working on nothing but high end content that will be sent out in our regular publishes.

—
(about collision detection)
We are still working on it. It is a huge change to the core game, so we want to make sure it is solid before we roll it out in a publish.

—
Animations – We will be doing some significant work on our animation system in the upcoming months. The collision system we are working on will allow us to get jumping into the game.

—
We’re going to put the stuff that’s clearly SW in first. We’re going to modify or retrofit the best of what was fun but not completely SW in second. We’re going to remove or eliminate those things that clearly aren’t SW.

And, we’re going to do it all at a pace that ensures quality and fun.

—
SWG is no longer striving to be a world simulation.

There would be so many things to say about all this.

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Promising impossible things

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Let’s see some comments:

Krones:
In this role Koster was SOE’s trophy wife, a fucking meat-puppet, something that was propped out to travel and show off as if he were some one man traveling sideshow circus. It isn’t a bad thing, far from it, a position like this as a chief creative officer for one of the biggest mmo companies in the world is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It is a position where you do a lot traveling, have access to a myriad of projects, and I’m sure the pay wasn’t bad either. It is a king of kings, a throne, a dream position for many in the industry, but in reality Koster sitting in this position was more like being nothing more than a mere cub scout’s badge on SOE’s dirty stained shirt.

Koster has been feeding his passion for design and development by developing various games during his free time and of course writing about the inwards, the ticks, the veins of a myriad of concepts, but it’s not enough, those are mere masturbatory exercises. The whole point is developing for an audience of more than yourself and a group of friends if you have the means to do so, or even a group of readers, too share your ideas and passion with the fucking world, some people design for reaction, it is the response which fulfills them with meaningful satisfaction, that is their play.

Ironwood:
Oh God. The wheel turns again and we’re going to build up a ‘next saviour’ off this crackpots back and when it fucks up YET AGAIN, we’re gonna make another 200 page thread about it.

Call me again in Ten Years.

Brian Rucker:
That’s nice Raph’s throwing down the gauntlet. Now I wish the dumbass would pick it up himself.

Raph Koster says the most brilliant things (and sometimes ridiculous outrageous things – to get a response) about what needs to be done with game design. I don’t agree with all of it, like his seeming fascination with direct PvP, but much of it is spot on. What fries my shorts is he talks this amazing game, and on occasion displays those insights to good effect – the unique things we loved about SWG for example, but he never follows though. I’m guessing it’s because there are other forces getting exerted via marketing or licence holders or just other devs who have other agendas.

You lament. You lament. You made this. You gave into the crappy and shallow expectations of the very game design decisions you’re pointing that stubby old finger at now, Raph. And you can do better.

Then fucking do it. As yourself. As the guy that loved MUDs and had some great ideas. Not as the posterboy of MMOdom. Not as the Quoteable Visionary.

Just you, Raph. Do it. Fuck the money. Built it right, you know you’ve got the right ideas, and it will come.

I tend to agree with a variety of points of view.

As I read the news I felt somewhat disappointed like Ironwood. Gordon Walton, Rich Vogel and Raph Koster. Not going indie, of course, but joining the next Big Guy (Bioware) entering the playfield, and claiming it their own territory and pride. Despite Raph repeats how much he loves the indie game development and how the scarcity of the resources can be good for the creativity. So absolutely predictable.

See, it’s not that these guys didn’t get second, third or fourth chances. It’s not like they didn’t have the occasion to express themselves and demonstrate their ideas. So, every time I see these “dinosaurs” swapping companies and projects I always feel somewhat cheated. They swap side, have parties with friends. It seems things change but everything is exactly the same and in the tight grip of the same hands. We have always the same masters. They feign change but it’s always the same game. They promise impossible things, fuck them up and then promise again with a wink.

Jump ship before it’s too late, dodge the responisibilities and show a big smile as a new project is rolled at your feet. How convenient and cheap.

Take the case of Lum. It is totally different. Lum didn’t have the chance to try his ideas, he was in the back implementing stuff, observing and commenting. But he didn’t have the possibility to demonstrate the other side of things. So I’m interested in what he can say. I’m glad to see him now in the position to poke at things more directly. I think he deserved that and that, finally, he could be used for a role that suits him better. It was long due.

What I criticize is this idea of a “sealed” industry completely controlled by some elders that built their own reputation long ago and are now continuing of inertia. There’s lot of ego and convenience driving things, but not much honesty and merit. These guys should help to form and educate a new mentality, new blood. And instead they plug every hole and sit on top of the pyramid, expecting to be revered and keeping tightly everything in their grip. They suffocate the industry instead of making it more vibrant and alive. More responsive.

I’m not attacking Raph here, but what you expect me to think when I see Gordon Walton, Rich Vogel and Raph Koster together again under another Big Company and possibly building another game about Star Wars. Come on. I’ve already seen this movie. You cannot expect to sell it to me as something brand new. I see too many free cookies for these guys.

But then I am also overly excited, because this is what I wanted Raph to do since the beginning. His biggest “mistake” was to leave the lead of SWG, I always considered that as a betrayal to the game. I’ve already said that a lead designer should NEVER leave his project. This commitment is fundamental and the very first responsibility. Instead Raph dropped everything, fled from the battlefield when things were heating up and when it was crucial to push forward the “Vision”. Because the release of a mmorpg isn’t the end of the development, it’s the beginning of the journey. And that ship lost the commander, a ship that wasn’t particularly strong in the first place and that surely couldn’t “afford” to be left on its own. That ship sank long ago and it sank ALSO because of the original design. There were flaws but it was the very first reason why Raph should have been there to figure out and and solve those flaws for what it was possible. So that he could have been *accountable* for both the merits and the problems. His responsibilities. Mmorpgs are like babies, after nine months you aren’t done with them. That was the easy part.

I’m not criticizing his practical decisions. Or Raph as a man. But just the public side and his choice and responsibilities toward the game.

Now I’m overly excited because Raph is back to where he belongs (well, assumptions). Because I’m so absolutely tired to see him talking at the high level about abstract ideas that do not go anywhere. So. Horribly. Logorrheic. I want to see him in the front lines. To work concretely, get his hands dirt. Fight for his ideas and ideals instead of writing them in a book about games. I love his book, but with no games, no book.

So I think, “FINALLY”. Things are moving again. We aren’t swamped in the sameness where you feel like suspended in a time without time. In a stasis where you finish always to think about what happened in the past and with no faith or interest about the future. This industry killed the genre, it sabotaged it. Where are out “virtual worlds”? Where are our myths?

I believe that Raph still has a lot to demonstrate and I believe we can draw a line over the past to look at the future.

Maybe with Bioware guarding his shoulders and forbidding him to try things too wacky and out of place.

Hoping he won’t bail off again near the end.

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Smed on the news

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1) Yes Raph is leaving SOE. It’s not some big dramatic thing – it’s simple.. he’s at the end of his contract with SOE and he wants to try some new things that realistically we can’t do here at SOE right now. The truth is Raph is an incredibly talented and amazingly creative person and he has 1000 great ideas. He’s done some great things in this industry and I know he’ll continue to do great things. Raph’s been with SOE for 5 years. I’ve enjoyed working with him a lot and he’s made some great contributions. At the end of the day we have a finite amount of resources and projects that we can have in development at any one time. He wants to try some new stuff that we can’t do at this stage.. we have a lot of things we are trying to do as a company right now. I’m always surprised by the amount of rampant speculation that goes on about stuff like this.

2) No – in fact LucasArts isn’t “pulling the Star Wars” license or anything of the kind. We have a very long term deal and things are fine between our companies. It’s complete and utter fabrication. I feel like we need extra-special tin-foil hats in the shape of Darth Vader’s mask or something. What happens is one website writes something – then 5 more link to it.. so it must all of a sudden be true. I wish it worked that way.

Well, I was wrong.

They still have a secret reserve of smileys. Smed is more ostinate than me.

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Ring a Ring O’Roses

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Gamespot confirmed the rumor. As Shild said, “I like my post more”.

Interesting bits:

Raph Koster, chief creative officer of Sony Online Entertainment, and one of the leaders behind the development of Star Wars Galaxies, has left the company, SOE reps confirmed today.

“Although his current interests take him into areas that don’t match SOE’s strategic goals, we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.”

Koster’s departure wasn’t the only piece of scuttlebutt making the rounds today, but it was perhaps the most accurate. There was also a rumor circulating that SOE would soon lose the rights to the Star Wars license–and suffer the fate of having to delete or otherwise retire the “Star Wars” component of its Galaxies MMORPG title; SOE called that speculation “completely untrue.”

Three cheers for “creative divergences”! First time that it is stated quite clearly.

That the whole SWG wouldn’t have switched hands in a week was already quite obvious. It’s not like the game is full property of Lucasart and I’m not sure that SOE will sell lightheartedly the whole code and infrastructure to whoever is going to take over. I’m pretty sure that right now noone knows how things will go, not even those involved. SOE is probably pissed off beyond what you can imagine. They are going to fight over this, it won’t be all smileys anymore.

That things are going to change is obvious. SWG went through the last revolution (NGE – Neon Genesis Evangelion) not because it was overly successful to the point that they wanted to burn some money, but because the previous situation wasn’t commercially viable. It wasn’t satisfactory. Well, if it wasn’t satisfactory back then you can bet that they aren’t overly pleased right now.

The countdown started. Things will blow up. There will be fireworks.

“Ring around the rosey
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes
They all fall down”

Let’s just hope that the “winners” won’t be the same people responsible, swapping sides and wearing new masks. Because those who lose are always the players.

Always.

SOE: Tinfoil hats

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So, I sleep four hours and the place blows up. Krones is already on it.

Kotaku jumpstarted the rumor machine:

It’s no secret that things at Sony Online Entertainment haven’t been gumdrops and lollypops. While EverQuest has been a bonafide success, Star Wars Galaxies has been an enormous screw up. The massively-multiplayer online version of the popular George Lucas films has been a fiasco, costing SOE players and money.

A mole sends us word that Raph Koster has left SOE to start up a new games studio. Cindy Armstrong, head of Business Development, has taken an offer to become the new USA honcho for Webzen. Moreover, Lucas Arts is not extending their Star Wars license. Yikes.

The rot has started to set in, and the mole implies that it’s only a matter of time before SOE’s prez. John Smedley is sent packing. “Place has been falling apart for a while,” writes our mole. “Smedley is not long in his job.” May the force be with you, John.

The follow-up to the rumor is that Raph should have joined his mates at the new Bioware Austin studios. Which would mean that Raph will have to move since he was in the SOE studio of San Diego.

For what? The “Star Wars Galaxies” of the future, whose licence is suposedly being revoked to SOE and given to the Bioware studio. I doubt that Bioware can use SOE’s code if this is true.

This while Raph is happily blogging about the GDC and looking even too giddy.

Beside these rumors, nothing else official. Not even a hint or a confirmation from other sources if not players’ speculations. The only thing that comes close to an official comment doesn’t say much:

Our new sister studio, BioWare Austin, has yet to state what stance they will be taking. I would refrain from assuming anything, one way or the other, until they’ve released more information.

You can find more consolidated version of the rumors here and here.

Now. Here’s the part where I say I’m highly skeptical, but it’s confirmed. Shild confirmed it openely. I’m going to believe him.

Yea, it’s not a rumor. I already confirmed it. Discuss, or something.

Edit: I’m not posting sources or anything, but let’s just say it’s probably not a secret at SOE or even GDC by now.

I’m refraining to comment past this.

Three years old DAoC’s bug makes its way to Oblivion

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Have I already said that I hate Netimmerse/Gamebryo?

Well, people are reporting that with a simple change to the advanced options of Nvidia drivers you can greatly reduce mouse lag and have a more steady framerate.

This is a bug in the Netimmerse/Gamebyro engine that is about three years old and that I discovered because without the fix I just couldn’t play anymore DAoC on my old Geforce 3.

To apply this fix and enjoy the improvements in Oblivion you just need this small file (right click and “Save As..”, or it will show on the browser window). Double click on it and it will ask you to add some options to the Windows registry. Accept it. It should work with every driver version, so don’t worry about compatibility issues or nasty surprises. It just enables some hidden options in the graphic drivers.

After you have applied the registry key you’ll have a new tab in the options of the drivers. Under “Performance & Quality Settings” you’ll find “Additional Direct3D Settings” and it’s where you’ll have to change the “Max Frames to render ahead” from 3 to 0 (or “1”, just try both. At that time setting it to “0” didn’t work. I don’t know if something changed). This is a “safe” change. It won’t create problems in other games, so don’t worry about messing up.

The slower Oblivion runs on your system the more this fix will improve things.

Congratulations NDL. Three years later and this major bug is still there, intact.

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A personal form of expression

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Here below I wrote that I consider games as an hybrid media and that the learning experience should be the discovery of oneself.

Now I’m reading an article from Will Wright that mirrors many of these fundamental points:

Dream machines

Games cultivate – and exploit – possibility space better than any other medium. In linear storytelling, we can only imagine the possibility space that surrounds the narrative: What if Luke had joined the Dark Side? What if Neo isn’t the One? In interactive media, we can explore it.

Like the toys of our youth, modern videogames rely on the player’s active involvement. We’re invited to create and interact with elaborately simulated worlds, characters, and story lines. Games aren’t just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination.

The same transformation is happening in games. Early computer games were little toy worlds with primitive graphics and simple problems. It was up to the player’s imagination to turn the tiny blobs on the screen into, say, people or tanks. As computer graphics advanced, game designers showed some Hollywood envy: They added elaborate cutscenes, epic plots, and, of course, increasingly detailed graphics. They bought into the idea that world building and storytelling are best left to professionals, and they pushed out the player. But in their rapture over computer processing, games designers forgot that there’s a second processor at work: the player’s imagination.

Games have the potential to subsume almost all other forms of entertainment media. They can tell us stories, offer us music, give us challenges, allow us to communicate and interact with others, encourage us to make things, connect us to new communities, and let us play. Unlike most other forms of media, games are inherently malleable.

Games are evolving to entertain, educate, and engage us individually. These personalized games will reflect who we are and what we enjoy. They will allow us to express ourselves, meet others, and create things that we can only dimly imagine. And more than ever, games will be a visible, external amplification of the human imagination.

Which means: a personal form of expression.

The goals in a game shapeshift from functional (and objective) to metaphorical (and subjective). Symbolic. It isn’t anymore a custom path from A to B. But it’s instead a “slice of world” that you can then model as you want. Following your “imagination” as the displacement that exists between the world of forms and the world of ideas. Games become not just “lessons” to figure out, not just “packaged experiences” but a form of discovery and expression of individuality.

We sublimate to the world of the ideas, toward the culture, its myths and what we absorb from those. Our personal elaboration and interiorization. Our symbols, our sensibility, our presence. A form of communication.

This is an essential evolution.

From my point of view the “roleplay” isn’t one of the patterns available in a game. But the only one complete. The one more powerful and effective. The one that “reaches” more. That communicates better and without “language” barriers. Universal.

Now an entire generation has grown up with a different set of games than any before it – and it plays these games in different ways. Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn’t a random process; it’s the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It’s a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis.

I believe this process works at best when it happens through the immersivity. Where we remove the filters and let express the player the way he like, in that particular context that was offered.

The immersion in an environment. Free to our interpretation and individual perception of it (and ourselves within it).

I see mmorpgs as the best way to explore these possibilities.

PS3 is region-free

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From the GDC and from Joystiq:

During a Q&A session with media over lunch after yesterday’s GDC keynote, Sony’s Phil Harrison confirmed that PS3 software will be region free and that multiplayer gaming will also be free.

“It’s possible for developers to put all the TV formats – PAL, NTSC, HDTV, and so on – on the disc.” Can Sony bring the world together with games?

Finally a marketing decision that isn’t going against the interest of the players. That’s all I wanted to hear.

PS3, I will buy you.

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Subjectivity of fun

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Another turn in a discussion that I already started here (the second part in particular).

“Content that is not seen as good by players is not content”. Fun is subjective. And there’s also a “communicative pact” between the game and the players that is the premise of what comes next. “I’ll tell you that story you want to hear”.

From the comments where this discussion is continuing:

—
The parallel you do between games difficulty, greater player choice and “sandbox” games is interesting. They seem to have so much in common that the concrete distinction between each is a blur.

Which could bring to the conclusion that fun in games is always subjective. Exactly because “the pattern the player masters does not have to be the one that the game was intentionally presenting”. What is fun for you could be boring for me, the game could communicate something to me that “doesn’t tick”. That doesn’t have a common ground.

And then. “That goal and the player’s goal have to actually align”. Which actually means that the player must be “preventively” interested in the pattern offered.

And what if this specific pattern comes in the form of a metaphor that the player is trying to “roleplay”?

—
I think “mastery” means the acquisition of a competence. It’s always an idea of fun strictly tied to “learning”. When you have mastered a pattern (meaning you know it thoroughly) you stop having fun, it becomes boring. Which is the idea of the “losing battle against the human brain” that tries to optimize everything and make everything “boring”.

The “jump” in the discussion is when we deal with games that are subject to an interpretation. So where what the game “teaches” isn’t strictly codified but that allows the player to interact with less “filters”.

I discussed about this point here, but it’s where I start to have different ideas than Raph. From my point of view the immersion becomes a fundamental element because it removes the filters and allows the player to explore and determine the game and its patterns from a personal point of view. Adding subjectivity.

—
To the last line of the first comment Raph replied:

Then the underlying game patterns that the player wants to learn likely aren’t mechanical, in the rules sense… they may be social.

But “roleplay” isn’t always social. I don’t even think that the two are connected. Take the recent example of Oblivion. It’s all about the roleplay, all about the immersion, all about creating your character and “exist” in the “slice of world”. Oblivion can be considered as a “sandbox”. And again I see “sandbox” and immersion as tightly connected.

The roleplay is a basic form of experience without “filters”. This is why we would like to reduce or remove completely the HUD. Live an experience in its full potential instead of through stictly codified patterns. A degree of freedom that is again strictly tied with the immersion, then the roleplay and finally the symbolic meaning. The myth we are trying to reproduce.

All this may or not include social patterns, but these patterns aren’t essential.

I don’t see the games as a medium that has its fundamental qualities in the mechanics. I see it more as an hybrid medium that can borrow narrative techniques from everywhere. It’s more like an infusion of different styles. Probably one of the most powerful way to communicate even if not yet used in that sense (which brings to ethical problems).

I’m not sure if I can effectively connect all the dots but I have a very precise point of view, with ethical implication: “learning” should be the discovery of oneself:

The evaluation should come from within. Not from the outside. Originally “education” meant the discovery of oneself. Not shoving in an empty, valueless mind the imposed categories and dictates of a culture.

Which brings to:

We learn through stories; we become who we are through stories.

Our own stories, those that we can shape the way we want, those that we can control to an extent and add our subjectivity. So adding something that is about us. About our symbols. Our value.

From wherever you want to look at the problem, the mechanics are a mean, a vehicle of the communication. Not its end. We can communicate how we are to someone else, we can explore ourselves in a game but, essentially, a game is a form of expression. It must be personal, somewhere, so that it can truly communicate to us, or communicate who we are.