One of those things I find myself doing too, I think maybe it’s too close to my day-to-day ruminating to feel fantastical? Which is obviously ridiculous lol

Gosh Nuclear Throne slaps, every now and then I’ll sit down someone who’s never played and watch them get ultra-invested in just getting past the Sewers. Great soundtrack, too.

It infested so deeply into me that my playgroup refers to the int/wis stat dichotomy as Facts/Vibes now

My understanding is that it uses how much you interact with a given account as a metric for how highly on the list to show one thing or another, as opposed to an algorithm, I might be wrong though. I also heard you can be tagged as “controversial” and such internally which can also effect who sees

Indie ttrpgs are like the MtG Cube community. Everyone involved has tried to design a cube, or succeeded, and those who came early on are renowned. Getting your foot in the door relies on peers noticing your “innovation”. All are shunned by the main MtG community, who see no value in alternate play

This has been a long rant to say: you won’t see me put something out until the thing that’s following it up is also ready. I don’t want to be the oil in the pan that has sizzled up in smoke before it was allowed to even touch the ingredients, I think. Disappointment hand in hand with real life. :’)

I believe that when we talk about innovation in games, we’re actually referring to innovations in technique rather than technology. Now technique, that’s a thing we can laud and praise. Technique can be trained, and more easily adapted by others than technology. But “innovate” is innocent, imo.

My discourse take: yall aren’t separating the word innovation from the word technological. And the emotional response brought about by technology is repulsive to most. Technological innovation is hard to see without entire strides and changes in history: the aircraft, refrigeration, home computers.

This community has a fickle attention span. You can rise, then fall, if you don’t follow up your hit appropriately. How likely is someone to read your blogpost over, INSERT FAMOUS DESIGNER when they have limited hours in a day? How did we come to idolize famous designers anyway if innovation=bad???

All I’m saying is… the ones who succeed around here are the ones who can treat their games and work like a job. Hobbyists get shafted because they can’t keep up with the work ethic of someone making games to be able to eat. If you do have a hit, you better convert into a career, stat!

Everyone says “just put it out!” and then only the products which have inbuilt innovation get attention.
“Yeah but that’s a bad thing“ I KNOW, but we aren’t doing anything to dissuade this system of values. We’re dealing with money, ideas aren’t free. Concepts take hours and hours to develop.

If a product isn’t valued for the new things it brings to the table, and is instead about reconfiguring components in the most appealing ways, we’ve lost sight completely. Yall don’t remember making fun of ashcan hacks 6 years ago? Everyone who claims we can stop innovating thinks we’ve made it?

There was a discourse going around not too long ago about innovation in ttrpgs. How that’s a nasty turn of phrase. I can see it. I’m also not foolish enough to convince myself that the primary audience of indie games isn’t just other indie game designers. We are passing ideas around in product form.