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references

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Midnight_Carnival
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We live in such a referential society it seems.
I mean it is as if knowing a quote for every occasion is a mark of intelligence. Granted, it shows that you are well-read or well-watched or well-googled, but what happened to wit?

Our humour seems mainly to consist of parody, spoof and slapstick, just the idea that everything good has already been done, that everything original already exists and the you can't live your life without copying someone. Come on, run my post through a plagiarism checker and see how much of it is someone else's.
Originality is not something we could spend our lives striving for and never finding, originality is something we are condemned to.

But these days, it is like it is frowned upon or something.
"Oh, did you make that shirt yourself? - Oh, well, yes I'll buy you a real one then..."

This idea that all good ideas already exist and all you can do is put your own little signature on someone else's is ... unhealthy to say the least. Where did it come from? Why is original thought discouraged? Is this part of our culture of guilt and shame, this culture which tells little children that they are fat and ugly and stupid and sinful from the day they are born (or even before then) and that they must atone for being who they are and not living up to society's expectations of them? Is that why people are so cynical when it comes to original thoughts: "I am worthless and can't produce anything good, I shouldn't even try, I must just buy more stuff to make me feel better"?

Really, I don't see building dependency into all future generations as a viable solution to anything.

Tbone
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Reactive v.s. Proactive

I'm sure what this has to do with game design (I guess maybe the the dependency on based mechanics in games?), but its the idea that we have learned to react to our surroundings instead of actively pursuing solutions. We let our circumstance chose our outcome instead of choosing how we handle the circumstance.

Bringing this back to game design, instead using someone else's design, we can break down our own designs to find the real problem. I don't think it's terrible to use mechanics that work such as worker placement and deck building, but you must make it YOUR own.

I agree, we love to reference our environment, but rarely do we create our own environment.

ElKobold
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Joined: 04/10/2015
And where, exactly, is the

And where, exactly, is the original thought discouraged?
I must be missing something.

Midnight_Carnival
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Joined: 06/17/2015
point taken

you are correct Tbone, my post was largely down to frustration over people treating originality as a commodity and so seeming to suggest that only a genius was capable of coming up with something original so why bother.

I get annoyed with people thinking that everything is a reference always, even when it is plainly not.

No, I don't believe that we should invent everything ourselves and had press boards/cards, etc from papyrus (actually that would make some good cards and it's not hard to grow, my mother has it growing in her garden). I just see this sort of thing as a symptom of a bigger problem facing our society, what I call the culture of referencing as described. No, it does not only relate to game design but it definitely effects game design!

Thanks for that.

Kobold:
Where is it discouraged? according to my friends from the US, that would be "back home", I am not a US citizen and have no interest in their politics, but if people from that country claim that original thought is discouraged there then I can give at least 1 place.
I won't speculate on how much you're missing.

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