Hi Ryan, Dark, and all, Ryan basically summed up our line of thinking extremely succinctly. Using gold, silver, etc, would be just as arbitrary to many people as colors would be, as most metals do not have radically varying textures.
The problem would exist for nearly any system you could think of, for large swaths of the world's population. We could use galleons, sickles, and knits from the Harry Potter universe, and I, and likely many others, could use that just as well, and those things are purely abstract. Also, in a system that uses something more arbitrary, like types of metal, colors, animals, whatever…you are then asking the person to memorize values for five different representative items. In ChangeReaction, as it stands now, the user only needs to really remember three…and really, more like two. I doubt anyone who knows English well enough to buy the game does not know what a "dollar" is, particularly as that is a name for currency in far more countries than just the USA. Likewise, "penny", as was previously pointed out in this discussion, is pretty universally understood. That leaves "nickels", "dimes", and "quarters". "Quarter" simply refers to the fact that it is worth one-quarter of a dollar, so that is easy as well. Nickels and dimes are the only truly arbitrary names to remember. Anything else is more arbitrary than what we have now. And, speaking of arbitrary, the original ChangeReaction also used simple tones in one mode to indicate the various types of coins. We eliminated this in favor of using pitch to indicate the height of the stacks, and also because it did seem far too arbitrary. We had, at one point, considered adding additional types of coins as modes in the game, including fictional or archaic forms of money, just to give folks something new to learn and play with…although this discussion is really making us reconsider whether that would be such a good idea. While James probably did consider ChangeReaction as a Tetris variant, we are treating all of the titles now as their own entities. Hence why you see modes like LooseChange and PayDay in the new version, which have no correlating Tetris equivalents. If you expect ChangeReaction to be exclusively a Tetris clone, or AlienOutback to be exclusively a SpaceInvaders dupe, you're going to have those expectations shattered…hopefully, in a good way. On Dec 27, 2012, at 9:15 AM, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Ryan. > > for me it is a question of identification and logic. i know! what british > coins are like, I have no idea what american ones are, indeed until Tom's > explanation I didn't even know that a dime was a tenth of a dollar. > > At the moment, the game feels like playing with completely random names that > have no meaning or logic to me at all, I might as well be playing with made > up words such as zing zang and zod. > > The reason I think this is such a big deal is that clearly in creating the > game, james north wanted a way of constructing tetris using everyday objects, > however to most people outside the us, they are nothing of the sort, just > pure abstractions, which actually gets in the way of playing the game sinse > it means your effectively working with something rather meaningless just as > if they were totally nonsensical names unrelated to anything in a person's > real environment. > > One way of fixing this might be to add options for various currencies such as > British pounds and euroes, however you still then run into the problem of > people in countries who's currency wasn't represented, (I know for a fact > there are several indian audio gamers who naturally use rupees), and also the > more serious problem that each coinage has different size and denomination > coins, for example we've already said that in British coins there is no such > thing as a quarter of a pound coin. > > thus, the suggestion is to create a system based upon objects that everyone > has readily to hand, or could easily imagine for themselves, that is why I > personally suggested simply changing the names of the coins to metals such as > copper, iron, bronze, silver and gold, sinse then anyone is free to imagine > the physical coins themselves. > > tom suggested plastic tocans of the arcade type with some sort of internal > logic. > > the point however about either of those systems is that they have more logic > and relevancy to players outside the us. > > As I said, imagine playing the game with nonsense words substituted for the > coin names and you might gather why it is such a problem, particularly for a > game so heavily based on the idea of moving physical objectts. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [email protected]. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
