The Assumed Relevance Of First

A Defense of “FIRST!”

This video helped kicked me thinking about this for a bit so I’m going to just sit here while you watch it. Join me after the fold.

I talk quite a bit about base assumptions when I talk to people about making games and I tend to do so in a way that involves being looked at like I’m from space. A tweet of mine went just famous enough to get the attention of cringing idiots, where I forwarded that games contain base assumptions and if you’ve never noticed that it’s probably because you haven’t ever encountered something that challenges your base assumptions. Some of our base assumptions about the world are really quite superficial, like trains are always late, but some of them are really sunk down deep in our brains in a way that it’s kind of hard to escape. My favourite example of this is bigger numbers are better, and many a designer has stopped me there and said hang on, but why is that bad?

It’s not bad. It’s just a basic assumption your game makes.

Second Edition Dungeons and Dragons, to make its own little math subsystem work relied on player armour classes (‘how hard you are to hit’ creep downwards, which as players grew closer and closer to a 0 armour class, eventually led to the inevitable punching through the other side, allowing players to start working with negative numbers. If you’re an old hand at 2ed I’ve no doubt you smile fondly at this but most everyone I know who’s unused to it reacts the same way when told to do math about adding or subtracting negative numbers, which is comparable to the way a puppy reacts when it licks a lime for the first time.

We get to the video soon I promise.

When I describe base assumptions – the things we use as the very foundations for how things should or would work – I’m usually met with the response of why are those things bad, which misses my point rather grossly. I’m not saying any set of base assumptions are good or bad (though some of them are pretty bad), I’m saying that it is worthwhile being aware of them… and so…

The video.

The thing this whole video works on and assumes is being first is good.

Now.

Imagine what a culture that doesn’t think that would be like. Paint in your mind the image of a society that doesn’t think it’s impressive to do something the first time. Does that dissolve the thrill of discovery? Does it look like a complacent land of dirt farmers who don’t want no high-falutin’ medicine? Easy to do that perjoratively, but then you’re still bringing in the base assumption that being first is good, and a society that doesn’t care about firstness is bad. Would a society that cares not about first be instead interested in second? What if they care about replicating results? What if they care about the person who comes back from an expedition rather than the one who reaches the edge of the world the first time? Would they look to science differently, thinking those who replicate results are noble? Would this society look to the explorer fondly, but even more fondly on the first friend who said to the explorer, yes, I will travel with you, for I believe in you enough to follow?

Can you think of universal constants in game experiences, in design that you lean on? Are they necessarily good? Can you see interesting or fun things to do if you don’t necessarily follow them? Are you just strawmanning the importance of your previous base assumptions, or are you really trying to shift what your zero position is?