Blog #4: Freestyle

After reading the articles I noticed many similarities between them. The first article, Game Theory 101, went into detail about how a good story arc makes a good game. While the article doesn't introduce anything new, it interests me at how the author's perception seems to be that games need to have somehow have a good story to keep the player interested. I find this to not be true many times such as the Mario series or the Zelda series where the premise of the game has been the same ever since its inception. Although successful, games like The Elder Scrolls don't even come close to the sales of the Mario franchise even though the Elder Scrolls has the "open-ended" type style of gameplay. I'm a little confused as to what theme actually is, but I feel as though theme is not as important as just getting players as involved as possible. I notice the board game design source had emphasis on the outcomes as well as the other sources. Even though the "free will" in the game might give players more of a reason to replay the game, I feel that it is not necessary for a good game. The Elder Scrolls games, relates back to Hardin discussing Federation & Empire where he states how despite the game in actuality just being a set of data on a map, it's theme is so powerful that it gives the player the sense they are actually living in a different universe complete with its own currency, racial groups, religion and social issues that emulate the real world.