Speaking of not making audiences happy, Brendan Keogh's "Videogames Without Players" and Mattie Brice's "Kill The Player" both think about what games might look like without our focus on the player's pleasure--and what that focus has lead to in design and aesthetics
(Aw crap, the site ate the comment I spent like 20 minutes drafting, so here's a shorter vers)
I've been making weird indie games for years, some of them got featured on some major sites like Kotaku and RPS. I've been following the "Don't worry about amusing the player" rule for a while.
Usually the games I make don't have conventional visuals or any sort of challenge. They'll also look really *weird*.
I've also made obtuse games before, one of them was where you had to steal a mech, but you couldn't read the buttons because you were a dog, and you had to start the mech using a really complicated startup sequence that was relayed via text messages. It was basically "Keep Talking and nobody explodes" but for one player, and with mechs. And it was really cool but nobody could figure it out.
I like being obtuse with the game content, but generally if I make something I want the player to see it, and if you make getting there hard then they'll quit. It's a weird push-pull of being hard enought to be a challenge, but something they get on the first try.
But generally, I don't worry about whether the player is having a "good" time. I try to make what I'd want to see in a video game, and that typically resonates well.
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