My Life As A Gamer: It's About Mastering The Game, Not Making Better Bulldozers

The other day, I concluded that there was a way out of the problem that Build Culture and Instrumental Play combined to create in both videogames and especially in tabletop RPGs.

That solution is simple: Eliminite Build Culture.

Eliminating Build Culture means eliminating player ability to construct their character as if it were a robot, be it in the mode seen with Developer Kits products like GURPS and HERO, or Talent/Feat selection (d20), or being able to target powers/gear for deliberate acquisition.

Crippling Instrumental Play means eliminating all of the external aides that allow a player to go outside the game to learn how to optimize his performance.

Make the player make do with what he gets as best he can. Random rolls for character attributes. If classes are used, they are stripped down to the core functions necessary and have no other features. Eliminate irrelevant things like skills; characters are presumed competent within their defined spheres. Gear/powers are never guaranteed; all of them are subject to some form of scarcity or similar availabilty gate.

In short, you need the game to have simple character generation procedures--from scratch to play in five minutes or less--and give no control over development thereafter. For videogames, this means removing the ability to repeat playable content--to farm or grind--to chase down desired treasures or other improvements. (Yes, this destroys current ARPG and MMO business models; no, I don't care.)

The matter of Instrumental Play is harder, but for now--in addition to removing farming and grinding--removing player access to information that isn't character-facing should suffice; this will not be as hard as it seems because by destroying Build Culture you destroy most of the external assets right there, so this is a matter of clearing out those that remain. No sites, no mods, no guides- and no game designs that leads to "solving the problem" with such things.

Once the only way to beat the game is to play it, learn it by playing it, and master it by playing it--not by watching, not by building a robot that overpowers the game, not by having a solution handed to you--in a play environment that is not static but rather is always in motion and thus always changing due to the consequences of player actions then this self-inflicted problem solves itself.

This is what those who are #EliteLevel comprehend.