Very confused article. (Gaming)

by uberfoop , Seattle-ish, Sunday, November 03, 2013, 13:57 (4041 days ago) @ SonofMacPhisto

Couldn't keep anything straight. There were several things happening in it:

1-A flimsy attempt at justifying art that conveys ideas by attempting to make the viewer feel them directly, and

2-whatever the froodlenutzsky this is:

"If these games were playtested, they would, most surely, get feedback about not having clear enough avenues to control and victory. It would be whitewashing a particular experience that doesn’t really get light or validation in our current landscape."

You know what, the first sentence isn't wrong at all. It's exactly what the feedback would be. However, the second sentence sucks. It doesn't at all follow from the first sentence. Unless you take "listening to playtesters" to mean "pandering to playtesters" or "doing everything that playtesters say." If you actually intend for something to convery some whacky feeling that disagrees with someone, and your playtesters say that it conveyed that whacky feeling that disagrees with them, that doesn't mean that your product has an issue and needs to be changed. It means that your product is doing what it's supposed to do, and your testing just validated it. I'm not arguing over whether or not this kind of game design is worthwhile, but seriously, this isn't a design that makes testing worthless. It just means you need to listen to feedback/complaints/whatever in a different context.