I've seen a lot of people picking at GNS, lately, most recently in the 'incoherent' thread. Many of the main lines of attack used by critics are, to be plain, not very solid ones.
This is an effort to lay a few of the really useless lines of attack to rest, so that critics can make more interesting criticisms, and defenders don't have to keep keep repeating themselves.
So here's my understanding of the concept of Creative Agenda, specifically focusing on common arguments I see around here that many of it's proponents have got to be tired of (I mean, I'm tired of them, and I'm not the banner-carrier for the theory).
Also, I'll note at this point that I think that "Creative Agenda" is a terrible term. I don't have a better one right now, though, so I'll leave it at that.
1. Games, not players.
There's no real meaning to pointing out that people change preferences from game to game. The agenda of a game is the agenda of that one group playing that one game at the table. It can be expanded to mean "the text of that game", but games do get tweaked and adjusted in play enough by groups that a game may or may not be played as it is written.
2. Holistic, not atomic.
Arguing that a given game includes specific moments that are better suited to thing A than thing B doesn't invalidate the idea that there is an overall agenda at work in a game. To steal a line "Just because that muscles is in a dog, doesn't mean the whole dog is composed of muscle. Stop counting muscles, and talk about the dog". Scope matters; this is about looking in from the outside, not wander around inside looking around.
3. The effort, not the material.
From any overall perspective, it's true that many things that many people can enjoy in a game are materials, not the effort itself. If I'm painting a picture of a battle, and I happen to use a lot of green paint, that doesn't mean that I'm not painting a battle. My love of green paint is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand, instead, is, looking at this whole thing, what is it leading us to? Are we making a story, playing a game; what's the "big picture" view here, the common pleasure that runs through the whole of this experience and binds the players together? Is this thing you're pointing at the purpose, or just a material you enjoy?
4. Shaping the game, not directing it.
A creative agenda isn't an "agenda" in the sense of being an outright goal. From many perspectives, an agenda can be invisible. But if you look at a game from that same 'big picture' view, and find that it's bound together with a common thread of "we're making a story collaboratively, and we're all enjoying it", then chances are you'll also start to see places where people have done things to continue getting that good stuff, and where people have avoided doing things so as to avoid ruining that good stuff. Those moments, while they aren't the same as the agenda itself, can certainly become precedent; since they let the group get at that shared joy, different versions of those same actions are likely to keep occuring, because they lead to good stuff.
5. In three basic categories.
Not every pleasure to be found in the play of a game is capable of running through the total experience of play. Many are, when you get down to it, simply impossible to consider as valid. At least three such joys are capable of running through the whole of a game - the fun of making story collaboratively, the fun of meeting and overcoming challenges, and the fun of seeing a fiction come to life around you replete with detail and good stuff.
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Now, for those of you that want to correct my understanding, I'd like to see you tell me not only where I'm wrong, but what you think is right.
For those with criticism, try to avoid the ones here, and bring on the new stuff.
1. Games, not players.
There's no real meaning to pointing out that people change preferences from game to game. The agenda of a game is the agenda of that one group playing that one game at the table. It can be expanded to mean "the text of that game", but games do get tweaked and adjusted in play enough by groups that a game may or may not be played as it is written.
Ron has said that GNS is a means of categorising players, that it is meaningful to speak of gamist players, or narrativist ones or so on.
That being so, the above criticism might not be original but it does seem meaningful. Not sure I agree that just because something has been said before it loses validity.
Oh, my core criticism is none of the above. My core criticism is that I see little evidence the theory corresponds to real world behaviour and is so fuzzy that it has little predictive or practical value.
Which also isn't a novel point. Not sure what you're looking to achieve here Levi, could you clarify?
Edit: Also, I'm ok that there may be creative agendas, I am deeply unpersuaded that GNS are those creative agendas. N works I think, but the other two I'm not so sure. Sim in particular just doesn't seem to work in practice, it's a grab bag for stuff that's not n or g. The need to fit things into three CAs I think deeply distorts what is actually a wider range of CAs than the theory allows for. It also puts excess weight on CAs, which IMO are but a subset of a wide range of critical issues including for example stance preferences which I see as equally if not more important.
Ron has said that GNS is a means of categorising players, that it is meaningful to speak of gamist players, or narrativist ones or so on.
First: Can you give us a link to a quote? Because I've heard him say the exact opposite of that, very emphatically (as in "I am so tired of people thinking GNS is about identity politics") more often than I can conveniently count. So there is some possibility that he was misheard.
Second: If he actually did say that, and wasn't misunderstood, then he was wrong.
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First: Can you give us a link to a quote? Because I've heard him say the exact opposite of that, very emphatically (as in "I am so tired of people thinking GNS is about identity politics") more often than I can conveniently count. So there is some possibility that he was misheard.
Second: If he actually did say that, and wasn't misunderstood, then he was wrong.
No, it's topic banned. It was pretty clear though.
Can't find it now, I was going to pm you the link. Perhaps I'm remembering a different offensive thread. Anyway, his line was basically "you might say, hey, I'm categorising players by GNS and that's not ok. Tough, I do it all the time."
Those aren't his words, but they are not a mile away either, I'm not spinning them. It stuck because it seemed so at odds with my understanding of the theory.
That said, people routinely refer to gamist players or to being narrativists, so whatever the theory may say that's how it gets used.
I will totally accept that many people commonly use the theory that way. I'll even accept that Ron uses it that way.
I will, further, totally accept that such usage utterly muddies discussions, and that this (among other ways that the "theory-as-discussed" muddies discussions) is a legitimate reason to avoid using the theory in discussions.
That's a subtly different point from saying "This is what the theory actually says," yes?
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Saying Ron Edwards was wrong about GNS is like saying Marx was wrong about Communism. You might be able to salvage something out of the wreckage of the thing you just shot down, but it's unlikely.
If the inventor of the theory can't understand it properly, what hope has anyone else? And a theory which can be understand by nobody has failed in the purpose of all theory - to improve understanding.
It's like a snake eating its own tail. At some point it either disappears, or gets indigestion.
I will totally accept that many people commonly use the theory that way. I'll even accept that Ron uses it that way.
I will, further, totally accept that such usage utterly muddies discussions, and that this (among other ways that the "theory-as-discussed" muddies discussions) is a legitimate reason to avoid using the theory in discussions.
That's a subtly different point from saying "This is what the theory actually says," yes?
Definitely, that said if nobody uses the theory as written then that in itself is potentially quite a good argument against the theory's utility.
Is there anyway a single theory? It seems to me GNS is an umbrella term for a school of theories, close to each other but varying slightly each to each*.
But this gets to why in my thread I wasn't saying that nobody should use it, just that it wasn't useful here. Between participants who have agreed ground rules on usage, such as "it is incorrect and unhelpful to use this to label players" then I can see use.
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