Vidiot

A few months ago we had to read another article by Costikyan entitled “Don’t be a Vidiot”. Though there was a question that we had to answer during the session, I didn’t quite remember what that question was, however I did pick up on quite a few interesting things that Costikyan had said in the article and recently I have been thinking a little bit about them

In the article itself he talks a lot about the different kinds of games that are out there, ranging from board games to live action role-plays (do not want) and he says that games designers should be well versed in the art of games design, and not get all their knowledge only from video games, rather a game designer will try out a whole lot of different games and not just digital.

Well this got me thinking, for a little bit... Am I what he called a vidiot? I guess in some respects I am a vidiot, I mean I mostly play video games, I don’t play board games that often. But somehow I don’t know, the games I play I play for fun rather than to learn the design behind it (however I’ve been doing that less and less as I went through the course) and to be fair I’ve played a lot of board games in the past. Specifically trading card games and dice rolling board games that involved decision making.

Of the different game types that Costikyan talks of I must say that I have played at least one of each genre he mentions save for live action role-plays.

To answer my own question, no, I don’t think I am a Vidiot, especially of late. I have been playing a lot more board games and taking their particular mechanics into mind when thinking of games, same with digital games. I have been a lot more open minded with games recently, not that I have not always been, but now I am more so.

  1. Greg Costikyan, “Don’t Be a Vidiot”, 1998, http://www.costik.com/vidiot.html.