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Author Topic: Interview with Donald X.  (Read 2127085 times)

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Ozle

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #425 on: January 03, 2013, 11:45:10 am »
0

Are you proposing using It as a neutral pronoun or sending an evil clown to hunt us down so we stop nagging about this?

I am good with either to be honest!
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Davio

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #426 on: January 03, 2013, 12:39:02 pm »
+6

3. One of the two things that I hate most about Dominion (this sounds harsh, but after reading it, I think this is more a testimony that I love the game) is the fact that the text on the cards is sexist (it refers to individual players as "he"). Did you consider gender neutrality while making the game? Would you (if you happen to call the shots on such a thing) consider a request for gender neutrality for upcoming expansions/games?
The prototype said "they." RGG which is to say Jay switched to "he" (and also expanded most contractions).

I think "he or she" is awful. I think "she" is also awful. "They" is where it's at and has been in use for centuries. Evo is an example of a game that uses it.

I would not include this in contracts; it is hard enough getting games published. If I self-published (not likely) I would use "they."

Donald's probably right that singular they is where the future's at. But, you know what's so amusing about these claims of sexism? Gender-neutral "he" was introduced by a feminist. e.g. see this NYT article.

Also of note from the article: "It’s a shame that grammarians ever took umbrage at the singular they. After all, they gave you a slide. It began life as a plural object pronoun and evolved into the whole enchilada: subject and object, singular and plural."

(Side thought: I wonder why "one" hasn't caught on? I would think since "one" is already a gender neutral pronoun, its use as a personal pronoun in informal contexts would be an easier adaption than using "they" as singular, but I guess not).
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onigame

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #427 on: January 03, 2013, 05:23:55 pm »
+1

Here is a collection of mistakes in the German forums:
http://forum.dominionblog.de/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1338
This is great, but if you want to go that extra mile, what Goko will need to fix these is fixed text in German. I'm sure they can get someone to translate for them, but you know, if you have fixed text I will give it to them and you will get to have it all just the way you wanted.

I was at Goko when they were copying the German from the cards into their system and I did make sure that King's Court and Venture were corrected (but that's the only errata I noticed at the time).  Thanks for the link, kn1tt3r, I'll make sure that they get looked at.

Thanks a lot.

I got permission to edit their card text and all the errata on the German page you linked to should be in (but I did the copy-paste manually myself so I can't guarantee that it's completely error free).

Here's hoping there aren't any mistakes in the Guilds translation...
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GigaKnight

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #428 on: January 03, 2013, 06:25:56 pm »
+2

My two cents on the ego thing: I also have the impression of him giving egotistical answers, and I think this is primarily because...

I also have two cents to chip in, but they're a bit more general than that.  I think smart people (like Donald) tend to state things very efficiently and matter-of-factly, which can create an arrogant tone, especially via text.  I honestly think the majority of perception issues stem not from what Donald says, but how he says it.

Take the "so much crap about Dominion clones" issue brought up earlier.  Every version of the answer Donald generated about playing other people's games starts with "Basically never."  This is super word-efficient but sets the tone as "I don't have time for that" rather than "I'd like to, but I'm too busy".  Personally, I find the tone of the first to be impatient/offputting and the tone of second to be apologetic/conciliatory.

Good, meaningful PR is a weird and delicate art, which is why you usually hire somebody skilled to do it.  I'm not always good at generating it, but I think I recognize it decently-well.  It's really cool that Donald interacts directly with the community, but I think he's a game designer first and PR guy second, so it doesn't surprise me that these issues come up.
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clb

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #429 on: January 03, 2013, 06:43:03 pm »
+2

I think we have also been conditioned to perceive confidence as arrogance. If you state something succinctly and concretely, you must obviously be arrogant, since only arrogant people do not hedge and concede with every statement.
Now, of course that is hyperbole and not meant at anyone in particular. I think it stems at least in part from the same thinking that handed out trophies to everyone on every team in little league, but had nothing to congratulate the team who actually won the play-off.
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GigaKnight

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #430 on: January 03, 2013, 08:39:28 pm »
+1

I think we have also been conditioned to perceive confidence as arrogance. If you state something succinctly and concretely, you must obviously be arrogant, since only arrogant people do not hedge and concede with every statement.
Now, of course that is hyperbole and not meant at anyone in particular. I think it stems at least in part from the same thinking that handed out trophies to everyone on every team in little league, but had nothing to congratulate the team who actually won the play-off.

I think that's probably part of it, but I also think that's an easy excuse for the insensitive.  I can think of several extremely confident people who don't come off as arrogant.  There's a real but hard-to-define line there.

Part of communicating effectively is knowing your audience and if you're perceived as arrogant, you can't simply say "well that's just your perception" and expect people to accept it.  IMO, that would actually be arrogant, since you're effectively putting the blame on anybody but you.  Something causes that perception.  If it's rare, isolated cases, you can shrug it off as anomaly.  If there's a pattern, then maybe you're sending different signals than you thought.

BTW, this isn't directed at Donald or anybody else.  It's just, like, my opinion, man.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #431 on: January 03, 2013, 08:49:48 pm »
+6

Why are you not depicted in a Dominion card art? Are you going to get depicted in a Guilds card? If you could redo the art of the existing expansions, in which card would you like to be? (cue Harem joke)
I've got my name on the boxes, that's something. I had the game, I didn't need to be on a card. If I had to be on a card it would be the randomizer for the Knights.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #432 on: January 03, 2013, 08:52:58 pm »
+4

I got permission to edit their card text and all the errata on the German page you linked to should be in (but I did the copy-paste manually myself so I can't guarantee that it's completely error free).

Here's hoping there aren't any mistakes in the Guilds translation...
Incidentally I sent the list to Jay and I believe fixes will be incorporated into future printed German cards also.
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soulnet

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #433 on: January 03, 2013, 08:59:50 pm »
0

I've got my name on the boxes, that's something. I had the game, I didn't need to be on a card. If I had to be on a card it would be the randomizer for the Knights.

Nice choice!

Follow up: Are the personalities or any other real life characteristic of the real persons that inspire the names of the Knights in any way related with the card "effect"? More precisely, are the assignments of names-effect purely random? If not, what were the criteria, assuming is something not too private to be told here?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #434 on: January 03, 2013, 09:51:51 pm »
+1

Follow up: Are the personalities or any other real life characteristic of the real persons that inspire the names of the Knights in any way related with the card "effect"? More precisely, are the assignments of names-effect purely random? If not, what were the criteria, assuming is something not too private to be told here?
"Here" is the internet you know - I am not whispering exclusively to the people on dominionstrategy. Google can find anything, within reason - even pictures these days. It's okay though, nothing's too private for the internet.

Dame Josephine, Dame Molly, and Sir Destry all picked what bonus they wanted, from a list. At the time there was no Sir Bailey effect and I suspect if we did it again Dame Molly would pick that one. Sir Bailey is her boyfriend so hopefully that all worked out.

Sir Martin got his because he was the youngest in our gaming group. Dame Natalie got the one that gains little cards because she was a baby. Sir Vander was depressed so I gave him the suicidal knight, there's an in-joke you weren't expecting. I gave +$2 to Dame Sylvia just to give her a good knight. Dame Sylvia is a good one, you heard it here.

Dame Anna, Sir Bailey, and Sir Michael are just random.
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Davio

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #435 on: January 04, 2013, 02:11:15 am »
0

Okay, Dame Natalie is my new favorite knight. :)

Now, finding some actual time to play Dark Ages with my wife is tough with a 4 months old baby.  ;)
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loppo

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #436 on: January 04, 2013, 03:23:13 am »
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Now, finding some actual time to play Dark Ages with my wife is tough with a 4 months old baby.  ;)

i find it quite difficult to play dark ages with my wife in general. She likes BM-type games, and whenever i manage to pull of an uncontested engine megaturn she walks off, doing laundry or some reading,... and dark ages is all about crazy engine possibilities (exception: rebuild)
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Davio

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #437 on: January 04, 2013, 03:51:26 am »
+5

I think we have also been conditioned to perceive confidence as arrogance. If you state something succinctly and concretely, you must obviously be arrogant, since only arrogant people do not hedge and concede with every statement.
Now, of course that is hyperbole and not meant at anyone in particular. I think it stems at least in part from the same thinking that handed out trophies to everyone on every team in little league, but had nothing to congratulate the team who actually won the play-off.
To be honest, nothing I've read from Donald seemed arrogant to me.

If he tells us he doesn't play other games because he doesn't have time, I believe him. I don't think he thinks he's too good for games made by other designers. He might like to play them, but I can understand that if you are a game designer and finally have a bunch of people together, you'd rather seize the opportunity to test your own games instead of playing something else.

And concerning Dominion clones: I don't think he said anything weird or negative about them.

In all of Donald's answers all that's become clear to me is that he is a human being passionate about the games he designs and why wouldn't he be? I write game reviews for a printed magazine and when I write something (I think is) good I'm very proud of myself. Or when I find an elegant solution to a programming problem at work.

In fact, Donald has been very helpful answering most if not all questions in this 18 page thread and he often jumps into other threads to clear up rules questions or provide various other insights. He didn't have to do this. He could have just designed Dominion, moved on to the next game laughing and swimming in the money a la Scrooge McDuck.

He shows a big commitment to Dominion not only here but I suspect at BGG as well and therefore I have a lot of respect for Donald. I mean, he could also take the Martin Wallace A Few Acres of Snow approach and just pretend an apparent game flaw is not a big deal and when you can't suppress the angry crowd anymore come up with a half ass solution. Now I'm not trying to dig up dirt here dragging that game into the discussion again. It's just to prove my point how "lucky" we are that Donald is that passionate about his games.

I don't know many other games and places that allow for this kind of direct communication with its designer.
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DStu

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #438 on: January 04, 2013, 04:00:24 am »
+1

To be honest, nothing I've read from Donald seemed arrogant to me.

If he tells us he doesn't play other games because he doesn't have time, I believe him.

and, after all, we want an interview with him and not with his PR-manager...

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ipofanes

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #439 on: January 04, 2013, 07:06:05 am »
+4

He could have just designed Dominion, moved on to the next game laughing and swimming in the money a la Scrooge McDuck.

That's an odd way of spelling Martin Wallace.
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soulnet

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #440 on: January 04, 2013, 09:51:32 am »
+2

He could have just designed Dominion, moved on to the next game laughing and swimming in the money a la Scrooge McDuck.

He already said he prefers engines to BM.

About the post, I agree with Davio, however, I do not think those good qualities are related (at least not too strongly) with him being arrogant or whatever. Plenty of arrogant people that are also smart, passionate and good persons.

However, why would we (or him) care so deeply about him being perceived as arrogant or not in the internet? Is definitely not such a big deal, and I don't think responses in this forum are conclusive proofs about his actual personality in either way. If he was asking people their skin color to decide weither to answer their questions, it would be different, but is nothing like that, so what's the point?

I think what we are actually doing here is almost Analysis Paralysis, just analizing a situation for the sake of arguments and discussion without any actual consequence or conclusion coming up. I know I do this a lot, and the nerdy folks I know IRL also, so I guess is just "professional" deviations, but we should seriously stop and get something useful, like nice questions.

So, questions:

What are the best games of Dominion you remember playing and why? (more fun, surprising, whatever)
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Davio

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #441 on: January 04, 2013, 10:00:49 am »
0

I wonder if it included Rats and Knights. :)
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #442 on: January 04, 2013, 10:16:02 pm »
0

What are the best games of Dominion you remember playing and why? (more fun, surprising, whatever)
I have commented on some memorable games in secret histories and that post in response to "maybe you should try getting beaten with KC/Masq/Goons before commenting on it" and such. It will be hard to find good new stories. Which I think is what I said previously in this thread. There isn't generally going to be much of a story to a random game with Rats that was a blast.
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soulnet

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #443 on: January 05, 2013, 11:23:04 am »
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What are the best games of Dominion you remember playing and why? (more fun, surprising, whatever)
I have commented on some memorable games in secret histories and that post in response to "maybe you should try getting beaten with KC/Masq/Goons before commenting on it" and such. It will be hard to find good new stories. Which I think is what I said previously in this thread. There isn't generally going to be much of a story to a random game with Rats that was a blast.

Sorry, I did not explain myself correctly, I was not requesting anecdotes (although I love those), I was thinking more on "were there boards that surprise you because of its power or fun or whatever?". Do you even keep some boards to study later like we do here?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #444 on: January 05, 2013, 08:27:31 pm »
+1

Sorry, I did not explain myself correctly, I was not requesting anecdotes (although I love those), I was thinking more on "were there boards that surprise you because of its power or fun or whatever?". Do you even keep some boards to study later like we do here?
Well playtest games played online all had that uh block of text from isotropic showing how they went posted in a thread so I could review them, sometimes with a sentence of description. Mostly I wasn't looking at those cards later - an exception would be like when Crossroads / Margrave was too strong and we had to work out what cards exactly were the problem. If nothing was a problem then we just moved on to the next game of random cards. When it came time to make recommended sets I made lists and then we tried them; obv. any particular combo I remembered enjoying might make it, but I wasn't saving up sets of 10.

As far as sets where we focused on them due to problems, the big one is again Crossroads at +2 actions every time / Margrave / Spice Merchant / Highway / "discard x coppers, gain a card costing up to $3+X." As I have related it turned out that Crossroads and Margrave were the issue and Crossroads was more fixable given what I was getting from both cards. Generally a power problem is more obviously confined to one card and so there's not a memorable set of 10, just, that card seems broken and we play it some more.

If it were rare for a random set of 10 to be fun, I would be desperately trying to fix that. Some are more fun than others but not by a sad margin. There are broad issues like "are there enough villages" and I look at those.

Okay I searched for "fun" in the latest version of the thread. Most of the hits are for Sir Destry saying how fun some specific card is. Most of the sets you couldn't play anyway. Here's an example set though, described as "really, really fun:"

Quote
cards in supply: Armory, Counting House, Develop, Great Hall, Hermit, Mandarin, Rebuild, Talisman, Walled Village, and Wandering Minstrel
Armory is Storeroom; Walled Village is Fortress; and Rebuild is some kind of Remodel outtake, I don't know which one. Probably one of the $5's since then you could Develop a Fortress into it. Destry specifically cited getting to go village, Counting House, Madman, and also using Hermits to draw Fortresses.
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NoMoreFun

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #445 on: January 06, 2013, 06:42:21 pm »
0

There are 12 blank cards in Seaside; enough room for an extra kingdom card. Why was the decision made to have blanks instead of an extra card? This is especially notable as seaside had at least 2 outtakes that were deemed good enough to release as promo cards.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #446 on: January 06, 2013, 07:31:33 pm »
+1

There are 12 blank cards in Seaside; enough room for an extra kingdom card. Why was the decision made to have blanks instead of an extra card? This is especially notable as seaside had at least 2 outtakes that were deemed good enough to release as promo cards.
Originally the mats were going to be cards (which takes 18 cards total). Then when it turned out they were going to be mats, Haven didn't seem like it needed more testing, and some people felt like some people would like blanks. If it had switched from cards to mats earlier, I expect I would have put another card in, although I don't think Black Market or Stash would have made it.
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NoMoreFun

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #447 on: January 06, 2013, 07:38:46 pm »
0

Why is there a strict requirement to have a round number of cards to the point where it influences what cards make it into the game?

Also, what's your take on including blank cards in general? What do you anticipate players do with them? If you could go back and replace the blank cards and placeholders (which IIRC you never used) with new cards, would you?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #448 on: January 06, 2013, 08:24:16 pm »
+1

Why is there a strict requirement to have a round number of cards to the point where it influences what cards make it into the game?

Also, what's your take on including blank cards in general? What do you anticipate players do with them? If you could go back and replace the blank cards and placeholders (which IIRC you never used) with new cards, would you?
The number of cards comes from whatever RGG agrees to with the printer. There's a deal for a round number or something. 493 cards would cost as much as 500 so we might as well give you 7 blanks. In some cases we could give you more Spoils or something instead, but in others it's like, a blank is maybe better than more Silver. Obv. when it hits 11 cards we can give you another kingdom card.

I have no interest in blanks. You can always sleeve cards and stick a slip of paper in front with your homemade card image, as I do for prototypes; you don't specifically need blanks. You can use extra treasures/VP from Intrigue, or cards you don't like.

The Copper etc. placeholders were obv. not the move. I did not advocate those, or try to fight against them; it didn't feel like I got to make those decisions. I would use those slots for something better, who wouldn't. The randomizers, I'm not sure, I don't have a good idea as to whether people in general would prefer to have them or not. They might prefer to have them. The main set could benefit from having more variety, but it could manage that with the 25 cards it has, or the 26 it would have with just dumping the Copper etc. placeholders.

I expect most players do not use the blanks, but I know some people want them.
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SirPeebles

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #449 on: January 06, 2013, 08:30:43 pm »
0

I assumed that the blanks were there in case you lost or damaged a card.
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