Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted

[mushroom patch]

Should I feel non-smart for not understanding the evil of a list of features as the most helpful way for someone to grasp what is it we are talking about? am I an inferior human being?

Well, I think these are questions you'll have to answer for yourself, but as to why lists aren't always awesome (except on Buzzfeed) let me give you a list:

- Lists are bad at expressing interrelated points in a way that exposes their relations. They are most effective when they don't try to.

- Lists have no subtlety. If you combine a big list with some other more subtle points that don't fit into the list, the subtle points will be lost on most readers. Most readers will only remember their favorite points in the list.

- Lists are good for surface level exposition and outlines, but as soon as they get big enough to describe something moderately complex reasonably thoroughly, they start to become incoherent, as it becomes less clear what the main points are and how the points interact. Few interesting things can be fully described by a collection of independent points or propositions.

[JeffLait]

Should I feel non-smart for not understanding the evil of a list of features as the most helpful way for someone to grasp what is it we are talking about? am I an inferior human being?

An ancient question is: "What is man?"

A school of philosophy concluded:

Man will be defined as:

• Biped
• Featherless

So someone plucked a chicken and threw it into their compound.

Breaking things into lists is a very valuable and useful tool.  The term "Analyse" refers to just this - cutting up the complicated object into pieces we can understand.  Vast leaps forward in knowledge have come because of our ability to do this.  Abstracting "gravity" from all the other stuff that happens when stuff falls gives a nice clean understanding.  The problem is that when cut through the sinew to separate the organs, you lose all of the relationships between the parts.  This "Sum is greater than the parts" problem I think is what mushroom patch is frustrated with.

My own view is the fault is on the reader who decides to ignore all subtlety just because a list showed up.  I suspect such readers wouldn't have read a five page essay on roguelikes either.  If the Berlin Interpretation would have been a five page essay, people would have just sniped key sentences and used them out of context, in effect creating a list for future people to slavishly follow.

I also believe there *is* a genuine advantage to analysing roguelikes.  While we always lose essential relationships between those qualities, it is a lot easier to think of what it means to have a "Single player character game" than it is to always compare back to the holotypes.

So, when someone eventually makes a 7drl that matches all points of the Berlin Interpretation but isn't a roguelike (which people have been threatening since day 1!), it really doesn't prove that there is anything wrong with the Berlin Interpretation.  It merely underscores that "roguelikeness" is not a checklist of features, just like "human" isn't a checklist of features. 

But, it is *useful* to note that "Humans are bipeds", even if "Biped" isn't a necessary or sufficient definition of Human.  (In particular, someone who loses a leg isn't kicked out of humanity! (anymore))

[Krice]

My ground for defining roguelikes will be boobs. You know when you see great boobs, but you can't define them as mathematical set of attiributes.

[JeffLait]

My ground for defining roguelikes will be boobs. You know when you see great boobs, but you can't define them as mathematical set of attiributes.

You ask, and the internet delivers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhxAoREt6Pg
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Boobs-on-Mac-Grapher

Which I guess proves your point, as there are at least two competing formulas!

[mushroom patch]

I suspect you'll have difficulty convincing people that you have the experience to usefully apply your definition, Krice.

[tuturto]

I'm with Krice here. I can't define excactly what I will or will not consider as a roguelike (although I can try describing some attributes), but I know one when I see it. And like Krice's example, preference is very personal thing and can vary from a person to person and from occasion to occasion and even change over time.

[Kevin Granade]

I'm with Krice here. I can't define excactly what I will or will not consider as a roguelike (although I can try describing some attributes), but I know one when I see it. And like Krice's example, preference is very personal thing and can vary from a person to person and from occasion to occasion and even change over time.

(sorry to single you out, I've seen something similar stated many times, just using your post as an example)
If it has anything to do with preference it's not a definition or even atempt at one.  Whether you like it or not is orthoganal to whether it matches a definition.  It's perfectly fine to just decide which games you like (considering the tone of discussion sometimes, maybe that's the better path , but wether any particular person likes a game has nothing to do with which genre the game is in.

[tuturto]

I'm with Krice here. I can't define excactly what I will or will not consider as a roguelike (although I can try describing some attributes), but I know one when I see it. And like Krice's example, preference is very personal thing and can vary from a person to person and from occasion to occasion and even change over time.

(sorry to single you out, I've seen something similar stated many times, just using your post as an example)
If it has anything to do with preference it's not a definition or even atempt at one.  Whether you like it or not is orthoganal to whether it matches a definition.  It's perfectly fine to just decide which games you like (considering the tone of discussion sometimes, maybe that's the better path , but wether any particular person likes a game has nothing to do with which genre the game is in.

Well, preference as if something should be called to a roguelike and not a preference as if I like something. I can call something a roguelike, even if I don't like the game after all. But I can see how I wasn't particularly clear what I meant.

It's just so funny sometimes that we spent hours and hours debating if something could be called a roguelike or not. Kind of reminds me of music genres: "I only like North-North-Western True Semi-Gloss-Pitch-Black-Quasi-Shine Über-Metal that has exactly 2.5 quitars, everything else I consider not music." Defining a roguelike isn't easy and most likely there won't be a single definition that satisfies everyone.

It's understandable that people who are passionate about their hobby like us are like to talk about their hobby and define it. So, don't stop on my account, I like reading the thread now and then too.

[Slash]

I'll stick to lists (and rely on a pre existent context from the reader to stick the components together) as a way to outline what the fuss we are talking about.

I'll leave it you, noble people, to craft an absolute definition that gracefully and accurately describes our beloved genre.

Not that these sets of features shouldn't be maintained and updated, which I should be up to soonish.

[Darren Grey]

If it has anything to do with preference it's not a definition or even atempt at one.  Whether you like it or not is orthoganal to whether it matches a definition.  It's perfectly fine to just decide which games you like (considering the tone of discussion sometimes, maybe that's the better path , but wether any particular person likes a game has nothing to do with which genre the game is in.

The point is there is no objective definition. Words are defined entirely by their context, and that will change over time and in different communities. Genres especially are not hard and fast, and everyone has different ideas on where the borders lie.

And the worst thing about genre definitions is they tend to be about exclusion. The really interesting stuff, the items that straddle genre boundaries or push into new territory, are delegitimised in favour of samey, repetitive content.

Just to give an example, 3 years ago there was a huge outcry when Dungeons of Dredmor appeared on the ASCII Dreams Roguelike of the Year poll. Seriously, a giant outcry. The very notion that a commercial game could be a roguelike! Horror! Now it seems positively conservative in comparison with the platformers and the real-time shooters that borrow a few roguelike ideas. Any new game coming along in the style of Dredmor is championed as a traditional roguelike in a sea of blasphemy. How times change!

[AgingMinotaur]

 Pretty shaky. Let's bomb it

As always,
Minotauros

[Krice]

It starts to look like something, but I'd first like to practice scientific writing with something easier, an article about "How The Old Kingdom pyramids were built?"

[Bear]

Okay, just to throw some fresh provocation into the fray ...  What about the endgame?

We usually think of a roguelike game as being something you can 'complete' - that is, you get the Orb of Zot (or the Amulet of Yendor or whatever) back to the surface, you kill Morgoth, or whatever... 

Is this an essential part of the roguelike genre? High value or low value? 

Or is it just something we tack on because we haven't managed to develop any more interesting content and we've run out of things that the player can do/learn/master?  Are we putting up a "congratulations you win" message where, if we were being honest, we'd be saying  "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I wasn't able to come up with enough game content for you." 

These games tend to have limited capabilities, and once the player has experienced everything the game can "do", we could throw up endless variation that doesn't contain any real surprises, we can just admit that we've got nothing more and apologize for the limitation -- or we can tell the player s/he won.

[Aukustus]

I see roguelikes as a one big quest, whether it is killing a bad guy or retrieving an artifact. Thus it needs to end.

[Bear]

I think it's maybe too easy for some players to misinterpret the existence of a possible 'win' as evidence that the game isn't over yet when they get killed. 

Because it is possible to 'beat the game' - in some player's minds, therefore a particular run of the game isn't over until they have done so.  Hence, save scumming, etc. 

But in a game where the only possible ending is that eventually the character gets killed one way or another, it's a lot harder to justify save scumming on the grounds that the player "hasn't finished the game yet".  Which brings us around to Dungeons of Dredmor:  "Congratulations!  You Have DIED!"