Salazar said:I don't object on spec to Dyack namedropping Shakespeare, but the remark about doing dirty jokes for the groundlings and more elevated fare for the aristocracy is bunk. For a start, the Elizabethan aristocracy were at least as sordid in their proclivities as the peasants, and probably a damned sight dirtier given the leisure and privacy to experiment. What's more, reliable scholarship has shown that we have, over the centuries, significantly underestimated the intellect and ability to track narrative of the common folk who went to watch Elizabethan theatre. For one thing, following sermons as if (as you might well have believed) your immortal soul depended on it would conceivably have trained the mind to keep up with a good deal of the vocabulary and wordplay on offer.
The point isn't just academic - Dyack's bogus ideas about Shakespeare are irrelevant in themselves, for sure, but having this patronising audience dichotomy driving game design sucks. Gamers who want a workable combat system aren't guffawing peasants. I for one won't have my irritation with a substandard game tempered by the idea that entry-level moral philosophy inspired this or that part of it. Just make a good game, and stop pretending that you have the artistic elbow-room to pontificate about how different bits of it will change the lives of different gamers.
Great, great post.