1. This first point, I think, is proof that game design is immature and that study focused too much on some part to the detriment of other. I, for example, and I think some other practitioner mostly in the indie space, has no problem at all. I’ll come back to that certainly peppered in the rest of the answer.

2. My point is that there is no spectrum at all, a spectrum implied that when you are at one side you are not at the other, my point is that is bogus, I now made no difference at all, and that ties to point 1.

3. I have witness a lot of developer just doing that, and in fact when the author react by making the kind of statement that spurred the recent “formalism” discussion is exactly because they are sometimes panned or literally mocked by some other. Sometimes it is broad statements, that have implicit connotation, that is unforsee by the author of the statement, on the practice of people like Meritt which prompt them to react in frustration. What happen often is a comical backtracking like “it’s not what I wanted to say” that kind of disqualify the statements in its entirety, as, if he he didn’t meant that then the statements don’t hold anymore.

3. I see myself as a formalist too, I see myself as a ludologist ie I thrust “structure” but I don’t forget that structure has “purpose”, just like grammar exist to support language therefore expression. My first contact on internet was with Jesper Juul’s works (even though I haven’t revisit nor followed in years, forgive me). toward 2002-ish I start to be in contact with “narrativist” frustrated by “mechanics”, but my education was made by reading project Oz with Mateas and Andrew stern and seeing them progressing toward Façade. It’s through them I know the work of Janet Murray even though I didn’t read Hamlet in the holodeck, I use its premise as outline in their paper to think about narration.

I was seeing narrativist trying to use narrative theory to try to understand how to tame the “rules and mechanics” to tell story. I thought, as a ludologist that they where too remove from gameplay to make strong assumption and that lead to naive conclusion. It was particularly frustrating to see that they successfully point at all the relevant parameters only to miss their own point at the conclusions. Not seeing them making any progress I decide to use their tactics in reverse.

My stance was simple, If you try to describe using narrative theory, I will try to describe story and narrative in term of games, aka systems, mechanics and rules. Which bring me back to point 1, to day I just see no difference at all, absolutely none, it empower me to do anything or everything.

So that lead also to your conclusion about how this is “just” hypertext and not radically new … To which I will mention a “nude descending a staircase n°2”, how does that compare to “the death of sardanapalus”, we can claim there is nothing radically different about them, they are both painting on a canvas ;) . Culture does change how we approach things and how we compose, it can lead to new insight, I would not dismiss them too quickly base on superficial similarity, that’s a sin!

On a superficial level they look the same, but playing them reveal new concern and new tactics. Hypertext where interested in freeing text from it’s linear format and how non linearity impact the experience, it wasn’t exactly about the experience itself but about the media. Twine game is all about how to convey experience and personality through a tools seen as the liberation of the individual and amplifying unheard experience, non linearity is really not a real concern. I learn a lot, and you can read some of what I learn for game overall (beyond narrative) in those sample I posted here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22176.msg945133#msg945133 here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32220.msg1097426#msg1097426 and here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32220.1440

4. I have been working on the inside of the industry from at least 2005 to 2008. I have met a lot of denial when approaching those matter just on the suspicion it was wrong by “definition” (ie story si wrong, there is nothing learn there) they even used a term about me “bumpmap” or the use of big word to appear intelligent (as of course I don’t know what I’m talking about). Even recently Danc said use a “no one meaningful” to handwave argument I was using to explain things about the famous twitlonger that spark the discussion (twitlonger itself being a frustration because of a discussion people like meritt where having in their own circle), just because something don’t happen to you don’t mean other people don’t have this experience happening to them. I left the industry now to focus on my own research. The irony is that even though I spend a lot of time understanding “gameplay-narrative” structures I can’t use them, I have no real thing to say.

As far as awards shows and festivals — I really do think the categories are mostly driven by marketing labels and not formalism. :)

To me, the most interesting point of interest is really award shows and festivals: how *are* we deciding what merits inclusions and awards? My worry is not as much that we (I am an IGF judge) aren’t including experiments, as much as that we are promoting a particular insular hipsterish idea of what an experiment is.

Similarly, the authorship versus player creativity dichotomy you mention has never been thought of as a dichotomy. It’s always been a spectrum in everyone’s mind — it’s all too obvious that it’s not a black and white issue.

Lim is brilliant; I am not sure it contradicts The Marriage so much as it builds on it, though. They are very much in the same tradition. They also got comparable amounts of acclaim and recognition — which is to say, from the mainstream, next to none, but among design cognoscenti quite a lot. I don’t know what practitioners you are talking about who denigrate it.

Finally — I, like many other formalists, see Twine as firmly in the tradition of hypertext. Content in Twine is structure and mechanics in exactly the same way that it always has been in hypertext. It’s not a new field, a new genre — in fact, it’s thirty to forty years old. That doesn’t mean that the work made using Twine isn’t often brilliant — it is. But it’s not radically new in that sense. What is new about it is who is writing it, and what sorts of stories they are telling. That speaks to cultural systems more than to game systems, so to speak.

When I read a comment like yours, it just illustrates for me how much perceived antagonism there is in this discussion. The assumption is that other designers (for that is what I assume you mean by practitioners, the group #2 in my list) are the ones blocking or otherwise denigrating this work. But in practice, it isn’t; it’s much more the NeoGAF crowd than it is fellow designers. Designers, at least the savvy ones, think it’s all pretty damn awesome and interesting, and if that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t be seeing these new voices on stage at GDC, Indiecade, and so many other conferences.

I have been following this for almost 10 years and it’s still leave me scratching my head. For example most practitioner want to see a divide between “content” and “rules and mechanics”, seeing ambivalently one or the another as a necessary evil or the holder of true creativity, or they just want to hide the baby and not have the discussion at all (recent errant signal). There is also the debate of authorship vs player creativity.

But all of that is false dichotomy, Meritt Kopa one of the vocal new voice which denounce this kind of “formalism” made a game, Lim, that prove the authorship vs player creativity to be a false dichotomy, it also prove that for narrative expression and mechanics, and that mechanics are ultimately also their own content. Yet practitioner only see that as a only a game made by a trans woman. Despite that the game is currently the definitive answer to Rod Humble’s marriage failed experiment on abstract mechanics, it should be praise as an achievement step into understand game design beyond the current bag of vaguely related tips we still use today, answering so many question about the craft, yet instead it was met with ‘meh’ and reduced to outsider art.

This is also true with twine game, the refusal to see content as structure and mechanics, the blind application of erroneous assumption and just plain cultural disconnect does a great disservice for the gem that actually improve the art of all games.

There is so much more to say and deconstruct this culture of statu quo that one comment wouldn’t be enough.