Thread on what I got out of Hades (video game) Has a few game element spoilers but doesn't actually talk about the story plot much so probably fine for most people 😊
What I got out of playing Hades
19 tweets · August 2021 · 97 likes · 1 retweets · read on Twitter
I got into it via @visakanv. This tweet sold me on it 👇 Built-in encouragement! The game really does live up to that. Hell/Hades tries to sell you on "there is no escape" but the larger frame of the game makes you not buy it and inspired to try again 😤
There was something really satisfying about beholding the rich archetypes of the various Greek gods that support you. They all have strong, distinct, multi-faceted personalities, and encourage you in different ways. The underlying message is always:
You also get to see pairwise relationships between the Olympian gods, both re personalities & in terms of the different ways they make you more powerful or change their attack style. The combinatorics are a lot, and make every run different, even as you gain overall familiarity.
Some chambers are "Trial of the Gods", where you have to pick one of two gods to accept a boon from first, & then the other tries to smite you. But after a short battle with the usual underground dudes while dodging lightning bolts or whatever, they forgive you!
This forgiveness and fighting-not-meaning-relationship-threat theme goes a lot deeper and permeates a lot of the game. We all have to bear our choices, and if you're immortal, eventually you get bored of holding grudges! Which doesn't mean you get bored of *fighting*!
Fighting—the contest of wills, wits, & wiles—is a pretty fundamental aspect of being. Now, if you're mortal, you don't want to fight to the death unless something even more important is on the line, but that's why we have sports and games and uhh status competitions 😅
But I can kinda see how if I were immortal, it could be cool to be lovers with someone who I also fight to the death periodically! For us mortals, there's wrestling your partner, or something like this:
It's been cool to have contact with a metaphor of death being a temporary setback. It helped me feel in touch with other reincarnation myths, and some recognition of how emotional flashbacks are a bit like dying and resetting to an earlier save point.
Anyway, as I wrote about in this thread👇 I've been playing more games lately and it's been inspiring thoughts on the nature of motivation. I'm trying not to use those insights to justify why I play games though. Games are fun! It's satisfying to improve.
But yeah, there's a lot of juice there. How can I add excellent gamelike elements to my own life & work, and to the productivity app I'm working on? It'll be "what if gamification, but good tho?"
In brief, as I see it, meh-gamification just sticks points and badges on top of stuff. It's an extra layer of fake proxy rewards, designed to tip the scale of an internal conflict. Gamification-but-good-tho gets you in touch with the real rewards & pleasures & fun of your work!
@visakanv captioned this meme below "unclear vs clear reward" Which it is! But there's so much more: 🎯 tough but reachable goals 🌀 tight feedback loops 👣 clear next actions 🤷♀️ failure not scary 🤔 visible choices 💠 and more! twitter.com/OldMemeArchive…
Some design Qs for complice.co, inspired by Hades: - how can I make multigoal intentions feel more like Duo Boons? ♥️+🔥→❤️🔥 - how can I help people see other ways in which their goals help each other out? - is a day like a Hades run? 🤯😮🤔
- how can I encourage people to try & fail & try again, rather than struggling to get started? 📈 These 3 short phrases actually came to me when I asked myself "how do I want people to feel when they use Complice?"
- how can I improve the text shown to the user in Complice to better incorporate what I know about them? Hades does a *brilliant* job of this. Complice is already way better than most apps at presenting contextual info, but so much room for improvment. youtube.com/watch?v=bwdYL0…
PS: I wrote this thread while listening to Hades soundtrack, which I highly recommend if you don't want to play the game. I've spent many hours listening to the Transistor soundtrack by the same game studio & musicians! (tho have never played the game) youtube.com/watch?v=3GRKJ8…
PPS: video game music is a whole different thing now than it used to be in the gameboy days. Nothing against chiptunes either, but yeah. I sent this to my mom the other day:
@visakanv this thread was inspired in part by a tweet you had that I can't find, which is something like whenever you do something, write up what you learned