Cania
@Cania

The final structure for discussing SNES games was:

Vanity
Gun
Poetry
Archaeology
Revelation

You could roughly map these to "Graphics, Gameplay, Writing, Historical Significance, and Overall Impact" but I think the particular word choices lead to much broader possibilities.

For example, Vanity is anything ephemeral about the game - what does it look like, sound like, what feelings does it evoke when these are combined. Gun is anything that your hands are doing, but also how mechanics make you feel. Poetry could be a particular combination of music and graphics and text that made you feel something specific, and is prone to giving examples rather than a general description. etc. etc. etc.

Honestly the thing tying these all together is they focus much more on feelings than facts. We went through several different structures but I'm happiest with this one, and I think it brought out the best discussions.


SpindleyQ
@SpindleyQ

I always really loved the way the original set rolled off the tongue:

Vanity
Mystery
Poetry
Harmony
Gun

Just a perfect poem in itself, imo.


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in reply to @Cania's post:

yeah i thought it was both stupid and evocative, which was always the goal haha. i also think people talk too much about how a game plays and wanted to smash all that into one category.

we had lots of formats but GUN was the only category that was in all of them.