The Quiet Year is gonna make ten years next year. It has influenced an entire genre of mapmaking and community building games, and remains as popular as it is now.
However, as new iterations on its winning formula come and go, some elements tend to go by the wayside: communication restriction and algedonic signals that allow in real time, synchronous adjusting of play.
Looking at The Quiet Year and some of the latest games of its lineage, I defend the mechanic most people seem to dislike: Contempt.
