it's the memorization-improvisation scale for action games! in reality it's more accurate to think of memo and improv as two separate axes instead of opposite ends of the same axis, but this diagram is good enough.
i was talking about how action games without enough improv can feel stale once you've memorized them, whereas action games without enough memo (like the current version of the game i'm working on now) can start to feel repetitive and hard to learn, because it's much easier for a new player to notice and memorize a static setpiece than it is for them to understand and work on a complex nuanced skill like beat em up crowd control or shoot em up screen control. no wonder a lot of beginner players tend to view beat em ups as repetitive.
so as much as i dislike memo-heavy console-style action games that don't offer much in terms of improv or fundamentals, adding a few memorizable/routable aspects to a game really does help to inject some variety and give players some easy short-term goals to achieve while they passively soak up their fuzzy fundamental skill knowledge. i'm looking forward to punctuating my game's open-ended improv rooms with a few predictable and exploitable setpieces and seeing how much of a difference it makes!
Hell yeah, whipping out the esoteric game design graphs, love to see it. This is something I've been thinking about a lot when it comes to Decobot. It's really easy as a solo "arcade" game dev to only focus on the most nuanced fuzzy interactions in your own game cause memo stuff is really boring to play since you already know all the solutions, and the design process itself tends to be linear - you think of a thing and add it. Lacks that spontaneous chaos and excitement of seeing a lot of simple things interact & create complex behaviors and shit. But looking at my own experience as a player, more stable, strict routing elements are extremely important for structuring games. Not to mention, if strict enough, they can remain relevant for a very long time, and it's fun when they're strict.
I think that's why I really connect with beat em ups, they strike the perfect middle ground, especially stuff like Final Fight. I wanna say that I think it's good to view the memorization stuff as the foundation, the main meat of the game and levels. And then the dynamic/RNG stuff as stuff as the topping, the elements that make engaging with those structures really damn fun long-term. It's tricky though, because the dynamic elements are harder to actually design and test, so you have to work in reverse order while keeping the "correct order" in mind.
