It’s nice when there’s a clear distinction between the objective metrics the game can measure your performance by and the arbitrary goalposts that are set up around them to facilitate play

Leaving my PS5 on for eight years while I desperately try to get through a game of Persona

There’s no accountability for what’s in junk food in Night City, so I imagined everything tastes like a dorito that got way too much flavor on it, but with different consistencies. Moonchies would be very light, crunchy drywall with synthetic cannabis thrown in, deliberately makes you hungrier

Promises made by a game and the expectations players bring about how those will be satisfied, which are informed by tropes and fashion. It’s important that creators make what they enjoy, to push what’s expected in the directions they like.

Taking it back to timers, one explanation by this thinking might be that people don’t like it when the rails on their ability to direct tension get exposed, especially if it’s done clumsily.

This gets at charts people make trying to quantify “tension”. Horror games manage their cycles of tension very carefully, while action adventure is generally satisfied to allow tension to be directed by the player outside of cutscenes.