I just wanted to indulge in other fellow designers (who have this book) viewpoint on authors views about Fallacy of Vision.
The FALLACY OF VISION is the idea that a mental movie of an experience is equivalent to a design for a system that generates that experience. But visions are also misleading. A vision defines an experience. But a game isn’t an experience — it’s a system for generating experiences. Just as it would be foolish to confuse a perfect flight with a perfect airplane, it’s foolish to confuse a vision of a great game experience for the design of a great game.
But to me vision has always the starting point for any game creation. Imagining the bright moments of the game leads to thinking wow this should be made and further leads to action.
If you’ve read that book what are your thoughts and interpretation for this section about fallacy of vision.
I don’t think the point is that vision is not important. It’s just a word of caution — envisioning a great experience does not automatically mean that the game will create such an experience. The mechanics may make your envisioned experience extremely rare (or even impossible if you completely flub the design).
On the other hand, if you can’t envision how your game will create a great experience, then it probably won’t.
So I think you’re both right. As you said, a vision is a great starting point for game design. And as the author says, a vision is not the endpoint of game design. The fallacy is thinking that the vision is the design, because it’s not.
The core issue here is the conflict between the player’s mental model versus the actual game model. The visuals stand between the two. In theory, visuals represent the underlying game model and exist to inform the player about the game state, but they can also lie. A common case is a fire that’s purely decoration, but the player thinks it would burn them. That would be a case of falling for the fallacy of vision.
"Players are going to play your game in their own way. No matter how much planning you put into a set piece, players will approach it differently to how you anticipated.
So focus on a game design that allows a player to have a good experience, rather then a specific experience you want the players to have."
It’s basically a caution against over design, and a reminder that the player is a variable that you can’t control.
This is really interesting. Now I get it. As a game designer one of my responsibility is to figure out the difference between game model and player’s mental model.