In a private discussion group I'm part of, a thread today involved the recent Jedi's Path: A Game of Life game. The issue was that the spinner in the game apparently doesn't work very well-- so much so that one of the game's own designers handed out ten-sided dice to his kids when he tried it recently.
This boggles the mind.
The spinner is The Game of Life. I'm 40. I haven't played Life in over 30 years. But I can still vividly hear the whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz of that spinner. It's a sound of visceral joy. Grabbing hold of that white knob, giving it a hearty twirl, listening to that sound and watching the wheel come to rest with a gentle bounce of the flap between two posts was the only reason to play the game. I loved getting my hands on that thing. It is the shining exemplar of all game spinners. That one simple hunk of plastic sustained the entire game experience.
How could they possibly have gotten that wrong?
But that got me to wondering about other experiences we enjoy not for the experience itself, but for some subsidiary component. Have you ever gone to see a movie just so you could get a bucket of popcorn? Bought a box of cereal to get at the prize on the bottom? Gone to a major sporting event just to be part of the energy of the crowd, without caring about the event itself? Do you hate fruity drinks, but love those little cocktail umbrellas?
What other experiences are appealing more for a side attraction than the main event?
Posted by Peter at January 22, 2009 3:18 PM