The virtue of patience

We’ve noticed something interesting while testing The Path. If you play the game slowly and patiently, it becomes a fluent and rewarding experience. But if you’re very goal oriented and don’t take the time to take it all in, playing can become frustrating and pointless. We will probably need to introduce our future customers to this concept of slowness in the marketing.

At the risk of sounding sexist, but generally speaking, from what we have observed, women seem to have it easier than men in this respect. They seem to be naturally inclined to observe more and actively interpret what they see. That doesn’t mean that men can’t enjoy The Path. They just need to slow down and take their time. Then playing The Path will be over before you know it -perhaps too soon. While if you hurry, it can seem to take forever -in a bad way.

It’s funny how this coincides with the structural concept of the game: the straight and short path to grandmother’s house versus the myriad possibilities for discovery when you get lost in the forest. Sometimes I get a bit weary of how much The Path is a comment on (the way people play) computer games.

I wonder if this can be applied to bugfixing too… 😉