Day 83: FotLC through the 113 lenses from The Art of Game Design

Day 83 - Lens 12: The Lens of Resonance
To use the Lens of Resonance, you must look for hidden power. Ask yourself these questions:

What is it about my game that feels powerful and special?
I think the gamespace that it creates. The real time nature of the game gives it a kind of focus that creates a strong 'magic circle' or sense of a playspace. The social rules of the game enforce the theme of the game and color that playspace. So I want to say that the 'experience of play' is powerful... or perhaps 83 lenses into this excercise my head has worked its way up my posterior...

When I describe my game to people, what ideas get them really excited?
'Post-Apocalyptic Real Time Strategy' does a pretty good job. I think it varies a bit depending on what the players like.

If I had no constraints of any kind, what would this game be like?
There are two answers to this I guess. As a board game it would be of authentic components, I would make it as available as possible to play with as much ceremony and theme as possible, running it at cons and things like 'Wasteland Weekend' with a booth and costumes etc. I would get artwork and writing to support the fiction of the tribes giving them deep history for players that got into it, raising the thematic stakes of the setting of the game.

The second answer is that I would develop the AR game that inspired the game. That game would be very different, but I think that the strategic bones would be the same... though the theme would have to be very different, either Cyberpunk or alternate reality.

I have certain instincts about how this game should be. What is driving those instincts?
The desire to make an elegant game and the desire to make a meaningful game. Also the desire to make the game the best that it can be and to hone my design skills against it.