When you try something new - like a new TV show or movie, a new food, or a new card game - and you decide you don’t like it, there are two categories your judgement may fall into.
- One is that you just don’t get its deal.
- The other is that you get it, but you don’t like its deal.
Figuring out the deal is part of the fun intellectual stimulation of our recreational activities. A process of exploration and discovery.
Jerry Holkins puts it like this:
“It is my goal to play a game until I discover its thesis. […] Essentially, I want to know a game’s intention. That intention is surprisingly close to the surface in games most people consider to be of high quality, and so I don’t need to play them very long to discern it. I will still finish games that I have come to understand, but a large part of my enjoyment is bound up in this interpretive process.”
