Getting stuck in an endlessly recursive series of subtask. Like so.
Most console adventure games are giant festivals of yak-shaving. I must save the world by killing the FInal Boss! The only thing that can kill the Final Boss is the Hoobler Sword. The Hoobler Sword was shattered into five pieces a thousand years ago! There is a man in Guncho Village who can re-forge it! But first I have to get all the pieces. I got three of them. The legends say the fourth one was thrown into the sun fifty years ago! But there is a girl in Blarptown who has made a time machine! She won't run it until I bring her back her lost kitten! I asked everyone in the town where it is, and the woman who saw it last won't tell me unless I give her some chocolate from the master chocolatier in Hacklemurff Junction! The zeppelin to Hacklemurf Junction only flies once a year, and the tickets were all sold out, so I had to waylay a rotor-polisher and take his place in the crew. So here I am, polishing this zeppelin rotor because only I can save the world from the Final Boss!
In that case, the yak-shaving is kinda what you paid your forty bucks for. But usually it's something bad, like, say, putting off working on a comic by having to find a nail to hang a calendar to use as a motivational tool to stop putting off working on said comic.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 06:00 pm (UTC)Most
consoleadventure games are giant festivals of yak-shaving. I must save the world by killing the FInal Boss! The only thing that can kill the Final Boss is the Hoobler Sword. The Hoobler Sword was shattered into five pieces a thousand years ago! There is a man in Guncho Village who can re-forge it! But first I have to get all the pieces. I got three of them. The legends say the fourth one was thrown into the sun fifty years ago! But there is a girl in Blarptown who has made a time machine! She won't run it until I bring her back her lost kitten! I asked everyone in the town where it is, and the woman who saw it last won't tell me unless I give her some chocolate from the master chocolatier in Hacklemurff Junction! The zeppelin to Hacklemurf Junction only flies once a year, and the tickets were all sold out, so I had to waylay a rotor-polisher and take his place in the crew. So here I am, polishing this zeppelin rotor because only I can save the world from the Final Boss!In that case, the yak-shaving is kinda what you paid your forty bucks for. But usually it's something bad, like, say, putting off working on a comic by having to find a nail to hang a calendar to use as a motivational tool to stop putting off working on said comic.