itch.io

i wasnt necessarily tryna focus on discourse vs design cuz i dont see them as separate; design is a kind of auto-discourse, ur game exists in dialogue w all other games in existence & so as u design a game, u discuss internally the linkages, the comparatives, the contrasts, the theses & anti-theses. defo coulda made that more clear tho

on the prime questions, those r the essence of it yea. prameya isnt strictly prior knowledge - its just first ideas, which are informed by past and presents social contexts bc im a communist, further clarified and detailed by corroborations between things (i,e, danda). i took the terms from wtf, in part cuz i thought it was funny, and in part cuz theyre suitable labels for the general creative matter which play is built out of; in their og context, they referred to the setting and by extension reality of the game itself—prameya as base setting elements, danda as additional detailing sourced from other players. thus, better questions for both would be "what are the fundamental ideas (prameya) this game coaxes out of the Player" and "what are the kinds of clarifications and additional details (danda) does it corroborate with the Player/what clarifications & details does it need corroboration on". 

ill also note that outputs need not be what a game promises - though unequestionably, a designer should align a game's actual outputs with its promised outputs. the outputs just have to be whatever play experiences are produced by the processes; this is how you get game-breaking exploits and games that dont live up to their premises (which isnt always the same as player expectation)

on flow vs look, the point was to not look at this oppositionally, but rather to reify components of play that every instruction directs - how play  goes and how play appears aesthetically. i think the issue u might be coming up against is the granularity of it - flow and look are to be understood on an instruction by instruction basis, u cant make an overarching question of the game over it. if u were to phrase it into a question, i think itd be like "what does [this specific process] direct and how does it do it?", which would be applied individually

diy vs dictated has a similar-ish issue of granularity, as a lot of games have small intentioned spaces as many games have big ones, sp a broad sweeping "how much work does the Player need to do to make the game work" or "how much creative agency does the Player have in the play experience" are only really useful in the latter but not the former. sometimes thats enough but if we were to narrow the scope, something like "what intentioned spaces are littered throughout the game (if any)? how do these affect the outputs?" might be usable