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Designing Videogames For The Wage Slave
Thanks to Ron Gilbert's weblog for pointing out a GameDev.net article discussing the topic of "Designing Games for the Wage Slave" . The author explains: "We balance on the knife's edge between our glorious time-squandered youth, and the commitments of inevitable middle age... If games can adapt to the needs of the working gamer, they can find a lucrative niche." He goes on suggest practical tips for game developers, including 'Don't Waste My Time' ("Make every moment count. I don't play games to punish myself. I play them to be entertained, rewarded, and challenged"), 'Curiosity Killed The Cat...' ("Constant death was a necessity in the days of video arcades... Now, in the comfort of our lounges or offices, what reason is there to keep dumping us out of the game we bought with our hard earned cash?"), and 'I Need Help' ("Make any necessary information available from within the game.")
I find this very interesting.. people who work 40-60 hours a week dont have time to be playing EQ for 10 hours a day everyday, or likewise, any game that wastes my time (and doesnt allow me to skip past the bullshit to the actual game). I noticed when I was on spring break or winter break back in college, I had all this free time to sit and play video games. Now I come home from work, cook/eat, pay bills, etc. And then maybe I have time for a video game.
Growing up sucks...
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Please, please stop this. Thief 3: Deadly Shadows is a great game, but half the time I can't skip the logo crap on startup. Why do you do this? For godsakes, show them all the first time the game is started if you really want to, then GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY AND LET ME PLAY THE GAME. Thank you. It would be one thing if the game was loading while the videos are playing, but nope. Morons.
I think web-based games are one of the entertainment for wage slaves, after Slashdot. I wonder if there's any 'mainstream' publishers out there?
Video games are more interesting, but the lack of time and money committment might push some away.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
And here I was hoping the author was sharing his secrets on finding time to *build* games on a tight 40-60 hour workweek. Taking the time to build even simple games results in a massive reduction in sleeping hours.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I find this happening to me (I'm no wage slave, but a college student). I used to play every kind of video game under the sun, but in the last two years I don't care as much anymore. My younger brother can spend all day playing a game, but I've missed a lot of games he's gotten (Mario Sunshine, Prince of Persia).
I find myself, however, gravitating towards Tactical RPGs (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Disgaea, Fire Emblem). I think it's because the rules don't suddenly change in a TRPG (you'll never have to do a move the blocks puzzle like Final Fantasy or as I saw my brother do, in Tales of Symphonia). You don't have to wander around looking for the right villager to talk to or anything - you get right into the action. Instead of trying to figure out some convoluted puzzle, you have one level after the next. They have new challenges and rules, but none of the "fluff" of finding the right item, talking to the right person, etc.
This is kind of the argument for retro gaming too - you can play Mario 1, just pick it up and play for 30 minutes or so. You can't really do that with say, 3D Zelda games or Mario Sunshine.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Sure you *could* develop games geared more towards middle-aged adults, I don't think it will be very lucrative though. When you start hitting that middle-age lifestyle especially that mid-life crisis you don't want to spend all your time inside on a computer after spending 40+ hours inside an office cubicle. Leave the video games for your kids and enjoy the stuff that you can do now that you're older and hopefully a little richer.
Coming from the 2d RPG genre style of FF3 and Secret of Mana, Video Games just don't do it for me anymore. Sure FF7,X were great games, but they don't stick in my mind like my childhood favorites did. As I got older, I found that the stock market can become a game. A very very fun and adicting game that can be played at work or at home. :) Only now, I can control the game based on my thoughts/ideas/suggestions. This game is now manifesting itself into a company that seems to be doing really well so far.
If you aren't happy with games or have time to play consoles, find something else to enjoy. Maybe it'll make you money so you can have more time to go and use emulators!
Aj
-------
artlu.net
As an aside, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was the last game I bought for the current generation of video game consoles. My Gamecube is packed away, my PS2 is just my DVD player. I simply can't find any enjoyable games on consoles for me at the moment.
When targeting consumers with less free time, develop games with lower time requirements.
sustained gratification => instant gratification
This is what passes for insightful?
Is there a niche market that matches this description? Probably. But if you're so god damned sure about it, go and try to convince a small game dev. shop and help them pitch a specific game meeting these criteria to a publisher, don't come and whine about it on Slashdot. Welcome to the capitalist system, come take part, get rich and fulfill a need in the market, otherwise you are just participating in large scale mental masturbation in front of hundreds of thousands of Slashdot readers.
Sports games give you nicely self-contained packages of gameplay. You can play a football game for a half-hour, and enjoy yourself. You don't have to string together hours of playtime at once to enjoy yourself. ESPN and Madden are always ready when you have a few minutes to kill.
Constant death was a necessity in the days of video arcades... This is why I love MAME, the archade game emulator. You got unlimited funds.. just press a key, and play on. Instant death can also be avoided by saving games. It's all the 4500+ games you played as a child, only on your PC.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
As a corollary to the 'don't waste my time' item, is the issue in some games that only allow you to save at fixed save points - then put those points more than 20 minutes of game play apart. There's nothing worse than picking up a game to play for a while and find that you've solved/succeeded a complex section of the game but can't find a save point and have to go.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I must say, I'm always a little disappointed in todays games. It seems like todays game are the same as last years, but with better graphics.
I started playing computer games on an 8088 with 256k of memory. I couldn't wait to get home and play Kings Quest or Space Quest or (if I get past the age check) Leisure Suit Larry. Even my parents didn't mind me playing these types of games (they never knew about LSL). I loved the problem solving and the "adventure" of each game. Me and my friends would call each other as soon as a new item was acquried or a difficult problem was solved.... The experience of the game made the characters timeless, not the 16 color graphics and blocky adversaries. King Graham, Roger Wilco, and Larry Laffer will always have a special place in my heart.
I'm just not interested in today's games (except Doom 3.... I cannot tell a lie). I might play for a couple weeks... then thats it, into my CD archive, never to be touched again.
It seems todays games take full advantage of the most current hardware, but little advantage of creativity and human brain power....
My biggest issue with time drainers like EverQuest is the notion of risk vs reward coupled with lack of player/player interactivity. Post-Ultima Online, the notion of player killing, as well as certain notions of freedom to operate within a gaming environment, have disappeared. I have always thought the greatest risk and rewards took place in that kind of combat. There was no difference in EverQuest for me, new monsters sure, but everything remained the same, I found that bots could have taken the place of the other players. It was the world's most boring single player game, except I paid for the privellege of having an IRC window tacked onto it.
This also brings about ideas of "death" in games, like in games like SWG where you would get warped back to the nearest city, or lose stats/skills upon death, or even those ever-elusive "permenant death" games. I always thought that games that encouraged cowardice never captured my interest, you could lose all this WORK (because on the MMORPG treadmill, you are working) that you did if you attack a monster that is above your level.
Sadly, I don't quite have a solution. But the second year of Ultima Online is pretty much the perfect game of that type, as the treadmill wasn't as emphasised, death wasn't that important, but the rewards weren't out of proportion either. There was a freedom in that game, it wasn't just whacking monsters like a single player game, there was true player interaction. Early Ultima Online was a fine gaming social experiment.
Constant death was a necessity in the days of video arcades... Now, in the comfort of our lounges or offices, what reason is there to keep dumping us out of the game we bought with our hard earned cash?
This is the reason Lucasarts adventure games are so fondly remembered. Nothing was funnier than falling off the cliff in monkey island and seeing the Kings-Quest-esque death screen, only to have your character bounce back onto the screen, make a face, and say "Rubber Tree".
Not having a fear of death lets you try all kinds of crazy shit in games. That's what makes them fun.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
There's also a "printable version" if you don't care to click through multiple pages, or want to help save GameDev survive Slashdotting slightly longer.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
The problem with MMORPG's, no matter how good the game play is, no matter how great it is for the casual player - there's always going to be groups of people that will play 10 hours a day and advance further along in the game then you ever could. And eventually, the game developers tailor to this group because they keep paying the bills.
So, probably your best bet is to find a non MMORPG type game to get your fill of games if you can't devote enough time to it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Fixed saves are very important for pacing. An easy way to keep them is to having the ability to save anywhere but load that save only once. FF tactics advance does this.
-I am an elective eunuch.
THIS GAME DOES NOT ALLOW SAVES!!
So instead you have to spend 20, 30, 40 ... 90 minutes working your way though the game only to have one of your guys take a bullet and make it all one big WASTE OF TIME.
..now that I can't sit on my ass all day playing games anymore due to having a job:
1. A proper save game system whenever possible. None
of that "save point" bullshit, which is the main reason I don't play console games, btw. It's insane to have to waste my time playing through the same level again when I just want to carry on with a game after I get home from work.
2. Cut down on aggravating shit. Like, the weapons
wearing out in System Shock 2. I mean, WTF?! They have FTL travel in that game but I can't get a gun that will fire more than 20 rounds without seriously degrading? I mean, shit, even my old hand me down M16 in the army worked mostly fine after pumping out a few dozen rounds in a row at the range.
3. Fuck mazes.
This article was one guys opinion on whats wrong with games today. And no slashdotters have been giving him any shit for his views? Whats going on?
Ill tells ya whats going on - he only pointed out and praised games that did things right, without spouting on about why Halo gives him the shits (for example).
It really made this article a good read. Maybe a good tip for you journos out there!
Since all of today's games seem to require a story I have one additional request... All cut scenes need to offer Pause, Replay, and Skip.
The most annoying thing about MGS and MGS2 was when the phone rang during a 10 minute cut scene.
You could use a sort of time dilation effect - game time starts to slow as the time since last control movement increases.
Maybe not so good for multiplayer, or at least require some tweaking.
Here's another benefit - anyone who's been a kid (or dealt with kids) and trying to distract their attention away from a game, the excuse is always "I can't pause now" or "hang on, just a minute". If you have a game that you can literally drop and walk away from, it changes the way you interact with it.
There were no middle-aged computer gamers in the last generation. We're the first big generation of kids that's grown up on video games.
Some people get tired of video games, but I'm 26, and I don't think I will ever stop playing them. It's good entertainment. I enjoy playing them, so why would I stop? I'll naturally gravitate away from games saturated with younger kids that I can't relate to, but as we grow older so will the theme of a lot of games.
So.. we're older now. We have money to burn. We like playing video games and we'll pay for them and the hardware to play them on. What's not lucrative about it?
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Almost as bad as the quadruple fire pillar jump in the first Tomb Raider. A very tricky area- probably hardest in the game. One error, and you got sent back to, like, the previous continent and had to run all the way back, and by the time you got there, you forgot what you needed to do differently. I finally did it after about 30 tries, but it wasn't a sense of accomplishment I felt.
--- Ban humanity.
I'm a working gamer myself, before I go next fall to the real-life Doom 3 that is Caltech. In the time I get to play games, I want to receive varied, enriching experiences: I recently bought a Geforce 6800, quite an upgrade from the 5200 I had earlier (pretty much 10x draw rate). The card came with Far Cry, so I checked it out.
Damn, what a drag. Far Cry's checkpoint system is a Console Evil, designed for 5 year olds with literally too much time on their hands. I spent 30 minutes sneaking through a level, making sure to pay every place a visit, when right near the end I am ungloriously gunned down and forced to replay that entire 30 minutes. I ended up playing the thing over Rambo style, taking a jeep and making a beeline for the place I last died, which took 10 minutes and was 1/10 as engaging as my last play. I've pretty much summed up the gameplay in Far Cry:
n = 1;
1. Walk.
2. Turn on nightvision.
3. Walk.
4. Turn on nightvision. See heat signature.
5. Go prone.
6. Unload all munitions at heat signature.
7. ???
8. Profit!
9. Find out you didn't really profit because 1 second later, one of those giant mutated bullet (and rocket propelled grenade) tampons walked up behind you and blasted you to hell.
10. n++; GOTO 1;
There you have it, the design document for the ULTIMATE FAR CRY SINGLEPLAYER BOT. Yes, that's who you and I are when we're playing games like that: bots. I have a hunch that it would work just as well in multiplayer.
Yes, I know developers and publishers want you to spend time on their games. But stuff like checkpoints and repetitive gameplay like in Far Cry destroy goodwill and create dollars for other, more creative developers. Sure, I know they implemented a quicksave--but that was after the entire populace, awash with rage, found the emperor naked, so to speak. This stuff doesn't have to be taught by hard PR lessons; it should be in the basic rulebook of game design, where it belongs.
All games should have:
An autosave that activates when you quit.
A restore in case of a computer crash.
Robust netcode.
Programmers that have more than the customary two-neuron-one-of-which-is-inhibitory brain.
Simply put, the PC game industry would be so much better if there wasn't as much sexing between the PC and console developers.
Did you try Super Mario Sunshine? Again, you have complete camera control. Very challenging game when you get into it.
Tactical RPGs are usually good, too, for the working gamer. You can fight a single battle and save.
--- Ban humanity.
I'm unemployed and have plenty of time for video games you insensitive clod!
>
Saddly, the sequel appears to have faired more poorly, but the original is absolutely worth checking out.
DMC1 reviews 97% positive
DMC2 reviews 20% positive
policy analysis and political satire
I had a conversation with a friend about this topic and we thought there might be a market for a gaming community based around it. something only for casual gamers. We didn't figure out exactly how it might work but it should be able to exclude people that become too good at a particular game, or spend over a certain number of hours per month or something. I really enjoy playing games online against other people, but it sucks if you have to invest x amount of hours to either get good enough, or build up a certain character to a decent level. I realize that some mechanisms are in place for this sort of thing, like ranking, etc, but i think that they are often inadequate.
One interesting thing that I notice in most sports games is that since the beginning of time, a "game clock" in a sports game has always ticked faster than real time, sometimes blazingly faster.
That's always bothered me a bit. I've got a pretty good feeling for how long a second and minute are, and it desturbs me to see 10 minutes just flash off a video game clock in a blink of an eye. I guess it's out of nessessity... a to-scale simulation of pro sports would take 3 hours on average to play, and overtime could take it longer. I guess nobody has that attention span.
Still, I wish a game with hyped-up offense to get realistic scores and a faster-than-normal clock would at least have a cheat code so that the clock shows 5 minutes "real time" instead of 15 minutes of "game time"...
This guy has preconceived some game in his mind. What he's saying makes little sense to me.
If you're so busy you can't dedicate one daily hour to a game, you shouldn't even try playing adventures. Instead of playing stupidly simple games, one would rather go to a web design company sitemap and start pointing and clicking while watching the multimedia. The whole point of adventure games is the challenge.
I've been quite busy myself for some years now and I only play adventures when I'm on vacation. Best games for busy people are multiplayer games with short rounds. I don't really need the latest and greatest. There are many oldies that never get really old. Tekken 3 for instance allows for several rounds in 30 minutes. SNES Mario Kart, or N64 Diddy Kong Racing in multiplayer mode are also great options if you have someone around. You can also look for adversaries online: Bomberman Online for DC is just great, so is soldat for PC (give it a download). Crazy Taxi or Jet Set Radio allow for short sessions. Short deadmatches of your FPS of choice are also very adequate.
This guy probably doesn't know what he's talking about by experience. I don't need a stupidly simple adventure game babysitting me to the end. If you want that, just try the lowest difficulty level and for many games you're set.
Trial and error is just fine. R-type and Ikaruga come to mind. There should be enough save points so you don't have to repeat the same level a ridiculous number of times. In other words: arcades so easy you don't even need to retry are silly (this only applies to arcades).
I agree in a couple of things, though: being lost is not fun (busy or not) and stupid long animations you need to see must die. Busy or not, I don't like wasting my time watching long animations. Most Final Fantasies are excessive, but FF X is just unbearable. Games are not movies, and Square sucks at making movies anyway. Let me play. Shenmues are much better in this respect. They don't bore the shit out of you every minute with a long animation: animations are short, to the point, instructive and often interactive. It also takes you notes so you can easily retake the game after long breaks.
I rarely play computer games anymore, and haven't for years. However, I have get one sometimes to see the "state of the art".
:-) Well, once they are old enough, and by then I'll be left in their dust...
When I do this, I know I don't have time to get good at the game or see everything. So I do the scummy move of using cheats to let me play beyond my skill with the game.
I'd rather my kids not do it, and I'm not proud, but it makes sense. I can see far more of the game and enjoy the art etc better.
I wouldn't use cheats with a multi-player game since it really harms the others.
Except of course if it were playing against my kids and then it would be "play to win"
this is not a sig
This has got to be the most annoying way to stretch out the playing time of a game - forcing the player to go through random battle after random battle in order to reach a sufficient level to tackle the next meaningful target. Quality games like SW:KOTOR never force you to do this, it was wonderfully balanced, there were no boring parts, and by the end, you were exactly powerful enough to defeat the big bad guy. It fills the above mentioned niche exactly, and i suppose in part the game's success can be attributed to these design features.
Perhaps the answer to the problem of teenagers dropping bricks from motorway and railway bridges is to sue Tetris.
dont base it on hours.. I do nothing but play games all day and I still suck at everything :(
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
My favorite game of all time hands down is Dungeon a.k.a. Zork, the great underground adventure (the DECUS shareware version, not the one marketed by Infocom). It presented dozens of challengins puzzles that took a very long time to solve unless someone gave you their map or solutions.
I also recall a VT100 game for VMS where you explored islands to establish new bases. Sure those games were primitive compared to the current stuff. But the shoot 'em up MUD games where you win by memorizing the nuances of some 3-D map. That's not fun--it's obsession.
I guess it comes down to whether you prefer games that require thoughtful problem solving (e.g., Zork or Indiana Jones) or precise manual dexterity and knowing the exact moment to perform an action gained only through repeated playing. I preferred pinball to video games because you got more value for your dime (or quarter).
signature pending slashdot approval
See, the thing is, they tried to make SWG more casual gamer friendly. Every mission is accessable to every player all the time. Generic quests are the theme of the day. You can get items for tradeskills while you are logged off. Skills are very easy to obtain.
It all sounds great for the casual player, but it all gets extremely boring at the same time. So what if you have some really cool weapons or armor - so does everyone else, no matter how much you play.
The game was a great success when it first hit the shelves, but it has nowhere near the continued subscription rate of Everquest.
The very things that many people dislike about Everquest (hard to get items, slow leveling, very difficult quests, etc) are the very things that actually end up making it successful. No pain no gain?
And comparing a MMORPG with a game like Doom 3 isn't a valid comparison. You can't just give everyone the best stuff in an MMORPG right away, or give them the same level of fighting abilities right away, and expect people to stay interested and paying.
It's a pickle, there's no doubt about that. Finding the right balance between boredom and redundant. Somewhere in there is entertaining and exciting.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
And incidentally, i've just started playing FF10-2 recently, and noticed that they seem to "follow" a couple of his suggestions. You have the airship right at the begining, allowing you to go anywhere and do whatever you want, lots of no hassle exploration. And like FF10, there are quite a number of save spheres, and you can use any of them to go back to the airship. Also like FF10 it has pretty good maps, often with arrows superimposed showing you where you're supposed to go. It has a jump command and some platform puzzles, but if you miss a jump your character just kind of staggers at the edge of the pit for a second and then lets you try again. No horrible punishments for failure, which makes it a lot more fun. You can still get killed in combat, quite easily if you wander into the wrong areas, and it still sends you back to the main menu of the game. An option to quick load back to the last save would have been convenient there.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I believe Guild Wars is targetting this area pretty well. Unlike the archetypal mmporg where you have to camp for days - you can log in check your buddy list and grab your friends (or team with strangers if you like) then load up a mission. Characters are persistent and you can go do pvp in an arena of sorts if that's your thing. Alternatively you can explore the wilderness; the point is you won't have to sit on your ass and pay to wait so you can have a chance to kill some lame mob for guildmate #294. The classes and professions seem robust and the monthly fee is 0. The E3 world alpha was pretty successful. Just food for thought, after playing masochistic games like EQ, SWG, AC, UO, AO, among others, I find a game where I can log in for a half hour and not feel guilty for logging out refreshing.
This game looks promising.
I normally play games like Xmame, (old arcade games) sopwith, cards, chess, etc. I remember the old Airwarriers, Mechwars and such.. way cool. Another good game that's out and has been around forever is Subspace, windows only, and the only reason I'd even install it again. Starting out back when Compute magazine was "the" rag and sitting up for hours copying code and then getting a failure, debugging and finally getting the damn thing running.. cool.. and then the power goes out... ahhhh! Lost everthing. Didn't want the tape drive, and just couldnt afford the 10MB hd for $600+.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
... is a great game that describes most of what you seem to be asking for. Well, except for the long cut scenes... but you can skip through them if you want. You get all of the info you need to complete the game, in the game...
Except for that really dumb torture session, the game is pretty good. I just dug it out after not playing more than once back when i had a modded psx and a burn of it... I found a copy in the bargain bin at the mall the other day, and I am about to beat it... I'm at the final boss right now... It is kinda cheesy, designed for those not quite technically affluent, but it's a fun game none the less.
Well hey, it was worth $8...
I find very few that are very engrossing for me anymore. The last adventure game I really enjoyed (if you could even call it that) was Metroid Prime, which I suspect has as much to do with the nostalgia factor as the gameplay. I have an inkling to play Prince of Persia, but almost no desire to play another RPG simply because the stories are not engrossing and MMORPGs for the same reason.
Even my desire to play sports games is somewhat limited. I prefer arcade games over simulation in almost all isntances. For example, I like NFL Street over Madden simply because it's easy to pick up and play.
I play fighting games somewhat, but am not willing to dedicate the time to master all the movesets and characters.... certainly not enough for 3d games, anyway. I prefer the 2D Capcom and SNK games.
MAME and the rest of the emulators are wonderful in the regard that there are a ton of great games out there which you can grab a quick game or two. Money Puzzle Exchanger, Puzzle Bobble, Tetris Attack, Windjammers, NBA Jam, Punchout, Ping Pong, etc.... all of them are great for short term entertainment.
I'd even go so far as to say that if you can't make a good game that requires short time spans to play, you have no business whatsoever trying to design large, complex games.
What he didn't hit on, though, is something disturbing I've seen in recent games: games that diss on you when you lose. The one that comes to my mind the most is Civilization 3. For those who haven't played the game, it can take a lot of work to master a difficulty level, and often times the downfall of any civ (a computer controlled one or yours) is when every in the world gangs up on it and crushes it. Okay, bad things happen sometimes. But do I have to see the enemies spew juvenile trash talk at me when I lose? Things like:
Gimme an 'L!' Gimme an 'O!' Whatever... LOSER!
Don't worry "champ," you'll get 'em next time.
Go back to chieftain! (Ed note: Cheiftain is the lowest difficulty level in Civ 3... imagine getting this while trying to learn how to play!)
Aww... was that your last city? Maybe we should give it back...
and so on. Really, if I wanted to listen to stuff like this, I'd go play some random game on a public forum, like Warcraft 3 (the ladder actually isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, though) or an FPS. And I'm pretty sure there's been other games in the recent past like this, either by way of insulting you or over heavily punshing you...
It's funny that this guy picks Grand Theft Auto 3 as an example. I loved its sequel, Vice City, but I hated GTA 3. Why the big difference? Well, let's consider:
And there's more. GTA3 seems to very strongly embody the faults he highlights in his article, so it seemed an unusual choice. I wouldn't be surprised if he only played Vice City, because he makes references to things from that game not in GTA3 (like robbing stores). Or maybe he's just better than I am at GTA3
Still, he makes excellent points all around. Often asked is "What happened to the fun in game designs?" particularly when MMORPGs are concerned.
If they're designing games for the wage slave then how about bringing back the boss key feature so I can look like I'm working on something when my boss happens to roll by.
...a basic tenet of gaming: games are meant to be fun to play.
:)
all of the high-end graphics and convoluted plots in the world will not carry a game. nor will the pretty animation cuts.
games must be fun to play in an addictive fashion, period. remember tetris, pong, bust-a-move? occasionally a FPS like Quake or Counter-strike will also have addictive qualities (but with a substantially greater learning curve) but graphics alone will never carry a game.
Having said that, I can't wait for Doom 3
what reason is there to keep dumping us out of the game we bought with our hard earned cash?
What reason is there to keep us from getting into the game in the first place? (i.e. Safedisc, Securom, ProtectCD, yadayadayada). Apparently game manufacturers didn't learn anything from the failure of radical copy protection schemes during the Apple ][ / Commodore 64 days.
Hint #1: I'm middle aged, I don't want broken "CD"s that make my drive barf trying to read them and lock up my system half the time. Hint #2: I buy my games (I'm middle-aged: I can afford them). Hint #3: I can get a crack off the web the same day your stupid game releases a new patch. But the point is that I shouldn't have to.
Game companies need to stop wasting money paying these copy-protection companies (and by extension: wasting MY money since the cost is of course passed on to the consumer).
Oh yeah? Just wait until Duke Nukem Forever comes out...
--Problems should have multiple solutions. Doing the same sequence over and over trying to guess what the programmers wanted is annoying, and not everyone solves problems in the same way.
:)
--If you can perform an action, it should do something on the screen. Back in the depths of time, one of the cool thing about Duke Nukem 3D was the bullet holes that it would leave in the wall after the fight. Sadly, many games have only limited actions that seem to do anything.
--If you are going to kill characters, try to make it funny (like Leisure Suit Larry), dramatic, or interesting. Making every death the same is boring.
--Don't make puzzles a pixel hunt. Those just suck.
--There should be multiple ways to explore the game, not just a single linear path.
--There should be at least one difficulty level where you can save your progress at any conceivable instant. Having to reach a "save station" or the like ranges from annoying to infuriating.
--Put plenty of incredibly obscure "easter egg" puzzles in the game -- ones not needed for the plot and which might only be found by a handful of people on their own, but which are fun to get. Secret rooms are okay, but things that require cleverness rather than exhaustive searching are more fun.
/ enough for now, I have anime to watch
no worries,
gaming will soon be revolutionized by the release of Peasant's Revenge which will probably be free.
ôó
"Constant death was a necessity in the days of video arcades... Now, in the comfort of our lounges or offices, what reason is there to keep dumping us out of the game we bought with our hard earned cash?"
Riding a bicycle down-hill is enjoyable for most people. If you never had to ride a bike up-hill in the first place though, it'd get pretty boring pretty fast. You need to know what up-hill means for down-hill to have any value.
If you want, wait a week or so after just about any game is released, search the web and find the God Mode cheats. Frequent deaths are instantly solved. Sure, you get to take a quick tour of all of the games set pieces and pretty graphics but it will barely be a fraction as rewarding as it would have been had you actually had to work for it. My guess is you'll resent the $50 you had to spend far more than if you'd actually earned your way through it.
The lazy option is there. My experience has been that when I've taken it, I've got far less out of the games than when my achievements have actually meant something.
Going back to the bike analogy... Imagine having an engine that powers you up and down hills regardless. Oh, wait, I have one... I call it my car. Yet I've never had a fraction of the fun driving down a hill that I used to get after working to get my bike to the top of a hill and feeling the exhilaration on the way down the far side. Sure, I see more hills now, in less time - which suits my busier adult lifestyle - but each hill means a fraction of what they used to. That's why grown men take time out to go mountain biking and why others find the time to play games without cheating.
Multiplayer FPS was mentionned briefly in the article (Unreal Tournament in particular). However, for me at least, this kind of game really does the job well. When I want brief periods of intense fun, I join a Quake3 Deathmatch or Capture The Flag server, and with matches set with timelimits of 20 min, fraglimits of 30 and capturelimits of 10, they're over in 10 to 20 minutes. Didn't get enough? Stay in for the next match.
I don't worry about savegames, mazes, game over, etc. Got killed? Respawn instantly. Lost your weapons? Get the rocket launcher next to you. Really it's perfect.
However, as Q3 is now dying in favor of more recent offerings (which is a shame since in my opinion, no other game has the pace, precision and fluidity of Q3), the servers which are still active are now either empty or filled with very skilled players. Not a good time to learn multiplayer deathmatch! Also, finding a copy of Q3 is almost impossible nowadays.
At least you took out the blatant footer advertisement, but can you PLEASE stop hawking your stupid company here?
Someone please mod this guy down.
Executive summary:
I'm 23, and I have pretty much stopped gaming. I still play a few games now and then.
Things that seem to make a game enjoyable for me:
- Good for parties/friends
- fun to watch someone play
- fun to play together
- small time commitment (15 minute session vs several hours)
- Smooth flow
- Very little searching for items, large travel times - things that make me feel like I'm wasting time
For example: Max Payne 2 and Metroid Prime. Both are excellent games, but Max just didn't keep my attention well enough for me to finish it, or took too long. Metroid was too much of "oh I forgot this item, I have to go look for it over there -- a 15 minute travel. Ooops, I need this to get over there, which is back where I came from"
a couple games I DO enjoy and why:
Super Monkey Ball (and #2) - packed full of fun mini games. You can play for 15 minutes and quit -- no huge time commitment. Great for mini parties.
Mario Kart 64 - same as SMB.
no comment
While we're at it... how 'bout some games that just kind of pretend the 3D arms race never happened and start making non-immersive-non-first-person-perspective games again?
:-)
Dear god, did I just say that?
Sigh. My desktop PC (dual Opterons, AIW 9600) and company laptop (Dell D600) have gaming capabilities I would have sold my parents to Saddam Hussein for less than a decade ago. Hell, so does my Gamecube attached to my 61" DLP TV. And what REALLY SUCKS is the fact that I can't play 3D games on ANY of them because they ALL give me vertigo (the Gamecube on the 61" DLP being the absolute worst... too late, I learned the hard way that playing on a bigger TV and making the experience even more immersive makes things WAY worse).
At first I thought it was just old age (I'm 31), but then I found out that lots of teenage guys have problems with vertigo too.
Bring on the 720p PacMania, Jumpman, Pogo Joe, and Super Giana Sisters
I finally played Oni after having bought it several years ago. I put it on movie mode (unlimited health, no other cheats) and it still took 10 hours to finish.
All games have cheat codes. Adventure games have walk-thrus.
With walk-thrus, just because you know the answers doesn't mean you have to follow them right away. When you know the answers you can waste as much time as you want because you can. Not because you're lost.
With shoot em ups and what not, generally the only annoyance is dying. So you put it on movie-mode and the annoyance of dying goes away so you can just enjoy the game of killing things and whatever storyline the game has.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Given a choice of easy, medium, hard in most video games I used to choose hard to start with. Of course now that I work, I no longer have the patience to replay a level dozens of times just for the challenge of beating a game on the hardest level. Heck, I even beat Quake 3 on nightmare mode (seriously, it's possible but very difficult), but I probably won't consider doing that when Doom 3 comes out. To me, video games now are more like a substitute for going to a movie. If I'm frustrating because I'm reloading a save every minute, it's no longer enjoyable anymore.
("Make every moment count. I don't play games to punish myself. I play them to be entertained, rewarded, and challenged"), 'Curiosity Killed The Cat...' ("Constant death was a necessity in the days of video arcades... Now, in the comfort of our lounges or offices, what reason is there to keep dumping us out of the game we bought with our hard earned cash?") Difficulty and death are in games for a reason. A game just isnt fun if "every moment counts". Without a little punishment from a videogame it doesnt really feel like youre even accomplishing anything - because anyone else would be able to accomplish the same thing easily. No one wants to sit down and play http://www.progressquest.com/ Challenges and a little "S&M" often make a game more interesting.
This 'fluff' is boring, when the game is boring. Remember Fallout? The action was only part of the fun, I still remember the dialogues with NPCs...
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
It is both relevant, and it mentions Nethack. That's 2/2.
But the author himself points out how certain styles of games, like RTS and FPS, are great for when you don't have a lot of time. They make it easy to find a game (either against the computer or against real players online), play, and then go do something else. This line of reasoning seems to defeat the original premise of the article. The funny thing is, I was thinking the same thing. When I don't have a lot of time, I might load up Age of Mythology, or UT2004. On the other hand, when I have the time to really get involved in a game, I'll turn to something like Morrowind.
My point is that there is already a huge variety of games, some that you can jump right in and play a few quick games, and some that are much more involved and require some time to really get into and discover everything. Both niches are already filled. Then again, when the guy is saying, "I recently moved into a new apartment. This has literally left me with only a few minutes of gaming per day," I don't know what he expects anyone to tell him. Wait until you have settled in to your new place, I guess. For most, gaming is a hobby like any other. If you can only spare a few minutes out of your day for a hobby, then you're either seriously overworked, mismanaging your time, or have way too many hobbies in the first place.
Crush them hard, and when you doubt your ability to do so, stop playing and find thing to do in the garage. You got to keep that Kick ass old gamer reputation as long as possible.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I bought the double back for the XBox a while ago but got bored of trolling around in a van trying to pick up pornos and failing in GTA 3 so just stopped playing. I was intending to go back to it some time but it sounds like skipping straight to Vice City might be more up my alley.
I'm sure giving up in the first area of the game is "lame" but I just play for amusement. I just want to take part in a story or have some relatively mindless fun.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
... of video games:
1) Don't piss me off
2) Really, don't piss me off
I love video games, but I don't consider them a big enough part of my life to devote my spare time playing some level over and over.
IMHO ProgressQuest does a beautiful job at taking all the tedium out of this style games.
They have all the coolest monsters/quests/etc. but fortunatelly they automate the boring parts so well, you can even play while doing other stuff.
I'll elaborate with a example. When i played one of the phantasy star games (long time ago), i started the game fighting the chirpers (little birds with practially 1 hit point) that would attack me as i walked around. Later I went to new places that had more difficult monsters which matched my improved guys. But later on, i got ran into a dead end (i needed to sole how to get through), and had to travel back from the planet i was on, and traverse across the entire surface of the planet i started on, to go look for clues. This would have been ok, if i hadn't been attacked by chirpers every 20 feet. I would kill them in one hit, but it would take over 200 button presses (attack button) to walk from one place to another. Now i really didn't even care about the battle strategy, I just didn't want to have to get involved unless the guys i was fighting were above a certain power.
The end of the story is that I gave up on phantasy star and never went back to it.
Same problem goes for Final Fantasy X, but there i care about battle strategy... it's just the same strategy *20* times as i battle the exact same configuration of monsters throught the level. oh joy! just want i wanted to do, hit the same button sequence i hit the previous 19 times! (sourcasm:)
Anyway, the scriptable interfaces could eliminate a majority of the burden, wihtout reducing the intelectual challenge of the game.
I think the thing that people miss is that middle aged (and by that I mean gamers with jobs) gamers are becoming more and more common. True, the kids are the ones who really got into gaming, but now a generation of gaming kids are becoming adults and getting jobs. They are running into the frustration of not being able to game any more because they can't blow 40 hours a week on a game. This problem is no more evident then in MMORPGs.
MMORPGs are designed around time sinks. EVERYTHING in MMORPGs these days revolves squarely around time. The equation is simple, time = power = fun. For this reason many gamers with a job are giving up on such games and going to things like Unreal.
For me personally, I am a great gamer. I pop into a FPS and generally rock the hell out of it after playing it a couple of rounds. This means that when Unreal 2004 came out I could jump in and start having fun right off the bat. The game design was fun and it didn't require anything other then skill to play. I didn't have to sit in a field killing rats before I could play it. The same thing would be true if you dumped me into an MMORPG with a level 50 character. Learning the ins and out is not a problem. It might take some time, but not much in the grand scheme of things. The big problem is that I simply don't have the time to be level 50. If I play an MMORPG I am pretty much relegated to running around in a field by myself killing rats. Oh joy.
MMORPGs need to take a clue from FPS and RTS games. Make the game based upon player skill, not time. This does not wreck the fundamental formula of an RPG. It just changes the nature of the game. Imagine for a moment SWG done in this style. If you wanted to smuggle, you would play the game like it was a space simulator and occasionally perhaps play the game like it was Thief. If you wanted to go explore you would jump on your land vehicle of choice, ride around, jump off, and the game would play like Jedi Knight or Dark Forces. If you wanted to be a Jedi the game would be more of a social game with elements from a Tail in the Desert combined with combat elements from Jedi Knight.
The real important thing to do is to be sure that any reward that increases someone's power is balanced. A n00b with skill should be able to kill the most jacked out person in the game. So perhaps it takes a little work to be a Jedi Knight, a total newbie with a blaster should still be able to cap you in the back of the head or stab you in the back killing you.
MMORPGs are obsessed with steep power curves, and nothing - absolutely nothing, is going to drive away a gamer with limited time more then that. Nothing pisses me off more then logging into an MMORPG and knowing that there will always be people I can never, under any circumstance kill, not because they are so skilled, but simply because I can't spend the 10 hours a day to actually gain the power to inflict any harm. In most MMORPGs a newbie could attack someone who is high leveled and AFK and still not be able to kill them. This is wrong.
For me at least "achievements" happen in the real world. If I'm going to expend real levels of effort or practice it's going to be on something that has real world value, not on something that is ultimatly pointless outside it's own artificial existance.
I play games in my downtime and the last thing I want is to end my downtime feeling frustrated. I want to have been entertained not tested.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
is the t-shirt :D http://www.unamerican.com/catalog/index.htm
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
Entertaining beat-em-up suddenly changes into annoying platformer.
Bollocks to finishing that.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
FEAR THE DAMNED ELDER GOD FOR ITS BEIGE OF THE END TIMES CONSUMES YOUR SOUL
Mod me up or down, whatever, but I have to know:
Am I honestly the only person here who likes the new beige colours?
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
I was playing MGS2 with a friend (we'd trade ff controller between cutscenes) and we were just about to wrap things up as he had to get back home for dinner and I had to meet my girlfried somewhere.
Well, we finished one last sequence (shortly after we got the big tank area) and then a cutscene began... anbd went on and on and on!!
I was thirty minutes late meeting my girlfriend, and have not played the game since.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I kind of liked that feature in SS2 but that was probably about the last game where I seriously enjoyed spending the time it took to beat even the tougher enemies using just a crowbar. A less extreme version of that could still be fun even for the impatient.
Didn't they have a weapon later kind of like the bee weapon in Half Life that lasted just about forever though?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For those that like to spit on ideas such as those presented in the article; take a look at the world around you!
;)
The most often played game is probably Freecell or Minesweeper? Why? Because you can play it for a few minutes whilst waiting for something else or just to while away half an hour or so. Puzzle games answer all the needs the author describes in the article, now if only other types of games would.
I agree with the article in many ways. Especially the part about having to restart. I cheat. Yes. I confess I cheat in games.
I don't like it when a racing game requires me to study it's mechanisms for multiple hours only to require me many hours of training more just to have a minuscule chance at unlocking a new car or course. I don't like to have to play a single course a hundred times just to enable an even more difficult course. I just want to switch on the machine and race a few laps with my extremely customized ultimate racing car in whatever landscape I feel like driving in that day. And perhaps even knock a few other cars around.
I don't like being kicked the crap out of by weirdo muscular freaks and freakettes, I experienced that enough in school! I want to take revenge; slaughter that big guy with the suit who looks just like my boss, kick the crap out of the that irritating muscleboy and I want to do it with the panache of Bruce Lee. And god knows I just want to see those cute girls wrestle it out on the beach!
I really (really, really) liked Jak & Dexter until one challenge which I just couldn't figure out. Since I had to do this particular challenge to continue I just gave up on the game.
Same goes for LOTR2 where somewhere in level 10 or so I couldn't even cheat through due to an enemy which would kill you with one touch if you were distracted for just a second.
Most games have such problems, please, please, PLEASE allow us casual gamers the ability to skip the parts of your games we don't like or just can't get past. Sure, it's cheating, but so what if it makes our experience better?
What the author is saying is that he just wants to have fun gameplay, not to wade through levels designed to be nearly unbeatable or challenge some artificial intelligence who knows more special combos than I'm willing to learn or worse; a hardcore gamer who's just intend on satisfying his ego.
This isn't just about older people though. The casual gaming market has been mostly neglected in favour of the "quick-and-easy-profit" hardcore market. Some noticeable exceptions such as Sims and (my own favourite) Roller Coaster Tycoon prove it can be different though.
Currently I'm putting all my hope on that new Playboy game, looks like Sims for men.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I think Rachet and Clank has already achieved the balance that the main story sought. You could play for jus a little bit, and it really had veyr few frustrations. You could skip just about any video, and almost never die needlessly. I don't recall any parts that were overly tedious either (though you could make them tedious if you liked if you grew faatical about weapons upgrades!).
I tried the demo for Prince of Persia but it really turned me off. It reminded me of the quote from Galaxy Quest - "Why would anyone put all these crushy chompy things in the middle of a ship? It makes no sense!". Simialrily swinging around poles and stupid random saws high up on ledges lost my interest just about right after Tomb Raider (the original).
So, try out either of the R&C games - both of them are great fun.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I skipped DMC2 myself, but from previews I think DMC 3 may be fixed and as much fun as the first DMC. Not entirely sure though.
Still waiting for Nico though!!! Ico was worth spending some time with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...is an open-ended, long-term germ that I could back to over and over again with the same character/player/whatever.
An example: a revised version of Privateer. There's the main story, which you can rip through right away if you're a 15-year-old adrenalin addict. Or you can put the main story 'on hold' and do countless other merchant or combat missions, improving your ship *very* slowly over time, or even buying newer, better ships. Make the galaxy freakin' huge with unique planets, a real economic system, random but distinct quests (most kosher, some not), other doable quest lines that are interesting but don't intertwine with the main story, etc.
Make the challenge of the main quest dependent on your ship and loadout and it won't matter how long you take to get there; it'll never be a cakewalk.
But for an older gamer like myself I get two things: a) my gaming dollar stretches out for quite possibly months, or longer, and b) I can do a simple, quick mission here and there when I have the time, or go back and complete an involved mission for the main quest when I get a few hours in succession to play.
If a game like this game out and was entertaining, I'd definitely buy it - AND the inevitable expansions that add to gameplay.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I guess I'm the demographic the article's about. I spent a lot of time playing games during my youth and while I was a student, but since starting a 9-to-5 job last year (with a 90 minute journey at either end of the day), I've had to be a bit more careful in how I use my gaming time.
That said, I disagree with a lot of the conclusions of the article. I don't particularly mind time-sinks. I play a MMORPG (FFXI) and, despite the fact that you spend a fair bit of time grinding, I don't mind that, because much of the fun in a MMORPG comes from the social interactions and from the thrills you do get when you explore a new area or fight a major boss. I also play a lot of offline RPGs, both console and PC, where levelling up your characters is a major factor in the game.
Making all of the necessary information available within the game isn't a bad idea, but I'd hardly consider it a vital factor. I don't mind referring to a manual. My normal practice when playing a new game is to read any "plot" sections of the manual and check how the controls work before I play. I'll then refer to the manual as I go along, whenever I bump into something I don't understand. I recently started playing Disgaea (superb game, play if it you haven't already) and this worked well there; reading the entire manual before I started wouldn't have helped, as many of the concepts would have seemed bizarre if I hadn't already played the game, but going into it with no grounding at all would have been hard.
For me, far and away the biggest issue relates to saving progress. One thing I absolutely loathe and despise is having to go back and do something I've already done. I'm not talking about grinding in FFXI here; that changes as you level up, so there's a sense of progress. I'm talking about having to replay a 15 minute game section because I died right at the end and had no option to save my game. In my mind, there is *no* excuse for not implementing a quicksave function in PC (and perhaps Xbox) games or not having ample opportunities to save in a console game. I own and use all three of the current-generation consoles, but I've a particular dislike for the Gamecube, because so many of its games have ridiculous save policies. I'm drawn to games which let me feel I've made progress at the end of each session; MMORPGs are obviously a good example here, as are RPGs such as Disgaea or KOTOR. Conversely, I'm much less likely now to play "simple" shoot-em-ups. I recently bought R-Type Final in a fit of nostalgia. However, despite the fact that it was a good shooter, I found the fact that I was expected to go back to level 1 every time I loaded up to be far too dispiriting.
By fixed, I mean done some better and additonal design to make it appeak to both varities. I have similar feelings about Raven Shield. See I like the action part of a game like that. I like sneaking around, I like working with teams, I like 1-hit kill type shooters. PRobably why I played ACtion Quake 2 for so long, though that had not nearly enough sneaking around.
I do NOT like planning the missions. I like to make minor tweaks based on preference, but I really don't want to have to watch 25 run througs just to get a plan that actually works. That's just not fun to me. I like the tactical, not the strategic part of the game (Civ is more my strategic kind of game).
Well, the solution, I think, would be to have a difficulty setting that influenced plans:
On easiest, it gives you the perfect plan, that the bots will exectue with no lossess. So you could literally just watch them run all the missions. You could only fail or loose someone by you screwing up.
On easy, it gives you a very good plan. It's not good enough for the bots to exectue perfectly by themselves, they need you to command one team (it would note which) to execute as is without lossess. Basically give you a pre-made plan, but more challenge in tactical mode. Not only do you have to not mess up, you have to be a little better than the bots.
On normal it gives you the plans as they are now pretty much. They are good enough to succede in the mission, but not without incurring lossess. You'll need to do some redesign to make it a perfect mission, no amount of tactics alone can save you, better strategy is required.
On hard it gives you a badly flawed plan, probably not even good enough to complete the mission. You need to make major repairs to make it workable, much less a stunning success.
On hardest you get NO plan. It's up to you to do all strategic formulation from scratch.
Problem is, as it shipped, the game only has normal and hardest options for strategic planning. That's great, if the planning is you thing, but for those of us that just want to get our shoot-on, it's frustrating. I don't want a shooter like Quake or such, I want the realism and style, I just want the game to have a good plan for me, and then leave it up to me to execute it properly. I think this is kind of what the author is talking about. Do some extra design work to help out casual gamers.
What I propose here would not at all change the operation of the game, and would not at all dampen the experience for the strategic gamers. However it would make it much more accessable to the more casual gamer. I do think it's something designers need to consider. Not throwing out the expereince for hardcore gamers, but doing some additonal work to make it as easy as possible for casual gamers to also enjoy.
A good example of a game that got it very right was Hitman 2. It had a good deal of varibility in difficulty, and gameplay. For settings, you could change a simple thing like saves. Set it to a high number to make it easy, so you could more or less creap and save, or if oyu were hardcore set it to 0 and have no room for error. It also just had good variability in methods to complete your mission. If you wanted, just running in and killing everyone was quite a valid, and fairly easy tactic. If, however, you were ahrdcore and wanted to challenge yourself, you could try and complete the mission only firing one shot, and killing only the target.
It's just more thought like that which should be given by developers. I'm not saying it's always possible, I really don't think Civ 3 can be made easier for casual play and still keep what makes it a great strategic game, however in many cases something CAN be done. Developers just need to think about this, if for profit reasons alone.
Hi,
I used to spend hours in front of my 486..
from the prince of persia, monkey
island I and II, Duke Nukem and Doom. Hours trying
figure out a new way to win Civilisation,
or understand the objectives of simcity2000. I had
to upgraded to a Pentium II
to play Driver and I must have
spent weeks trying to be proficient at Falcon 4.
Then one day something weird happen.. I did not
grow up or get a career (eventually I did get
one but that was much later).. a girl said Hi.. flirting, teasing, nibbling, dancing, talking over
coffee.. there wasn't just one girl.. there were
everywhere.. it was so much rewarding and
fun than any game I ever played..still to
this day.. it changes daily and it is
never dull and the rewards are so stimulating..
I have never again touched a video game...
I always think I had sunk enough time.
Just my own experience.
Cheers,
A.
By far, the best game for the wage slave is STRANGE ADVENTURES IN INFINITE SPACE. It's a space exploration game that never takes more than 20 minutes to play (usually less) and has random levels so it's always different. Great to come home, play a few games, and do whatever else you have to do.
(And, no, I don't work for them - I just really dig the game.)
> MMORPGs need to take a clue from FPS and RTS games
Done. Its called PlanetSide.
FPS: You are a soldier.
MMORPG: In an army of thousands.
RTS: To conquer the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlanetSide
I've been playing vg's since my dad brought back a C64 with games on tape. I must admit that in the last few years work and other realities have prevented me investing the time I used to in gaming. The problem I find is that many games require investing too many consecutive hours. Games that force me to play 70 hours plus (Planescape Torment, Final Fantasy X) just to finish them, to unlock all levels (Timesplitters 2) to l are getting a bit tedious (not even counting the time spent on the web reading about how to get to upgrade my charachter properly,...). And don't even bother trying loading a saved game you haven't played for 6 months, because you've forgotten about the quests , ... As for MMORPG's I have many friends involved in them, but I just can't imagine paying a monthly subscription for a game I probably won't play more than 6-8 hours/month (and that would be in the first months), not even counting the fact that I probably wouldn't get much further than the fishing and chopping wood levels !
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
For years now, western and particularly American games have been very, very easy. In games like Red Dead Revolver, you have infinite lives/credits and there is a save point every few minutes. It's more like an interactive movie than a game, since there is very little challenge.
I'm not saying games need to be really, really hard - sure, there are people who are just not that good or who don't want to invest the time. But Red Dead doesn't even have a difficulty setting, and there is zero replay value. Games can be both easy enough for casual gamers to progress in, and hard enough (by way of side tasks such as chaining in Ikaruga or fork-lift truck racing in Shenmue) to keep the rest of us entertained. It's like the action film with enough of a plot to keep you thinking.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That is why I love them. I am now replaying Quake2 and it is the signle most awarding experience (comparable to the old Doom/2 experience). I can sit down, fire up the game in less than a few seconds, run about and shoot things, save, quit. Great single player - monsters to fight, little puzzles which do not take away your time, nothing that stands in the way.
To be honest, this is the main reason I still play counter-strike:
a) No learning curve really, so I just hop in and create carnage.
b) I rent my own server, so no having to put up with dodgy hackers/raters/whiners/etc.
c) the game runs at a near constant 100fps, so no having to tinker and tweak the game to run well. And I don't have to constantly upgrade my rig.
d) Steam's server browser is the best I've ever seen (I've stopped using ASE). I LOVE how it's integrated in and out of the game. I just doubleclick on a full server and use auto-retry option, go and get some drink and voila, I'm in.
Absolute zero game playing time!
If your not with the kids your doing all the jobs you can't do when your with the kids.
If your not doing job your with the wife - because you NEVER spend any time together.
Maybe, every now and again you get 5-10 mins or so for a quick blast.
That's why I play sports games - you get a good, satisfying experience in a short time frame.
PS: I'm not complaining about the kids and the wife - reality Sims beats video games Sims anytime!
xrick aka rick dangerous http://www.bigorno.net/xrick/
Remember rick dangerous? either way check it out. this game rules!
The idea of logging off to do tradeskills is sketchy at best. You're basically just saying "Okay, everyone is now a master at " because everyone would just set it and forget it.
Making tradeskills more fun then EQ would definately be nice (SWG is better with this to varying degrees) but to allow it to be automated takes absolutely *all* the prestige and reward for it.
The rare spawn thing does suck sometimes - but, think about it. If everyone could just walk up to the cave, say a magic word, and pop here's the monster, what's the challenge? What's the reward?
As far as "essential character development quests and battles" well, I am not sure how you really classify this. All the quests in EQ end up with some sort of item. Nothing really more then that. Although a character's epic weapon is (okay.. was) really sweet, it wasn't exactly essential to your gameplay - and they used to be so good that if everyone could just bang them out with single groups, then *again* - what's the challenge? What's the real reward there if everyone's got 'em no problem?
EQ is not perfect but it's the imperfections that people bitch about that actully keep people playing. Sure, it could be better. How? I don't really have an answer for that. When you finally get that mob to spawn, or you finally get that drop, isn't it a great feeling? You have a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling that you've done something that a lot of people have not been able to.
If you can get that feeling of accomplishment without having to work for it, then bless you. But I can't.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Okay. I'm assuming we're talking about Everquest here.
The thing is miyako, people aren't level 1-10 for very long. You know, people tend to level up. And even if you only play a couple hours a day, you'll be a level 40 something in no time. Sure, when the game was initially released, and for the first year or so, it was a lot more difficult to level. But that hasn't been really true for a long time. So, where do you spend your dollars in development?
I must give Verant/SoE some credit in this respect; they have pretty much consistently added new content for low level characters. But in the end, it hasn't mattered all that much. Players level up, casual or not, and the content is neglected. Especially now in EQ, there's a lot more high level (level 55+) characters then any others. These people want content for their levels and that's what they get.
I guess I distinguish casual and active players in Everquest based on how much they raid with a guild. If you raid with a decent guild, and do so on a very frequent basis (daily, or close to) you're character advancement is a thousand fold what the casual non-raider can do. There's an enourmous gap between these two classes of people.
In the end, with Everquest at least, the game isn't really an RPG anymore - it's an adventure game. It's all hack'n'slash and really not much is left.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I do think that gaming for the wage slave is still possible, you just have to select other games. You could go for a drive with NFS or rebuild civilization with Civ3. Both games can be timeconsuming (esp. Civ3, I know), but you don't have to play that next round. And where is the ol' adventure? Those could be saved any time you pretty much wanted. Strangely, nowadays we don't hear a lot about them, but if someone had the creativity to program a good adventure, I'd be playing!
PlanetSide did do it - kinda. The problem with PlanetSide is that it ignores the MMORPG element almost all together. It is not much different then a big version of tribes. Just because the meat of a game is based around skill instead of the old time = power equation doesn't mean that you have to cut out all role playing elements like PlanetSide does. Things like houses, clothing, an economy, and in general the entire social scene of an MMORPG do not need to be cut in order to make the game player skill based and attractive to a casual gamer. PlanetSide doesn't have much more of a social scene then any other FPS. People might bullshit during a fight, but really there is little beyond that. The appeal of an MMORPG is a vast world to play AND socialize in. I am not putting down PlanetSide, but it isn't a new breed of MMORPG, just a sophisticated large scale FPS.
I personally find the utter lack of imagination in MMORPG developers to be disappointing. They tout features that are just refinements on a bad formula. World of WarCraft is not going to be any sort of holy grail. It is going to be the same old MMORPG done in the refined manner that Blizzard is famous for. Certainly it will be a great MMORPG compared to the rest, but they are not changing the formula. It is still a game where your character's skill means the most, and your character's skill is based purely on the time you can throw at the game.
I foresee an MMORPG some time in the next five years that is going to break all the rules. Alls it takes is a gutsy developer and some designers who can convince the money men that the casual gamer is the target. They are going to build a world based upon player skill, and it is going to be big. Imagine if you will a world with the size and exploration potentials of any current MMORPG, along with solid role playing and socializing features that we expect in an MMORPG, but with a combat system like that of a FPS. Such a game would be big. It would attract those into FPS, those who like the socialization aspects of MMORPGs, and those who can only play a limited amount each day. Hell, you might even bring in the people who like to play the Sims if you make your socialization features robust enough. The only people getting the shaft in such a system are the people who blow 10 hours a day on a computer game to be the best... but who really gives a shit about them? If you are spending 10 hours a day on a game, chances are you don't have a credit card, and you certainly fall into a very small minority. Attract the people who play Unreal 2004 and/or the people who like the socialization aspect of MMORPGs and you have a massive audience that dwarfs the crazy 15 year olds who can blow half of their day on a video game.
Hell, just imagine collecting a monthly fee from just the people who play Unreal 2004. Believe me, that number make what MMORPGs bring in now look like pocket change.
subspace, aka continuum seems to meet all of the requirements of the perfect wage slave game
;-)
not least of which because i sereptitiously play it at work all the time
the dying part doesn't matter, as you tend to die in about 12 seconds flat every time on a classic zone like trench wars, regardless of skill level, but this is actually part of the fun, so it is indeed beyond the concept of dying
and there is always somebody cooking up a new and different zone, like the ever-increasingly popular and well done capture the flag zone metal gear ctf
so the game is different and fun every time, you can play for 2 minutes or 2 hours and it is stil fun, and there is always something new to look out for
and it's free!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I agree for the most part. Some games I don't even bother starting up unless I have a few free hours at least. I may grab a quick multiplayer round of RTCW or Far Cry or play games on MAME for a short while, but I'm not going to play Silent Hill or something for only 30 minutes. Certain games are not very well suited to very short infrequent playing periods. I find that games with prominent stories and games with strong atmosphere don't work well very short sessions, because by the time you're getting into the mood fo the game, it's time to go to bed or work or school or wherever.
Why are you people taking this so personally anyway? The original poster made no personal attacks, but you are making plenty against him.
Play whatever you want, but realize that most adventure or RPG games are generally designed to be played for a little while at a time.
And for the record, I'm 24, working and going to school and I don't have that much free time either. I just realize that some games need more time than others and plan accordingly. But then, I'm also one of those weirdos that reads manuals in their entirety before playing a new game.
.....timeslices gets smaller. I am 42, married, have two adorable kids (both well versed in pokemon gold, i understand 10% of what they say) play golf, play computer games,have a day job......and the biggest "hits" on my hours are:
1.day job;-)
2.golf
3.family activities.
computer gaming is a group activity, when you have a ten-year old son, and my big problem is to convince HIM to save and come to dinner.
Frankly, I would need a SAVE/RESUME option for my golf game(..well, also a "REPLAY FROM LAST SAVE" would be grEatly appreciated). A round is four hours, more or less, so it really takes away time from something else.
On video games,I found out that I now tend to play "no-brainers" like arkanoid, or quick turn based games like Civilisation. things with steep learning curves, I really cannot afford anymore, and that's irrespective of the type of games, console, PC, or even Gameboy. for example, my kids let me (..!!!) play on their pokemon gold on one condition: "...Daddy, DO NOT SAVE ANYTHING"...
one more thing. I am a compulsive reader (i.e., I've read the whole Pat o'Brian's Jack Aubrey series in a year), but strangely enough reading has the least impact, because I can snatch snippets here and there.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
.."Golf seems like the most pointless waste of time ever. Like i said, i want to have _fun_, not waste large amounts of cash on useless things that unenlightened middle age people think will make them feel younger again. " Golf doesn't make you feel younger. it makes you feel mad.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Well yeah, the "think will make them feel younger again" was more refering to the motercycle and the boat and similar stereotypical mid-life crises purchases :)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/
Sorry to plug so shamelessly, but I've found that not only are their games absolutely amazing storyline and interface-wise, but they also are great for playing when you might easily be interrupted. You can save them at any time, and should you be interrupted in combat, you don't even need to pause. I've been playing Geneforge for quite some time now, and it's never bored me, which is saying a lot, considering how much I dislike most modern games. If you're obsessed with eye-candy, Spiderweb's stuff is not for you, but if 'bad' graphics don't bother, these may just be the right games for the working class.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Might be a problem with the PS2's dog slow memory cards of course.
Hardwar is what you're probably looking for. It's like WCPRIV in real 3D. The game was pretty much an underdog (you can find it at The Home of the Underdogs), but gives you complete freedom.
;-)
You start off with a ship and you follow the storyline as long as you find it interesting. Then, at any point you can just ignore the key missions and wander around the gamespace (Titan), hunting for bounty, trading stuff, creating your own industries, and what's more, you can save anytime and come back later to evolve the character you play.
Just my 0.02 EUR.
Why not opt for a non character oriented skill building system ?
Reward those players instead, not with real skill points that will overpower your character, but by getting "fame points".
The idea would be to choose when you play the game if you want to be some ongoing character (the traditional way with exp points etc.) or a "hero for hire"
if you play the game the standard way, you'll be hiring at a cost which will be duely retributed as fame points to the hero player.
When you play a hero for hire, you won't play many time the same character because it will either die, or you'll dump it because you want to try something else ("now that I'm famous enough I can play a troll, great !")
your fame builts according to how helpful you are to the other player which is the team leader (leading npcs and heroes for hire)
there would be issues with this of course but I think it would be interesting for both the std player and the casual player who focuses on playing well his emporal characters. first, the hero for hire is always involved in action, that's why he's hired, so no time is lost wandering around. when you connect to the server you get to select from a list of possible characters and make alive a pool of supply and demand (your fame would let you higher priorities or would unlock races, things like that, it would also allow you to slightly modify characteristics of your character in more or less dramatic ways according to the fame you got)
oh well, regardless, I'm sure there exist ways to offer value to both casual and hardcore gamers, you would just need to address different needs differently and combining them.
To true, im sick and tired of games that waste your time, making you complete boring repetitive tasks or sending you back to the very beginning of levels because the only way to complete them is to know before-hand what you're going to come up against. If I want boring repetitive ill go work on a production line, If I want frustration i'll go back to school! The last game I played that did this was Manhunt, I got quite far but then realised it was total crap, I don't play a game to be told to go get a fucking can of petrol and drag it across a map, only to repeat 4 times because i cant get my gun out in time. Games that let you do anything and use your imagination (to complete a general goal or otherwise) instead of following a pre-set path are the way forward. Story lines and games are incompatible because if you stick someone in a level and tell them the only way out is to do this and that then they might as well be watching a film, except films dont stop every 10 minutes to repeat the scene.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Stock Market
Ask me about my vow of silence!
1. Splash screens. One of them I could deal with, but one for the publisher, the developers and one for the 3D engine? Enough already, I just want to play the game!
2. CD Checks . Yes, developers want to protect themselves against piracy, but name me one game where a no-cd executable isn't easily found? All this does is make me keep hunting for game discs when I want to play, taking away precious minutes of playtime. If you have a significant other who "tidies" your home then sometimes you can't even find the disc.
3. Cut-scenes you can skip. OK, first time you play a game you need to know the plot intro, but the 7th time you don't. Let me skip it.
4. Invisible forcefields. Things that stop you going where you want. This is especially evident in games where the level design has to look bigger than it actually is. The taller buildings in CityOfHeroes do this. ARGHH!
5. Stuck in the scenery. We've had home video gaming now for over 20 years and I can't believe I'm still seeing games where you can get stuck in the scenery.
6. Having to buy the physical disk in a shop. What? Its 2004 ! Why can't I just use my credit card and download a game? Because A: They have to have the easy to defeat cd-checking code and B: The high-street retailers are scared. Planetside, for instance , had a seven day demo which, when expired , required a disk to continue playing. We'll never know how many subscriptions they lost because people couldn't find the CD for sale, or changed their minds when they got to Amazon.
7. Launch dates. Linked to #6 slighty. For instace Black & White. Why could I not go into a games shop in Guildford UK, (minutes away from the developers offices) and buy when it was for sale in US game stores? Thats one GOOD consequence of game piracy - its reducing transatlantic game release lag (Doom3 is only going to lag by 24 hrs).
8. In game music formats . When you purchase Need For Speed Underground you've already purchased the music (the copyright effectively notice says so). So why is it not in mp3 so you can listen to the tracks you like outside of the game?
"If you're so busy you can't dedicate one daily hour to a game, you shouldn't even try playing adventures."
Sadly adventure games are not the only ones who waste my time. The other canonic example are MMORPGs, but even those are just one genre among many that waste my time.
E.g.,
- Mandatory tutorials. You can find them in every single genre. (Don't get me wrong: _Optional_ tutorials rule. Hour-long mandatory tutorials suck.)
- Idiotic save restrictions to make a short game look longer, by forcing me to replay each map again and again and again. Again, it's not only about arcades or adventures: you can find that idiocy in every single genre, including FPS.
E.g., the one that rilled me the most was Hitman. That was one shameless waste of my time. (And they lost me as a customer for good.)
E.g., one console RPG at one point made me play for 10 hours straight before it gave me a save point. Roll it around in your head: TEN HOURS. I mean, geesh. Thank god it was Sunday, but even then it's _not_ funny.
- Yes, idiotic overuse of cut scene and animations.
Your FFX example is right on: I've tried to play the game three times so far, and invariably I get bored out of my skull of getting a 5 minute cut scene every 1 minute of playing. It's not a game, it's a bleeding tech-demo.
- Stupid illogical puzzles where you don't get enough data and feedback to actually solve a problem. You just have to spend hours trying every single button and lever combination, until one mysteriously works. That's not a mental exercise (as a puzzle should be), that's not a challenge, it's just a stupid waste of time. Again, that's being abused in all genres.
"If you want that, just try the lowest difficulty level and for many games you're set."
The lowest difficulty level in most games is _not_ easy enough for a casual gamer. Not everyone is a die-hard CS player, who instinctively circle-strafes, bunny-hops and headshots 9 times out of 10.
So, no, just making enemies kill you in 3 hits instead of 2, does _not_ count as a low enough difficulty for a casual gamer. Making bosses need 100 direct rocket hits to die, instead of 150, doesn't either.
But the biggest idiocy are games which attempt to basically _punish_ you for playing on a low difficulty. E.g., most adventure games give you half the xp if you're playing on a lower difficulty level.
The problem? Your character slowly falls behind, to the point where your "turn undead" spells don't turn anyone, and your sword swings never connect, and your healing spells don't even heal the damage an enemy does in one hit. The game actually becomes _more_ difficult for the poor buggers who explicitly requested a _lower_ difficulty. Idiotic game design at its finest.
Basically: the lowest difficult level in a game should basically be (demi)"god mode". It should be low enough that any non-gamer grandma off the street can beat the game. Low enough that a paraplegic on drugs can finish it. For everyone else, hey, they can choose a higher difficulty.
Serious Sam got that right. Most others did not.
"Trial and error is just fine."
Trial and error is _not_ fine in most games. In arcades, maybe. But what does it really bring to further the story in an RPG or FPS? Other than boredom and repetition, nothing.
"Best games for busy people are multiplayer games with short rounds. I don't really need the latest and greatest. There are many oldies that never get really old. Tekken 3 for instance allows for several rounds in 30 minutes. SNES Mario Kart, or N64 Diddy Kong Racing in multiplayer mode are also great options if you have someone around. You can also look for adversaries online: Bomberman Online for DC is just great, so is soldat for PC (give it a download). Crazy Taxi or Jet Set Radio allow for short sessions. Short deadmatches of your FPS of choice are also very adequate."
No offense, but here you're overstepping your prerogatives by a
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Best games for busy people are multiplayer games with short rounds.
:-)
Typically, yes, but 'open' games like Grand Theft Auto are really good too. Back when GTA3 was out, I didn't have much time for games, but I could easily jump into GTA3, drive around, pull off some stunts, get chased by some cops, and then turn it off.
being lost is not fun
Again, this doesn't relate to GTA3.. being lost in GTA3 and working your way out of somewhere is most of the fun.
Crap, now I want to go and install GTA again..
I'd like to bring up Animal Crossing. A lot of my friends told me how cool it was, and I agree that it can be a lot of fun to watch your town evolve like that. But it seems to ask a lot from you.
In play time, for example, you can't save for like the first hour, not until you've finished all of Tom Nook's chores. And every time I want to take the train to another town, I have to talk to that stupid cat. In fact, a great deal of the game consists of reading dialogue you've heard before.
But the real tragedy comes when you realize the commitment level they expect. Suppose you just want to play every Saturday afternoon or so, when you have an afternoon to kill. Well, the game will punish you for having the audacity to have a real life, by filling your town with weeds, and your house with vermin, and everyone you talk to will complain about how long you've been gone.
Of course, the game comes from Japan, where the norm for a role-playing game is, well, definitely not for the wage slave.
Check out www.guildwars.com It is supposed to designed to take into account those of us that love MPPORG's but because of job are lucky to find a hour a day to play. Game play is supposed to be rewarding at all levels of play.
Back in the early 80's, games were just a quick 15-30 minute affair. A quick blast of Space Invaders, a quick nibble with Pacman. You did not get absorbed by the games, you just played them. This may explain why mobile-phone games are doing well. They are so simple that they require little commitment.
A video-game is just that - a video game. It's just a toy that's meant to be played with - not an experience that immerses you inside it. You're just meant to play a game, not to commit yourself to it.
Dispite my rant, I still get addicted to games like Civilisation III, Age of Wonders II, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, etc.... but in my defense, I used to work in the games industry, so there.
I resent being called a wage slave. I've worked very hard to get to the place where...oh shit! the boss is coming! Gotta go!
..but they'd have to change significantly.
Here's the brainstorm: don't have character advancement. Throw away the rather unrealistic old D&D idea of 'levels' or 'advancement'. Let people build the character they want right up front.
What's to keep people playing? Well, I assume that you have quests, storylines. Players play for prestige, for wealth (which can't buy power, only nice things like clothes and property), for dare-I-say-it actual role-playng (the RP in RPG) and just because the game rocks.
Rather than the characters changing all the time but the world staying static, I would try to build a game where the characters don't advance much, but that the world changes.
Am I the only person that immediately downloads any trainers and cheat codes that I can find for a new game? I never play games without them... because I would rather play through a game quickly just to see the sights and do crazy stuff without fear of death.
Meh.
OK, I must be an exception. But going from "college student" to just a "full-time worker" is like a vacation for me. Happens every summer, and hopefully this fall for good. But when I've got my "college student" hat on, it means working 40-50 hours a week and going to school full-time. Honestly, it's a vacation for me to just work full-time- instead of being on campus from 8 am to 10 PM every weekday, I'm only here until 4:30. I mean, jeeze, I get to see day-light! Only happens on the weekend during the winter for me.
I mean, I can see how having kids could change all this. *shudder* But still... Maybe if I had mommy and daddy paying for school, I'd be singing a different tune.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I thought I was just a bad gamer... Who knew?
I remember liking games like the Tex Murphy series. Good story line, lots of little gags, and a hint system that would allow me to just stumble through. You lost points when you used the built in hints but you could let the story line continue.
I remember Grim Fandango. One of the last games I played all the way through. Weird..
Any other games I should check out?
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
Hey, get with it and realize the point of the article was for designers to consider making games to those in time-limited situations.
Studying is not real life, my pasty-faced geek /.er - perhaps when you get a girlfriend you will understand what "time constraints" are.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Ok, 1000-hour RPG's clearly require shit loads of time. But how about creating an RPG that only takes 40 hours? Yes, such a game would necessarily be different from 1000-hour RPG's, but that doesn't mean it'll suck. (But it will appeal to a different audience).
Maybe we're just argueing semantics, but we are offended by the idea that we should be excluded from certain game types because we don't have lots of time. Your point is that these games take lots of time, so what do you expect? I guess our point is simply that the existing games in those genres take a lot of time. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
...and people into their early to mid-30s. these are the people that have sustained the gaming industry since its infancy. not the teens nor even new freshmen in college. the same people that have fed billions of dollars into the game industry have grown up. most of us at the LEAST have full time jobs, many of us commuting and also having to be more active so that we dont gain 50 pounds. a lot or most i would think are married with maybe some little ones of their own and couple that with family time + work + getting sleep and staying healthy things have changed...when we were in college or as a youth we could drink a coke or eat a bowl of ice cream in between pac man rounds or fix some nachos after each level of tomb raider was finished after you tried that jump for the 30th time and finally made it. then we could wake up at 10 am, skip breakfast, a shower and clean clothes just so that we could start another level before leaving late for that 11 am computer science class, then come back after that and play some more. nope, we all now have grown up, and the gaming industry needs to keep its fan/player base...or it will lose out in the end.
You know you have reached middle age when you ask what is the maximum you are allowed to put into your employer pension per month rather than what is the minimum ...
Of course it makes sense -- so why the tone of guilt? Cheating at a game is not a moral offense, since there is no victim. It doesn't encourage you to cheat elsewhere in life since the risks and rewards (and morals) are of a completely different category. And it lets you get a fuller enjoyment out of your investment.
So what's the problem? Why not let your kids do it? I'm honestly curious.
As a long,long,long term gamer of most of the turn-based strategy games, I'm amazed to hear that you can save turns. I mean, I knew it intellectually, but there was always one more tech to research, one more city to take, one more hut to grab, one more...damn, is it 3AM already?
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
My example is Championship Manager, a football/soccer management game with it's fair share of adicted devotees.
the grail is developing your own formation that maximises the strengths of your players and this beat the computer run teams.
Thing is, there is an actual formation that plays on a few design flaws or bugs that means that you just win pretty much all the time. Once you know this you try it and it's true. So you win to yoiu get bored.
then, you start again vowing not to use this 'cheat'. Thing is you know it's there. You are in the middle of a 6 match losing streak and you know that all you have to do is switch formations.
takes all the fun out I can tell you.
Although this might sound very un-l33t to a lot of power gamers, its MY choice to do these things, and it saves a hell of a lot of time as opposed to dying, reloading the old save point, and running a whole dungeon over again. If I wanted to impose some arbitrary set of rules where I never teleported out of combat or never rested in the dungeon, I could do that myself to improve my own play experience. But inevitably, all that does is force me to run away and take more of my time to accomplish the same thing (escaping the bad guys).
However, I was so entertained by NWN that I purchased one of its expansions, Shadows of Undrentide (SoU), and have been very disappointed due to the mechanics and level design wasting my time. This expansion was not designed in house by Bioware, the makers of the original, and despite all the nifty new things it added, it's an absolute bore to play because it simply wastes your time doing mundane things. I'll start ranting about it now (it's been bothering me for a while, so bear with it), but if you don't want to read, just mod me "-1 Not Hardcore" and know that simple level design flaws can waste TONS of a casual gamer's time.
To teleport in the original, you click a button to come home, and talk to the guy next to you if you want to go back into the fray. In SoU, your teleport item uses a crystal each time, and its up to you to make more. This requires hunting down a number of common gems, teleporting home, walking upstairs through a level load, walking down the hallway and into a laboratory, opening a crystal making machine, thumbing through your inventory to find and place the gems in it, then taking your crystal back downstairs to be sent back to where you came from. If you run out of crystals or gems to make them, you're SOL because there aren't any more in town. A very common action takes at least ten times as long in SoU as it does in NWN, and accomplishes the exact same thing. Presumably this is because powergamers complained that too many n00bs were relying on their teleport in the original, so now I have to waste a big chunk of my time proving myself to them (in my single player campaign, mind you).
Furthermore, once you're home and stocked full of loot, you probably want to sell the spare stuff off for cash. This requires you to walk out the door (level load), wander all the way across a very long town to the only merchant (level load), sell your stuff, leave the merchant (level load), then wander all the way back home (yes, four level loads ) before you can teleport back into the action. Again, a very common action that takes ten times as long as it should when the designers could've simply placed a merchant or equivalent in your home. Although I hardly noticed these simple luxuries playing the original, I would give anything to just have a damn easily accessible merchant in the expansion.
My understanding is that Bioware wasn't supremely thrilled with some of these things, and released an in-house expansion that fixes some problems (for example, you get to carry a small pixie with you that acts as a portable merchant, selling off all that loot that you earned but just can't carry). I'll have to check that out. In the meantime, I wish game designers would understand that all those really cool cutscenes and interesting hidden levels are nice, but you really have to streamline the basic mechanics and level design of the areas that the player will be spending half his time in before worrying about them, or I have no motivation to waste my time getting to that point.
Seriously, if you want my money for Doom III, just get someone skilled in shooters play it from beginning to the end, capture video and audio and release it on DVD. How hard could that be? And I would buy it and watch in on my coach drinking beer :-) without the need to upgrade my computer first and spend hours trying to jump over some nasty chasm or something. I just want to see the game, and I want to see it played on hardest levels which I am not capable of.
With titans of industry, Sony and Nintendo, facing off in the next few months over the handheld and portable gaming market, I'm shocked to see one feature that would be a huge selling point to the adult gaming community.
Non-Volatile Memory.
If I'm playing a game on the train, for example, and I'm at my stop between save points, I lose all my progress. I should be able to shut the lid, turn the power off, and instantly pick back up whenever I feel like it. Games developed for the Palm Pilot get this perfectly -- I can hit the power button halfway through a game of Bejeweled, and pick up *exactly* where I was before hours (or days!) later. I can even change the game, then reload Bejeweled and STILL BE AT THE SAME POINT.
Why is this so difficult for handheld gaming devices to do? It's surely got to be one of the greatest overlooked features of all time.
You'll find that you'll have much more time to play games when you're not tethered to the PC..
I think I beat golden sun (RPG) while exclusively on the shitter.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Rampages do respawn in GTA3 - they just respawn in their "alternate" position. In other words, there are two positions each rampage mission can appear in. Fail the mission from one position, and it appears in the other.
This article spoke to me! This is EXACTLY the situation I'm in. I've reached the point where I value my time too much to waste it doing stupid things I don't have to. And I still like video games. So something I can pop in and play quickly is right up my alley.
Perhaps this is why "retro" games are doing so well right now. Not only is there the nostalgia factor, but the games are quick "press start and dive in" type of games.
I don't just turn to old games though. There are already modern games which DO address my needs in some ways, though are flawed in others:
The Onimusha series is a great example of quick n fun gameplay that one can invest just an hour or two at a time playing and eventually get through.
Even Grand Theft Auto III fits the bill here because I can easily return to it, find a mission and just keep going.
Games that really screw it up though are the ones that require me to rely on my own memory. I have nearly completed Final Fantasy X, but it's been so long since I touched it, that I don't because I just don't remember what weapon or spell is best against enemy X Y and Z...
Same goes for any adventure with non-obvious puzzle elements.
Even Gran Turismo 3 is no longer appealing, because I don't remember which cars and which tuning settings are most appropriate for what. And I don't feel like starting over.
Recently I've been playing Prince of Persia for the GameCube. Well that game has worn out its welcome pretty quick. Running around a large room trying to find that one path that the designer intended the player to use in order to exit, and dying repeatedly trying to find that path isn't my idea of time well spent. So that game's been shelved.
Anyways, the article is has a very valid point. Yet at the same time, there are games that already fit the bill.
I tried clone wars comboed with tetris worlds, and found that the old NES tetris was more fun
I agree that Tetris Worlds sucks Big Floppy Donkey D__k(tm). Try Tetanus On Drugs instead.
What about limiting playable servers by level?
I mean, people are already comfortable with Pk and non-PK servers, right?
Or, another thought. A lock on the level of players you're allowed to attack. It could be as simple as a message along the lines of "This one is not a worthy challenge" or (say for a Jedi character in SWG (which I'm glad I never bought now)) "You're supposed to be defending the weak, remember?", or something like that
Unless it's the little runt who just stole your favorite blurdlecruncheon, of course
Grand Theft Auto for the Xbox - it's really long in the tooth since they didn't do much for the graphics engine but it's still easy to get a mission or two done in half an hour or just screw off and drive around looking for bonuses.
Simpsons Hit & Run - similar to GTA but better graphics and different plot
Driver 3 - Just started playing this, controls SUCK but it's got potential if I can get my muscle memory out of Halo and into the backwards controls. Missions seem to last about 10 minutes.
Futurama - AWESOME platform/adventure game. Fun to play, difficult without being impossible. Missions are anywhere between 10-25 minutes. I'm stuck on one level with Dr Zoidberg and it's frustrating the hell out of me so I haven't touched it for a month :)
I play games maybe 10 hours a month now. I was never really "into" it hard core so this isn't much of a departure for me.
I'm looking forward to an Xbox 2 for my unborn child though :) The whole idea of having kids is to allow you to relive your childhood with them. That was really something that only came to me a few days ago; I don't have to give up being a kid, I can do kid stuff with my kid!
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
An auto-quicksave can be something as simple as the autosaving feature in 3d studio max, where a timer varaiable counts down to zero, executes the autosave, and resets the timer and gets it going again. Easier said than done? If I just keep on "saying" it, "done" is a trivial matter.
Do you really want the game to pause for five seconds in the middle of a heated firefight?
It's to the point now where I've dug the old NES out of the closet just so I can play games in short intervals.
The only games I've played lately on my Xbox is Links 2004, and Halo on the weekends.
After a full 8 hours or more at work, I just don't have the energy to sit and play a game for 3 hours straight.
I ran a 2-line Gaming bbs back in those old days. My Co-Sysops and I created something rather singular for our paying users, a specially configured D&D style multiplayer MUD, with literally 3 thousand some areas (we called them levels), complete with it's own time bank and honor/fame system. The reason for this was we created the 999 planes (levels) of hell & heaven, along with a HUGE game world to segement out the types of players we had joining the game but whose playing styles didn't mesh very well. For example, whenever some player PK'd another we had a daemon pop them into the first level of hell forever keeping them away from the 'normals' who didn't PK and such. Other players who completed many acts of heroism (or quests) were rewarded by appearances of staircases leading into one of the lower planes of heaven, and normal players who liked exploring around, eventually found new enterances into the other sections of the 'normal' game world and so on.
We had set up DM's for each area, who were charged with keeping that game area flowing smoothly, and doing game maintenance - such as creating new stuff inside their area, or modifying bits of it as needed to prevent abuses. I (and certain other trusted DM's) became 'planeswalkers', and were able to move from section to section, and perform these same functions there as well.
While in appearances it seemed pretty complex (and very similar to many commerical MMORPGS around nowadays), The game pretty much ran itself with a little regular game maintenance. And to our delight, each game area evolved into a more interesting settings onto themselves. For example, the PK'ers eventually formed up thier own demon clans (probably the first 'guilds') through their kills and waged demon gang wars amongst themselves for ascension points/powers/weapons/MI, and the occasional angelic band or planeswalker who came down to their planes for kicks. (and if the devils won, one of their rewards was the option to ascend to the prime plane and play monsters or cash in some fame points and descend into a lower plane of hell and so on.)
Eventually, I think we built in a little something for just about everybody. And it's a real pity that the Internet eventually came along and drew most peoples attention away from BBS's of the time, and caused the game to be abandoned. I can't tell you how many times I've wished I could recreate that old game system to setup & run on the internet somehow. Unfortunately, since I didn't program the whole thing myself, (one of my co-sysop's did most of that grunt work while I managed the BBS itself) - I don't have all of the source code to do so. (Maybe some real kind person here will point me towards a very/completely configurable Perl/JAVA/MySQL/PHP/Python MMORPG game system that I can try-n-recreate it with...)
But anyways, my overall point here is I think if some group (gaming co or otherwise) wanted to address all of these MMORPG playability items, then they could easily recreate this kind of a setup for segmenting players to their own areas, do it in a just as appealing way as we had done it back then. :)
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
That sounds like a *horrible* solution.
Who's going to put the time and effort into building a character in the game, only to have the virtual character die - forcing you to start over again? And repeat this over and over and over?
There would be no continuity. No community. People wouldn't want to enjoy adventuring with some on-line friends because their character would be closer to death. It would be all about EXP EXP EXP and nothing else.
It wouldn't encourage "fun now" it would discourage community and "fun for years."
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I have little time to play now but I love RPG, i'm playing Chrono Trigger and I want to see every ending AND every DIALOG in the game. This would be ridiculus in a SNES but in a PC save states allow me to get chrono with marle, frog, magus -hit a key- and get him with Lucca, Robo, Ayla.
If you can't afford going trough a whole level again, use a select level cheat.
If you can afford all the games you want you surely can afford a gameshark, or sorta.
As a gamer, i understand that some games are great _because_ they take a long time, somebody said "Silent Hill", that's a good example. If the game was past paced, with infinite lives/continues/hp/ammo and allowed you to save and restore at any time. It wouldn't be "Silent Hill".
Not only that but, even middle age wage slaves have weekends, wouldn't you like a game for a good long gamin'session?
But... the future refused to change.
I liked Navi. I had problems with Tatle tho, I wonder, why didn't Nintendo give you the OPTION to play with her brother instead?
But... the future refused to change.
EV Nova is good stuff (http://ambrosiasw.com/)
It's almost like that, although you do have to start a new character to get into new plotlines (there are six major ones, and the thing is that events in one would interfere strongly with the timelines of the others.)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I don't get it. There are plenty of games for the wage slave. Hell, I work 45-65 hours a week, plus spend three hours on the bus/subway going to/from work everyday so I certainly don't have time for games like Everquest.
But, RTCW was great. I could play it for 25 minutes every couple of days and make some real progress playing it for a few hours on the weekends. Max Payne, Half Life, GTA3, Deus Ex and dozens of other games were the same way. I could be working on a project during the week and when I had a few extra minutes I could play the game for half an hour and then go back to what I was doing. Sure it might have taken me weeks and weeks to finish a simple FPS but thats a good thing. I'd much rather have a game last for weeks and weeks rather than spending $40 on a game that I can beat in one weekend.
What RPGs actually have 1000 (or even 100) hours of content? You know, NPCs with unique text, new monsters, new items and levels, etc? Walking back and forth over the same dull levels isn't content, fighting yet another randomly generated herd of orcs isn't content.
If a game actually had 1000h of content your point might be meaningful, as is though, those 1000h games could easily be 20h games that could be played in a month or two.
If you RTFineA, you'd probably know it focuses basically in THOSE games not meant to be played in short sessions.
This is how it works in EQ on some of the PVP servers. You can't attack someone +/- 5 levels of you.
SWG is a little different, because there's no levels, just skills. You have a chance to defeat any PvP enemy, although it's easier if you have good weapons and the skills to use them. It would be very difficult to limit who you can attack in this game because there's so many different mixes of skills you can have.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Cheating at `frivolous' things such as games can rob people of the sense of accomplishment derived from, more or less, `not cheating'. Further, frequent cheating can evolve into a general technique for approaching challenge in life.
:-)
No, I'm not saying that children who cheat at games will become bad people. What I am saying, though, is this: nearly everything children do often or for long periods of time has a learning element, often a social learning element. That's (part of) why we've been playing games for so long, as a species. You point out that the ``risks and rewards (and morals) are of a completely different category'' -- this is exactly the sort of thing that children pick up very late in life (and this fact is the basis for a huge swath of stories, books, movies, etc. for children).
Finally, you say ``And it lets you get a fuller enjoyment out of your investment'' -- I would say that this is only true if you assume (and you seem to assume it) that the cheating is required to derive the `fuller' enjoyment. I deny this as a general claim, and I would suggest that it points directly at the issue.
I realize that this isn't entirely on-topic, but I've been doing a lot of study on the social effects of games lately, so please forgive me.
Many games have way over 100h or real content. Try NES Tactics Ogre or Code Veronica. I agree Code Veronica can be shortened to around 100h taking some stupid puzzles and endless in-game docs out. What you can't do is taking EVERYTHING that's not clicking and watching multimedia. If that's what you want go see a movie, or visit microsoft.com and traverse the sitemap. Just as fun.
That is one hell of a good idea.
/em'ing as opposed to getting out there on the battlefield. Power gamers not only camp, they also push to do nothing but level grind. In other words "Let's not explore this area, I read online that this is the best place to get exp, so we stay here."
One problem, some players play for the RPG aspect. This would also penalize roleplayers for hanging out in town
You could introduce the concept of kids. (there's a funny sentence) So that you could 'will' all of your goods and money to your child. When you die you start playing your child character.
Something similar is being done in Worlds of Warcraft. They have a curve in place to prevent power gaming. The longer you play (in one sitting) the slower you advance. Well, something like that. I'm sure I'll get corrected.
OK. I'll admit it. I'm a casual gamer -- and I'm definitely not l337 when it comes to my game play. I mostly play nice simple things like Crash Bandicoot and that genre of games. Running, jumping, avoiding, nice easy stuff like that.
I'm like a lot of people in this thread, I want to be able to turn on the game to squeeze in a half hour or so of play time.
Nothing frustrates me more than running into some insane boss-level that takes 25 minutes to play and I can never get right anyway.
After the 10th time of dying in the exact same spot in the exact same way, I get fed up, turn off the console, and leave the damned game alone for weeks.
The next time I try it, I'm stuck at the same boss character and I give up after three deaths and turn off the game. Then I never finish the game and never buy anything else in the frandchise if there are sequels 'cause I know I'm just going to get stuck at that *one* point and give up.
Sure, my nephews who have grown up with gaming consoles and have evolved the invisible 3rd and 4th thumbs to operate the controllers can usually solve it in about 5 minutes and move on.
I, on the other hand, remember when the single joystick and two buttons was all you needed to control a game and play it for hours. Some of the controls on newer games completely baffle me.
I'd absolutely love to seem games that account for the fact that I'm not prepared to spend my entire life playing and that I may not be able to control that many buttons.
[ yes, I know, a game that would allow for that would bore the heck out of the people who need the challenge of operating 10 buttons and 2^10 chords of buttons. Me, I want nice approachable game play that I can have my friends who are even older than me play without spending an hour explaining the controls. ]
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
... on how you design the game.
If you design a game that, like most of today's MMORPGS, is based in level grinding and the achiever mindset, then, yes, a character lifespan is a terrible idea. It doesn't play to that mindset. It doesn't attract that kind of player.
However, I maintain that there are variants on that theme, alternate types of games that appeal to slightly different kinds of players, that would (and do!) make excellent use of such an idea.
Now people who say that people who get older should stop playing videogames and go on to more adult concerns can go and look at the fact that there are plenty of real life entertainment activities that have different versions for young and old players. Touch football is a young person's sport. Golf is an older person's sport. Dancing has variations based on age as well. Card games really don't have an age component to them, which shows that some recreational activities are not strictly age dependent.
Just as there are computer games for young people, there will be different computer games favored by old people, and some games that will have a fairly timeless appeal to them. I think as the computer game industry matures you'll find games that take into account the above factors and are tailored more towards older gamers. These games will be less enjoyable for younger gamers, but the fact is that these games aren't aimed at younger players.
Many of these games will be easy by younger player's standards. Sports for older people tend to be less physically demanding overall. But challenges can be shifted into more intellectual and contemplative areas for those who want those sorts of games. In wargames and various sorts of strategy games, experience tends to count more than youth. Of course kids tend to have a lot of time for playing these games but if a game has enough longevity older players can hold their own by more years at it.
So lets cover the effects of getting older and the implications:
I. Slowing reflexes
Older people generally aren't as quick as younger people. Once you hit your twenties, it's all downhill from there. Once you hit your thirties, you really start to notice it. Any game for older gamers is going to have to deal with decays in speed. There are a couple of ways to deal with this approach.
A. Turn based games
It should be noted that where sports like football, volleyball and games like raquetball are favored by younger players, older players like golf, which is a turn based game that can be played more or less at leisure. Turn based games allow older players to sit and contemplate their next move in an unhurried fashion (which can be taken overboard, admittedly). Recreational games like poker and bridge it should be noted, also are turn based games as well.
B. Openended PvE games which start slow and speed up
Tetris is the archetypical example. These sorts of games start out easy and then the player can play up to where they get overwhelmed and driven out of the game. Over time their high scores will drop but that isn't the issue. They have fun playing it easy at the start and working their way up. It should also be noted that these games never 'finish' either, so there isn't the sense of frustration that one is missing something or that one has 'failed to complete the game' in some way.
C. Pure PvP games
Playing tennis can go on for many years, but in general old players do not take on young and skilled players. At best they will go up against young inexperienced players. A game like Quake can be perfectly fine in pure PvP mode for someone in their fifties, assuming everyone else is in the same shape. One should be careful to have a non-challenging environment in such cases, so that all the challenge comes from other opponents likewise who have either a lack of experience or slower reflexes themselves.
II. Decaying memories
People don't want to memorize a zillion facets about the game, stuff they'll never need to know after the game, and stuff they need to know during the game as well. There are numerous features that can be used to deal with this.
A. Only a few list of potential types of actions at any given point.
This sounds restrictive, but when you look at games like golf, poker, and popular board games, there really aren't a huge number of different types of moves. Having five hundred different commands at any one point isn't always going to make a huge level of difference. The best games have a few simple
Get a motorcycle.
How are the achievements of a game any less real than any other activity you can participate in?
Sit-down games don't seem to promote good health as much as, say, aerobic exercise.
When I exercise my mind solving a puzzle in a game, I've gained "real world" value.
If you happen not to live in an area with professional gaming leagues, what real world value have you gained?
If you finding yourself constantly frustrated, maybe you are trying to play a poorly designed game?
When most PC games on the shelves are poorly designed, what does one do?
Strange, I never see anyone skiing up any slopes.
Doesn't cross-country skiing involve crossing a few gentle uphill slopes?
Featured in today's Age newspaper, is an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, in which he specifically mentions:
As the first generation that grew up with computer video games enter their 30s and discover less time for play, Miyamoto also questions the industry's obsession with game length. "It's been a topic of much discussion at Nintendo. We need shorter, simpler games that people can pick up and play without so much commitment".
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
... and if you don't have the video file in the required format, you can always download one from Kazaa.
Just make sure that your wife or girlfriend isn't around when the game starts up...
Ah, yes, old content dense games. I, perhaps would not kill, but am partial to commiting lesser atrocities for getting my hands on the MMO version of old gems like Star Control (2 of course). Which is much older, but also quite content dense single player game. One of the best games of all time ever made too. :)
Hopefully the Ur-Quan Masters project will take that direction somewhere after the 1.0 release. It could grow into something as fabulous as this MMO remake of the Pirates!
While there is in currently made games, and games of old that can be improved in terms of appeal for both casual and hard core gamers, there are also a lot of good ideas, that can be taken from them.
I don't know about you but games that are not challenging are not fun.
For instance, what is a game like Ikaruga for instance without the added challenge? It gets old really fast once you've gotten infinite continues the fact that the game gives you infinite continues whether you want them or not by playing long enough without a way to revert the settings in the options without having to wipe the savegames and all those highscores you've earned is kinda lame.
Or for instance the whole Draw IMHO in hardcore or non-hardcore Diablo2 is the challenge, challenge to find the best items for your character or the challenge of not dying the entire game. Whole games are built around challenge without any goals to conquer or if the goals are too easy you're enjoyment with the product will not last... period.
I can understand the comments about work and wanting games to make the most of the little time you have BUT I do not think going to the "fast food" model of short "excellen"t video games is the right move for the entire game industry. Most work-a-holic gamers that say they want shorter games would complain I bet if they finished a game and found out it was only "X"
hours long or only had "X" hours worth of content. I agree shorter games need to be released BUT only if theres a significant price drop for games because they do not have the content to keep you entertained for hours.
Also short games for working adults might end up being a double edged sword, why buy when you can finish a game on a rental fee? What would a cost-conscious adult do for his gaming addiction if we had a lot of short highquality games would any singleplayer play-once type of game even warrant a purchase?
Some games do get it right; my recent GBA obsession has been Fire Emblem, and you can turn that off in the middle of your turn (or the enemy's turn) and when you turn it back on, there's a "Resume Chapter" option which picks up right where you left off.
I'd like to think that this is a signal that some companies are thinking of us and adding the features we're clamoring for.
Granted, maybe I just have a different worldview. In that classic scenario where one arrives at a red light in the middle of a desert, and no one is approaching from any direction for 10 miles, and one is guaranteed not to get caught, I would run the light without a second thought, and I think an unwillingness to do so would constitute a character flaw. Without exception, I believe that victimless crimes aren't moral offenses, and acting to the contrary only introduces inefficiency and decreased utility.
Finally, you say ``And it lets you get a fuller enjoyment out of your investment'' -- I would say that this is only true if you assume (and you seem to assume it) that the cheating is required to derive the `fuller' enjoyment. I deny this as a general claim, and I would suggest that it points directly at the issue.
I only assumed this because grandparent stipulated it: he is busy, and he can only see the full game by cheating. Generally I agree with you that cheating tends not to increase one's satisfaction although I admit that there may be cases where it does. But again, I don't think that's a reason to prevent a child from cheating; better that he learn why it is in his interest not to ruin the game's enjoyment than live in resentment of what he perceives as arbitrary parental demands.
I realize that this isn't entirely on-topic, but I've been doing a lot of study on the social effects of games lately, so please forgive me. :-)
Intelligent discussions on slashdot are a rare pleasure; there's certainly nothing to forgive :)
You have to think, all the time, "is the guy who can't do this jump or figure this pattern out going to have fun?" You think, "what else can the player get out of this level". If you're going to put in challenges that depend on grinding out the details, then don't make the game depend on them.
Back in the 80's a friend of mine and I developed a game from the Amiga. The first thing we decided was 'you bought this game because it's supposed to be fun. We're not trying to suck quarters out of your pocket, we want you to have fun ALL the time.' The result, our boss complained he couldn't stop playing it... it was 'mindlessly addictive like peanuts'.
If you got killed you immediately started off at the previous level... but you were running at a slower rate and you got fewer points for each token. You could still eventually pass any level, but you may be running through it at 'walking pace' before you could manage it. Once you got past, if that particular level was just something really hard for you, you naturally started speeding up again. Eventually you got to what we called 'impossible' speed. What amazed us was people were able to play at impossible speed!
The other thing was, sometimes there were powerups in almost impossible mazes, some where even I couldn't figure out how to get them and survive (but people often did amaze us here too)... but you didn't need to get them. You could just go on to the next level and leave them behind.
I was trying to get this across to a guy who's writing a nostalgic side-scroller for OS X. It was like I was talking a different language, I kept saying things like "respond to the guy's skill level. Slow down, speed up, adjust the enemies, if he's good it'll be more exciting, if he's not it'll at least be possible. Ideally, you should be able to play forever at whatever your peak is", and he came back with "Look, all you need to do is set of a bomb HERE when you get started on the level, then do this that and the other thing, it's EASY." No, not when you're 44 years old and you don't get to sit around all day learning the patterns...
You can put challenges in without making older (and wealthier) players leave your games on the shelf. You CAN get repeat business at all ages.