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Games Are Supposed To Be Fun, Right?
The Game Chair has up an editorial examining the increasing complexity and learning curve that pervade todays games. He examines the reality that, for many people, games are becoming simply unfun. From the article: "As a Gamer, I am amazed and delighted that games have advanced as far as they have. I'm still blown away everytime a new Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda game comes out, and I look forward to spending hundreds of hours with them exploring all of their intricacies. That being said, the same things that attract me to these games might repel others who are casual gamers or non-Gamers. The importance of the 'pick-up and play' style of games, for me, lies not only in the nostalgia that I feel for them, but also in the importance of having games that are accessible to everyone."
I'm still blown away everytime a new Pac Man out.
Banu
Katamari Damacy. That game requires so little instruction (which is given anyways when you start a new game). It's almost as simple as Tetris to learn, and has comparable degrees of complexity depending on how seriously you take it. It's just brilliant...
As a new user I'm not even going to try to learn the 37 finger twisting combos that you use to move. The game looked good, got great reviews, but it's going to get me some credit at the game store next week now.
remember when it was {of|for|by} the people?
It's really hard to come up with a concept for a pick up and play game. Most titles attempt to refine existing formulas because there's so little left. For example, Will Wright's Spore is designed to be pick up and play, and look at the huge amount of technology required to introduce it. Basically, the low hanging fruit are already taken.
Yeah. That's great.
Where were these arguments during the Playstation 2, Playstation 1, or even the Super NES days? Certainly it wasn't a rare sight then to see a company like Square make a game dozens of times longer than the norm. While numeric hours of gameplay have gone up, I don't think that's the problem at all. Personally, I think that the problem now is that there are just too many games.
With that in mind, making games that are un-fun will just shrink the market and solve this, right?
Glog!
It is for this reason that the ever present jumping puzzle has become more and more popular. It combines the simplicity of control (you really only need a d-pad and a jump button) and the complexity of being difficult. They aren't my cup of tea, but it's obvious why the seem to be a staple of modern action games.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
But Tribes, Renegades in particular, is quite possibly the most fun gaming I've ever had. Yet it's also one of the hardest to learn games I've ever played. Perhaps it's just me?
Free will is just an illusion
More complex games, while harder to learn, usually entertain me longer than simple games. I still enjoy Starcraft, but I got bored with Bejeweled long ago.
At the same time, a complex game has to really attract my attention if I'm going to devote the time to learn it. When I started playing EQ, I was nearly overwhelmed with the learning curve. However, the premise was so inviting that I took the time to learn my way around.
Still other games just didn't look fun enough to figure out how to play.
Math has become increasingly more *unfun* stated one high school student...
...not Pac-Man.
seriously though... gamers have evolved... games have to evolve with them... what once held a challenge to the average gamer... no longer holds tru for today's gamer. Those kids are getting alot smarter...
I once thought Super Mario Bros. was *too hard*...
There are still plenty of *easier titles* available out there for the casual or non gamer. What you will notice however is those games tend to be cheaper... Most gamers who are the ones willing to spend the money today's games command... are the ones who want a challenge...
Of course I could be waaaaaaay off base here...
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
"I even put in Katamari Damacy because I thought it would be easy enough to pick up and play, plus it is one of my favorite games from last year, but she quickly lost interest because she had problems learning the dual analogue control scheme."
Console games are getting more complex to satisfy the PC crowd, and PC games are getting nerfed to satisfy the console crowd.
Two different styles meet in the middle and end up a mediocre compromise. Unshocker.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
As a rule, games should be easy to learn, but difficult to master. This is accomplished by making the basic game play not require many various button presses at the start. Hense the easy levels. But as the player goes on in levels, more special equipment is picked up, and the game play becomes more challenging.
God spoke to me.
What I think too many posters here will miss is that this article is trying to show that N is aware of this and they are focusing on making games that are simply fun. They probably aren't deeply moving or mind provoking, but they emphasize the game over the story.
I still to this day suggest say that if you want games with engrossing story lines and lots of unique gameplay, go for PS or X-Box, if you want a game that you can play with your gf, get a Gamecube.
There is a similar dichotomy in board games at the moment. The casual board gamers (i.e., the typical American family) continue to buy "classic" games (Monopoly, Risk, Yahtzee, etc). Anyone can put these things on the table and play them (albeit, frequently not as the rules actually are spelled out...)
Meanwhile, there are several "hard core" gaming communities (Eurogamers, Grognards, etc) that demand games that fail to generate any interest at the Toys 'R Us level. The *interesting* thing is that (at least in America) the mass market controls board games (i.e., war-games are not sold at toy stores, nor are eurogames). In the computer game community, the Hard Core gamers seem to still control the gaming direction. Which seems a little weird to me, but enjoy it while you can, because once the development houses figure out they can sell 50 million "generic-easy-to-play" vs 5 million (if you are lucky) hard core games, the game industry will be nothing but forgettable tripe like the American board games available in the average store. I guess the only thing that keeps this unusual situation possible is the larger free time pool that the "hard core" can expend and the fact that $50 x 5 million looks acceptible compared to $10 x 50 million (especially with cost of shelf space, etc). If casual gamers continue to gain marketshare, expect that calculation to change.
Sig under construction since 1998.
I think that a game is only worth as much as you put into it. I like some of those harder games that take time. Starcraft, for example. If you held it up to what they are suggesting, no one would buy it. Yet it is still one of the most sold games of all times. It is hard, long and it is defintely fun. Another game i like is Ogre Battle 64 for the N64. That game takes about 50 hrs to complete. I tried playing it to find everything. It took me over 70+ hrs. And i still love that game. Its not the easiest to master, but it is wonderfully rewarding to anyone who sticks with it. IMHO.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
Difficulty Levels. In the case of puzzlers, or shooters, it allows people to make the game as easy or hard as they feel they can and want to handle. For RPGs (or even FPSes), add a few hidden features and other "cool" things to make it worthwhile to play at a reasonably hard level (options and features you can't get at the easy level, or without completing a difficult side-quest). Maybe more than a few.... but this allows newer gamers to "enjoy" the fundamentals of the game without becoming frustrated that they can't get anywhere while still making it cool to be "good" at the game. As far as complexity in control goes, it's going to continue to be more difficult to learn commands as games become more.... "real" - you have literally a million things you can do with your body - simulating those in 6-20 buttons and a stick (I fully expect to get the obligitory pervert jokes from this one.... ) can't help but be complex... but it can be made easier with good instructions and the OPTION for a tutorial (I -hate- forced tutorials).
One of the most rewarding experiences I've found in many games is that complexity continuously increases with gameplay as not to overwhelm the user. Consider FF6 for example. There's no skill system for the first few hours of the game; people have skills they do stuff and that's it. After that, they slowly introduce new abilities, a skill system, new characters and whatnot. It's simply a design flaw to introduce the player to a complex system all at once and say "sink or swim". Additionally, I like playing a game where complexity does increase as it keeps me from getting bored of it.
Do modern games that do this? GTA San Andreas. Half Life 2. Not exactly obscure titles. Doom 3 tried the "all at once simple approach" and I was bored in 10 minutes.
Of course, what do we mean by simple? Chess is a complex but simple game as is Tetris (proven NP hard!) but that's another discussion.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
As an amateur/hobbyist game developer and game student, I spend a lot of time examining interfaces and trying to put myself in the shoes of a non-gamer. I think the poster is both correct and quite wrong. Some thoughts:
1 - Games, as a whole, take too much time to learn how to play and enjoy, ESPECIALLY for non-gamers. Too often, "learning how to play" means learning how to avoid pitfalls and problems that are due to sloppy execution or short-sighted production, rather than genuine "rules" of the game.
2 - Counterpoint: All games should not be Katamari Damacy. All games should not be Steel Battalion either. It is OK to have complex games, simple games, long games, short games, etc. VARIETY IS GOOD. IF we demand that the industry make everything accessible, that is just as bad as making every game inaccessible. Choice is king! (is that a burger king thing?)
3 - TFA uses the Zelda and FF series as examples of nice, easy to learn games. I don't think the author is stepping back quite far enough; these games, to non-gamers, are incomprehensible and confusing. Do your parents play Zelda? Do your parents play FF7? Games like Bejeweled or Rocket Mania are much closer to the point.
4 - In response to many of the posts that have already been put up, Pick Up And Play does not mean Simple and Boring. Super Smash Bros (both iterations) was a pick up and play title that offered successively deeper levels of gameplay and strategy the more you played. It required zero to little instruction and was instantly fun. I admit that most current Pick Up And Play titles ARE simplistic and get boring more quickly than complex games. However, I hope that the example of Super Smash Bros sheds a little light on the possibility of avoiding those problems in the future.
5 - I think that fixing this problem is easier in multiplayer games than in single player. Most of the examples listed previously (starcraft, etc) are still interesting not because of their complexity (or at least not wholly) but because they are a way of competing with friends or strangers, something people love to do anyways. Multiplayer gaming has a chance to really "lead the charge" here, as it were. Super Smash Bros is an almost invisible interface that allows you to fight your friends; Starcraft is the same, though with a steeper learning curve.
6 - Here are some things non-gamers don't understand:
A - If there is a blue key, then there is a blue door.
B - The big key is the boss key.
C - Red bad guys are harder than blue bad guys.
D - In all likelihood, your avatar is nearly invincible by real world standards.
E - Invisible walls are commonplace and accepted.
F - Animation isn't a real reflection of your interaction with the game world (is changing though - compare Prince of Persia: Sands of Time to Onimusha: Moonwalking In Place).
7 - I call at that stuff in #6 "game grammar." It's something that everyone who reads Slashdot has schema for, its hardwired in after 1000s of hours of Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It is a much larger stumbling block for non-gamers than many people realize. That's why the Sims was such a HUGE hit (and also a good candidate for pick up and play with complexity).
This is a lot of unorganized crap. But I hope it speaks to some of the concerns related to the topic at hand.
I think that there's a place in the world for both simple games and complex games. Simple games are great for casual gamers or short gaming sessions. More complex games are better if you want to have a longer, more involved session. Too many simple games just don't have the depth that the more complex games have. While Nintendo games are a lot of fun, most of them don't have much in the way of strategy or tactics. The most complex genres, FPS, RTS, and MMORPG are the ones that have the most depth, strategy, and tactics. You get to experience games in those genres on a more cerebral level. I don't know about other people, but the most fun that I've had gaming was playing FPS games with a half dozen friends at a LAN party. 2v4 Q3CTF was as much, or even more fun, than any Nintendo games that I've played. Still, when I play with friends, I play Nintendo games more often than complex PC games.
Steep learning curves and complexity add a richness to many games, maybe at the price of "pick up and play" qualities.
Tedium, however, sucks the fun out of games and adds no great stimulation to make up for it. Sometimes it's unintentional tedium, like bad inventory management systems or lack of non-repetitive content.
Oftentimes though, the tedium is artificially added. The best examples of this are in MMORPG's where "timesinks" can literally account for DAYS of gameplay over a long enough period. In WoW, for example, you can expect 15-20% of your gaming time being spent travelling.
If you want to make games fun, don't bother with the learning curve- just get rid of the tedium.
That is why some of these old classics are making a come back to some degree. The joystick consoles that you can plug into your tv to pla pacman, digdug and joust are simple no brainer games that are somewhat successful products.
He is right on with a lot he is saying, that's basically why emulation, and mainly SNES emulation exists... The reason is people still love the old Super Mario Games, the SNES Zelda. It was a classic sytem, most games easy to pick up and play. As long as people desire the easier to pick up games, people will still want to play them.
FTA: He cites the complex, inaccessible, and time-consuming nature of today's most popular games.
If they are so inaccessible, etc... then why are they the most popular?
This is a non-issue. The sky is not falling. There are games for all types of people. Also, o one should feel left out or need to contact their Governmental representatives to enact legislation to stop this sort of thing.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Games are supposed to be all about making Will Wright feel like a God.
Your only role is to purchase the game, then sit in Awe at his Magnificence.
-EvilMagnus
Perhaps, but not everyone feels the same way as you do about computer games. My wife's two favorite computer games have both been free web-based games. One involved launching a football at Marcia Brady's face ("Oh! My nose!"), and the other involved catching babies dropped from a balcony by Michael Jackson.
I'd like more game designers to recognize that not everyone has the reflexes of hard-core gamer. I often get frustrated by games in which I get blocked at a section that requires exact timing and perfect coordination to succeed. I bought the game to have fun, not to be reminded that I have no future in professional sports.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It reminds me of when I tried my wife's copy of The Sims once. I friggin' live my life already. I don't have time to help a bunch of digital homunculi work, sleep, pay bills, and indulge their neuroses. Despite the popularity of it, I lasted three days with it and was done forever.
My favorite PS/2 game in the past year was Simpson's Hit & Run. Just silly mindless fun. I'm old (old enough anyway) and I like to play games to unwind a bit, not to get wound up. If I want to engage my mind in something deep and complex, I look for a game of Go or a good book.
I prefer well-lighted environments (Half-Life 2) over dark hell-holes (Doom 3) so I can see where I'm being shot at from.
;) The AI needs to be intelligent enough to realize that his buddy AI lost his head (or nuts, depending on how realistic the game is).
If the game has a sniper rifle, there better be plenty of long distance targets to make it fun in single player, or have multiple camping... uh, hiding spots... in multiplayer.
Having zombies in the game is always fun when you can blow them up in different ways. If you don't blow yourself up instead. And don't forget the nail gun.
I personally don't have a problem learning a game. It's a challenge, but it's a fun challenge. I'll use Starsiege: Tribes as an example here. That game was, and still is, very difficult to learn. You don't just have two dimensions anymore, the maps are huge, and the pace is very fast. It took me forever to learn how to conserve jetpack energy while being able to aim and hit someone while we're both flying around like maniacs while we're both trying to dodge bullets, sniper beams, and mortar shells from the opposing team. I'm not goign to say I'm a good player, but I'm decent and it was a very good feeling when I started to climb higher and higher on the scoreboard, even if it was frustrating at first. I appreciate the fact that I'm not just mashing buttons and I have to teach myself how to properly react to different situations.
But I suppose I am a dedicated gamer and I live for challenges such as these.
World of Warcraft is quite a deep game with many complexities and the most content i've ever seen in a single game, yet it is never overwhelming. why?
I'd argue that the biggest factor is control mechanics. A lot of lazy programmers and stupid producers insert more buttons to press instead of substituting it with intutive level and UI design.
In addition to WoW, many Nintendo games are expressions of this philosophy. stuff like mario kart and mario golf are simple enough at the outset, but it isnt long before the player intutitvely figures out that a wiggle on the analogue stick can render backspin and powerslides. with a sense of discovery, learning is made part of the fun of the game.
theres no excuse for hunt-and-peck button pressing these days, especially when games like Gish can make *fluid dynamics* fun and easy to manipulate.
So you have casual gamers, hardcore gamers and non-gamers all playing games. The hardcores want the latest and greatest stuff and are generally satisfied. The casual gamers can usually pick up a console game and most PC games and be happy. The non-gamers that use their PC for solitaire or bejeweled -- why aren't these games on a console?
I personally have had enough of fixing people's PC's that are used for online games like Bejeweled. These are the people that mess up their PC's with spyware and adware quite a bit. So where the heck is the relatively cheap console that plays Bejeweled for $20 and Solitaire for $10 ? It doesn't exist as far as I know... Knoppix or some bootable distro with a bunch of games you say? Well I either haven't found the right distro or I'm just looking in the wrong place. Someone please - do enlighten. I want to put something together, or find something that my Uncle or Mom can sit down and play with for 45 minutes or 2 hours before the kids get home.
-Adam
The author of TFA is a Nintendophile, but not without reason. The truth is there are many pick up games on all systems, especially the Namco classics and Karaoke and Dance games. He qualifies his editorial that his likes are not everybody's. Mine are fringe tastes, which includes Nightmare of Druga (most hate it), and Beatmania IIDX. Both games are simple in concept, but require a near obsessive attempt to perfect a level over and over.
I see a lot of repetition in game concepts, but there really are a lot of original titles out there if you pay attention. Stretch Panic, Technic Beat, Beatmania (Japan for now), Pop N Music (Japan), Breath of Fire (Dragon Quarter), Shadow of Destiny, CSI (bringing back the point-and-click game), etc. It's too early to declare innovention dead.
that said, I guess I'm old
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
my friends and I picked up donkey conga last week (the bongo drums games). For the side scroller game, the instructions are /in game/. Your started off, and a bubble pops up w/ hands clapping, the another bubble pops up showing you what next. Its quick and easy and is a great intro to the game.
End result: 'Nintendo gets it.'
As said before, it's good to have a mix of simple games and complex games.
But if you're going to make you're game complex, then teach people how to play. Most games will attempt to teach you controls in the first level of play (or training mode), but most of them suck at doing so.
Example: Timesplitters Future Perfect. When you play the first level, it will tell you really basic stuff like how to move move, shoot, switch weapons, etc, but it neglects to teach you a lot of important controls, and gives you zero information on what kind of tactics you should use. In other words, people used to FPSs made this game, and the obviously don't understand what it's like to not be an FPS player.
In short, companies really don't spend enough time on tutorial modes, especially when the game is of a common genre.
(Personally, I love playing tutorials, even when I'm familiar with the game).
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
The problem isn't the length of the game, but about interface complexity and learning curve. If you put it in terms of time, it's the length of the time needed to learn even the basic controls or interface, i.e., time _not_ actually spent enjoying the game.
I figure I might count as a die-hard gamer, having played computer games since 1983 and currently totalling some 60+ hours of gaming a week. (Ok, so I don't have a life.) But even for me a lot of games are basically non-fun because they expect me to devote a few days just learning what my options are, wtf I can do and how.
I can think of games that were long and yet had a gentle learning curve, and which basically you could play right away. E.g., Diablo is the classic example.
E.g., I once nagged mom into trying Tropico. The game isn't short and isn't simplistic. For that time it was IMHO _the_ most complex city-building simulation. And yet lemme tell you after the tutorial and a few hits from me, mom was playing like a pro and enjoying it. Sure, didn't yet know _all_ the options and subtleties, but knew enough to build a city and learn more gently along the way.
E.g., I decided to one-up that experiment by introducing grandma to Sierra's "Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom". We're talking an 80 year old woman who is completely computer-illiterate and doesn't even own a computer. Ok, so it took a bit more tutoring, and every once in a while she'd hold her fingers wrong and use the left mouse button instead of right or viceversa. (Ok, Apple fans can feel vindicated.) Well, it was the first time she ever held a mouse, so can't blame her. But still, she did get the general idea, was doing an adequate job of building farms and roads, and most importantly was having fun with it.
That's basically the point: a game can be complex and it can be long (mom got about 2 months of playing out of Tropico) without having a vertical learning curve. It just takes good design, you know.
The trick Sierra's city building games did, for example, was to flatten the learning curve along the whole campaign. You start with just needing to build a well and houses in the first mission, and every subsequent mission gives you just a little more complexity, and a little bit more to learn. You can start to enjoy your game long before you know half the possibilities.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They're only getting easier for those of us who grew up on old-school die-hard kick-me-in-the-pants games with insane difficulty levels. We already know what to do there, and have already seen worse. But here's the scoop:
1. You're then talking about someone with 20+ years of experience, not about a new player. It's like saying "but the Unix CLI is very easy to someone who's worked as a Unix admin for 20+ years." Well, yes, very true, but that's not the experience someone brand new will see.
Humans are still humans. The species hasn't seen any evolution in 20 years. There's barely time for a new generation in there, so no time for natural selection or anything. And being a l33t gamer wasn't a natural selection factor to start with.
So basically what was difficult to a new player back then, will still be difficult to a new player today.
2. Perhaps more importantly, back then a game only had to sell a few thousand copies to be a success. Selling 10,000 copies was a _huge_ success.
Basically at that point it was ok to catter to only an elite (or elitist) minority, even at the expense of driving everyone else away. It was OK if a game was not appealing to 99% of the potential market, because we didn't need their money. We'd just look down upon them and laugh at them.
So for a while games were made by l33t boyz for l33t boyz, and alienating whole market segments was ok. Those who weren't l33t boyz should (and did) just stay away from games.
(E.g., here's a thought about alienating market segments: in the days of Pong the gender distribution of gamers was an almost clean 50-50. Then at some point the l33t boyz making the games decided that "chicks don't play games" and it was ok to make whole games where the _whole_ purpose is to see pixelated boobs and put women in demeaning roles. After all, it's only the 16 year old boys who play games, right? No point in worrying about women, since they don't play games anyway, right? Well, it wasn't true, but after enough games like that, the balance did start slanting in that direction. The game industry cheerfully gave away half the market. But again, that was ok, since you never needed more than a niche for any game.)
The problem is that it's a model that no longer works. With production costs in the millions, and sometimes tens of millions, you have to sell a lot more copies. And the number of masochists didn't increase.
That's why there's all the talk about casual gamers lately. The industry can no longer afford to make games only for the l33test boyz. They have to also sell those games to those who _don't_ find an insane learning curve fun, nor an insane difficulty level.
So what's the point of this long rant? The point is that the average skill or patience of the average gamer didn't "evolve", it actually went downwards. Some 20 years ago "gamer" meant one of the die-hard masochist minority. Now it also includes moms playing "You don't know jack" or Backgammon online, couch potatos playing "Deer Hunt", etc. The industry can no longer afford to catter only to the 1% far end of the l33t skillz Gauss curve. Far from counting on an evolving market, it actually has to lower the bar enough to get those too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm sure there's more, but these are the ones I could rattle off at the top of my head. So, stand tall, video game developers, and continue providing the level of excellence that has stood the test of time in the video gaming world!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I agree to you.
However.
Some tedium is needed as we would have the feeling of the game playing itself otherwise. Compare EverQuest with very extreme timesinks to WoW, you'll see which overdid it.
Have a look at Dungeon Siege. You can set many group options and the game, voilá, really plays itself. Not fun, too.
Now complexity, yes, that can add richness to a game. But you can have a complex game without dumping people into a situation where they don't know where they are, what they're doing, what _can_ they do, etc. Because that's what "steep learning curve" really means, and that's why some of us are against it.
As an extreme example, consider this: there was one map, among the many many user-made maps for Doom 1, that made you start in what seemed like a square room with no exits, facing a huge demon. No weapons other than your starting pistol and knife, no health packs, nothing. You had about 10 seconds to discover that there is a secret door, and where it is, before the demon made mincemeat out of you.
That's a (very extreme example of a) steep learning curve. And not only newbies gave up there, I know at least one review where the reviewer didn't find that there was more to that map either. And we're talking a die-hard gamer there.
Even if you remove the demon from there, it's still something that is a nightmare for a new user. If you don't already know about secret doors, you're seemingly trapped in a room with no exits. Try to think like a real newbie there. You're in a situation where you can't even _start_ to guess what's expected of you, or what kind of solutions to even think about.
That's the problem with steep learning curves. It's effectively just more tedium: it's minutes, maybe even hours, when instead of enjoying the game you're just clueless, overwhelmed and often just stuck.
As I've said, though, that doesn't mean "please dumb down games". You can have a very complex game and still keep it manageable, by lengthening that curve. Spreading it over more time. Give the user the information in smaller portions, and let him assimilate the old stuff before requiring him to learn new stuff.
E.g., since you mention WoW, you'll notice that it first let's you discover combat on non-aggressive targets, before letting you into a world where you can draw additional aggro by just being there. E.g., it first gives you quests that don't require more than 100 yard trips, before letting you loose on the big map.
Again in WoW, you may notice how instead of dumping all info on you at once, it delays a lot of it until the first time you actually need it. E.g., it won't tell you how to reply a tell from another player until the first time you receive a tell.
That all means just that: flattening the learning curve by spreading it over a longer time.
Other design elements can reduce both the learning curve and the tedium by, for example, letting you learn to recognize and use whole categories instead of invidual objects.
To give you an example from another game this time, in City Of Heroes they have missions requiring you to interact with a variety of objects: defuse bombs, search crates for contraband, get incriminating information off a computer, open body bags to identify the body, etc.
And here's the good design element there: _all_ of these goal objects have the same slow-blinking glow (hence being called "glowies" by some players) and the same soft sound. Nothing else glows like that or emits that sound. So after a couple of missions, you don't even need to think about it any more: if it glows like that or sounds like that, you know you have to click on it. So instead of having to learn the intricacies of each object type separately, or discover a new one, you can mentally file them all under "glowies" and move on.
This not only cuts down on the learning curve, it cuts down on tedium too. If, for example in the name of realism, you were actually required to open every single box in a warehouse, that would be pure tedium. Like this, they can give you 4 to 6 such glowing crates and pretend you searched everything.
E.g., also from COH, one thing I _love_ about that game is the abbundance of instanced missions. Starting at level 1, about 3 out of 4 missions you can get are in instanced dungeons. The advantage? Everything you need
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm not one to usually shamelessly plug something but God of War on PS2 is seriously one of the best games I've played since Mario 64 on the N64.
The game is straight up fun. They somehow manage to get you to use every single button on the controller, but they do it in such a way that it's not hard at all. You don't even have to think about what you're doing and before you know it your hands are all over the controller and your character is pulling off some awesome and visually stunning moves.
The game is fun from beginning to end... they put in just the right amount of each element to make the game good - the right amount of action, adventure, puzzle solving, RPG elements, sweet weapons and magics, surprises, an awesome storyline, not to mention the graphics and sound are some of the best I've seen on the PS2 EVER.
Anyone who likes what games used to be like and wants a game that's fun from beginning to end but isn't 100 hours long should pick this one up - seriously. Rent it if nothing else and blow through it in a couple days. It's the most fun I've had on a console in a long time - this comes from someone who bought an XBOX to play NES and SNES games on.
God of War doesn't disappoint. The pick-up-and-play aspect is always there - because there's no more than 20-30 minutes between each save point and the action is constantly happening. I've found myself picking this game up again and again after beating it - which in this day in age is usually rare of a console game for me.
Old school gameplay with new school graphics and sound - anyone who has a PS2 should definetly pick this one up.
Oasis is one of the most intuitive games I have ever played, and it's fun and original enough that I actually plopped down the $20 for it.
You can learn all you need one piece at a time in the tutorial levels, and then you've got three skill levels: Easy, Normal, Hard that are, get this, easy, normal, and hard! ::Gasp!::
It's turn-limited Minesweeper meets Civilization-lite. It is very enjoyable, and it's proof that pickup-and-play games aren't dead. They just seem to have moved away from the console market.
e2 | LJ
I tried playing Go a few times. I still say there are some scenarios where it's impossible to tell who is surrounding whom.
I obviously meant "hints" not "hits". Funny what a missing letter can do :P
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I do not really agree that games are becoming more complex, but I am also one of those gamers who enjoys complex games, so my standard of judgement is probably not that of your average consumer. Barring that however, a somewhat new trend (new in that I am seeing it used well in modern games) is the ability to select the complexity & difficulty you play the game at. A great example of this is a rather recent game called Silent Hunter III, which is a WWII u-boat game.
I had always found subsim games interesting, but was always put off by the fact that they often required you to have an existing knowledge of submarine terms, the mechanics and so on, and given the complexity of submarine combat, this would result in me not playing the game again due to fustration. Enter Silent Hunter III which allows a player like myself to choose how realistic I wish to play the game. At first I played at the most unrealistic level with unlimited oxygen, unlimited fuel, automatic targeting, etc etc, and let the game AI deal with most of the ship management. This allowed me to focus on ship interception strategy & get a firmer grip on whats important when playing. Then slowly, I enabled the realism options as I became more confident & knowledgable about the gameplay. I still do not play at a true realism level as I do not personally find it too incredibly fun, especially since I am not quite that good yet, but the game succeeds wonderfully at scaling to a player's level of knowledge. As well, if I find the motions of sighting, configuring, etc a torpedo attack, I can relegate the task to the AI, and focus just on navigation, ever having to deal with torpedo details. Same for sonar, radar, deck guns, and so on. You can play the game the way you like.
It is this type of choose-your-own-complexity-and-gameplay-style that I'd like to see more in games beyond just 'Easy, Medium, Hard' (though most games need only this), especially in the more complex games that require micromanagement. Rome Total War was great in this aspect; you could let the AI manage your cities building queues & recruitment and just focus on combat. Or you could do the opposite purely manage resources & territory aquisition and just let the AI fight the battles for you. In this manner, both a Civ fan and a Command & Conquer fan would both enjoy the game in a seperate way.
Both of these games, Rome Total War, and Silent Hunter III are fairly complex games but each is great in that I do not have to be a Roman historian or a U-Boat expert to play & enjoy the games; and better still, those experts can play the game and love it too in their own way.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Party games are a great example of old school, pick up and play gameplay in a modern setting.
I have pipedreams of building my own for DreamCast, cribbing from Mario Party and Fuzion Frenzy...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
So it is with videogames too. When Pac Man came out, people were just happy that they weren't stuck with pong anymore. But now, no matter how realistic, how impressive the graphics or gameplay is, none of them are good enough, and lately we've been subjected to an endless stream of "Why Videogames Today Suck" articles.
Honestly people, doesn't anybody think before they go into a rant? Test out a game like Midnight Club 3 or Burnout 3, and try and tell me that Pole Position was better.
... that a lot of us actually enjoy Will Wright's games.
Since you've linked to Penny Arcade, I trust you've read their blog entry for that day, right? Because there Tycho says that only Gabe feels that way about Will Wright's games, whereas he (Tycho) actually likes them.
Any way you want to slice it, The Sims is _the_ best selling PC game _ever_, and that's not even counting the 7 expansion packs. So Will must do _something_ right.
Actually, let me even comment on what he's doing right: most criticisms of The Sims seem to revolve around "but it's not even a game! What are the winning conditions? Losing conditions? Challenges?" Well, that's exactly it: The Sims isn't really a "game", or not a traditional one, it's more like a virtual toy box to use as you see fit.
That's exactly what Will Wright did right: realized that a helluva lot of us actually don't even _want_ a traditional game. Judging by the sales numbers for The Sims, I'd say it's safe to say that the market for basically non-games exceeds the one for traditional hard-core competitive challenging kick-me-in-the-pants games by a wide margin. By a _very_ wide margin.
And there's a lot of design that went into that. If you've read his interviews, you'll notice that the guy actually studies what people do with their computers, and how they entertain themselves _without_ a BFG and lots of gore.
E.g., the house building/decorating thing in The Sims comes from noticing that a lot of home-design programs are used basically as entertainment by the buyers. So he set up to make one which is easier to use by people who aren't 3D CAD experts.
E.g., all his interviews and speeches about dynamics, interactions, etc, may seem boring and off-topic. But they're actually reflected in the games he produces. All his "games" (well, non-games) are all about giving you a lot of such possibilities and a whole matrix of dependencies and interactions.
So in my book he fully deserves God status. Or at least demigod. Because while the rest of the bunch was busy just cloning whatever sold well last year, and usually cloning it badly, he was actually studying what _else_ can be done. That deserves lots of bonus points in my book.
And to come back to that PA strip, you know what? If that guy made a game about pee, I'd buy it. Seriously. Chances are it would be something that's innovative and great fun to play.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm not trying to troll here, but who cares if complex games do not appeal to non-gamers?
It's like saying we shouldn't have great sex because it doesn't appeal to nuns...
Design the game so that you can play it, not in some simple mode, but without micro-managing the detail by allowing the player to leave a lot to the game AI, like Civ III does with city management. If you want to micro-manage, then fine do so, but dont design the game so you have to to win. RPGs can do something similar by having a mix of complexity among the classes played. A warrior might be simple enough to just pick up and play well the first time, while a Wizard would require more studying the books, practice and min-maxing to be really effective. But design the game with multiple levels of complexity and let the player pick it.