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Is 'Safe' Gaming The Best Kind Of Gaming?
An anonymous reader writes "James Portnow has written up an in-depth article about 'risk in game design'. He discusses the concept of the safe game, 'any game where given X hours (with minor variance for skill) any player will beat the game and get the prize.' Do you prefer your games tricky and studded with failure points, or does smooth and easy win the race?"
I prefer to 'Play' the game.
If it's good, I might finish it.
I like games that have a sandbox or arcade mode, that just let me ride/shoot/build whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want, but also a career mode that poses more of a challenge.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
When I first get the game I just want to know how to play it and watch the eye candy. And admire it on a technical level. After that I want to go with increasing difficulty and make it harder to play. Harder to play doesn't mean just more monsters to kill but harder to find stuff, different keys for different doors, more locked doors etc...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It should be easy to beat in a given time on easy, more difficult to beat on medium, and impossible to beat in hard.
There's no game which isn't beatable in X hours though; given long enough anyone can beat any game.. Except Ikaruga.
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Take a game like Quake 3 -- I really couldn't care whether I beat it, or whether I use cheats, or what. It's really intended to be multiplayer anyway. Given x hours, I will have fun, even if it means gauntleting bots on "I Can Win." Or I can play on Nightmare, or online -- either one, I will lose most of the time, but damn, is it fun to win just by the skin of your teeth -- or to get kicked into that higher gear and come back from 5 points behind to 5 points ahead.
Now, consider a game like, say, one of the Final Fantasies. Those are challenging, but you can generally beat one, given enough hours. This is good, because you don't want to pay $50 for a game and not get to see the end of the story. But, being able to see the end does not imply getting all the Legendary Weapons, and damnit, we deserved ours. I say "we", because my roommate and I traded off playing the Chocobo Training (for Tidus' weapon) -- even tossing the controller halfway through, as we were each better at different parts of it.
Or Halo, maybe the best example. Legendary is about as hard as you can make it and still have it be possible. Easy is a bit like "I Can Win" -- if you're trying at all, you'll beat it easily.
I can enjoy a game like, say, Half-Life 2 -- hard was too easy, but it was still fun. But nothing gives a game replayability like a decent set of difficulty levels. And if your game is, say, Enter The Matrix, you NEED as much replayability as you can get -- DAMN that game was short.
I can also enjoy a game that is hard, but not impossible. The Jak games were like this for me, especially Jak II. Often, required missions were ridiculously hard, requiring 10 or 20 tries to get it right. But it was possible, and the plot, animation, and humor makes it all worth it, no matter how short the cinematic.
So, in short, you are permitted to make it hard, provided you either provide a way around it (by making it an optional sidequest, or by allowing an easier difficulty level), or make it worth it. Difficulty levels are really the answer you are looking for -- the casual gamer won't buy Midnight Club 2 or Jak 2, the hardcore gamer won't buy Half-Life 2, but they'll both be happy with Halo 2 for quite a long time.
Oh, and crappy, old, still hard arcade versions of this game are to be unlockable secrets (PoP: Sands of Time had PoP 1), NOT requirements for beating the game! (Donkey Kong 64 required you to beat the original Donkey Kong!)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I would say that I like a game that:
a) allows you to at least play even if you aren't that skilled
b) has rewards for people who have/improve skills
c) games without "real" endings. Even if there is some kind of ending (like the end of a particular round), I want a game with replayability.
I enjoy real time and turn based strategy games, mmorpgs... right now I'm playing a lot of Puzzle Pirates, which I think is a good example. I really don't care for shooters (I'm just not wired that way, I guess), nor do I care for single player "rpg" titles, most of the time.
I've been playing a little BF2, and I'm not very good (but I enjoy it nonetheless). With games like BF2 having user accounts and tracking all kinds of stats, it came to me that it would be possible for the server to give handicap to a team based on the stats of the players in it. Say in BF2 for instance, the server will have access to the player's kill-to-death ratio, not only for the current session, but back to the beginning. Based on this it could, for instance, open additional slots on a team -- effectively giving them a handicap -- if they're "too low" in this ratio. Or give that team an extra vehicle, etc.
This could be fun for both good players who might enjoy and even seek out the opportunity to play the 'underdog' to a team with a numerical advantage, and for new players who risk getting frustrated and even bored if they're on the losing side all the time.
As it is now, the server relies on the random allocation of players to a side to 'balance things out', but I postulate that it might actually make the game more fun to bias this to give it that 'skilled underdogs vs overwhelming force' tint. As a server option, of course.
Any MP games out there doing this already?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
As I read the article, the author seems to assume that "game" means an avatar-centric, single-player experience (ACSPE), along with MMORPGs thrown in. Certainly all his screenshots are of this type of game. So-called "puzzle games" (Tetris, Popcap's catalog, etc.), sports games, strategy games, and multiplayer games of all kinds, seem to fall outside his analysis.
For one thing, the concept of "beating" a game only really applies to the ACSPE, where there is "content" to burn through that usually doesn't merit a second look, like most movies. I think this is one of the main problems of gaming today that leads to lack of variety, a narrow audience, and excessive time commitments in order for a game to be fun.
Consider the pre-computer era definition of game: A game was something that was played against someone else, could have been physical (sports) or purely cognitive (board/card games) and almost always lasted less than a few hours (obviously, cricket strains this definition). Early computer games followed this pretty closely, replacing the human opponent with an AI (chess simulators, combat simulators, etc.).
The advent of paper-and-pen RPGs, and their subsequent translation into CRPGs changed all this. Persistent state that spanned play sessions, extemely large time commitments, and the elmination of what was traditionally thought of as competion created something that arguably should never have been called a "game" (how many of you were ever asked "How do you determine who's the winner" when you first explained RPGs to a layman?). These ideas soon bled over into most of the other genres, as they proved to be very effective in building franchise loyalty. Today, it's difficult to find a "serious" game that doesn't incorporate the features of "leveling", "extrinsic reward" (e.g. cutscenes, loot, etc.), "guaranteed success" (the main idea of the article) or "hidden rules" (my personal pet peeve), common in many Japanese games - the techique of withholding the rules of the game from the player, forcing them to "discover" them as a part of the process of playing, essentially turning rules into "content". I realize "hiddne rules" is a mainstay of some genres (fighters and Japanese RPGs comes immediately to mind), but I find them unforgiveable gimmicks for milking extra play-time out of a system, and forcing the player into an OCD-like monomania in order to actually get their money's worth (thereby wasting their time).
As popular as the ACSPE is, thousands of years of human history shows that the other sort of "game" (directly competitive systems, or abstract puzzle) can be quite successful as well, but it's been overlooked by almost everyone other than the online Flash/Java minigame market. Is this really the only venue for this type of fun? Even systems that would seem to be ideally suited for this type of game (e.g. the GBA or mobile phones) have precious few "strategy" or "puzzle" games, compared the mountains of action and rpg ACSPEs that have always struck me as inappropriate for systems that seem designed for short games with other people, as you're usually out in public with a few free minutes when you have the opporunity to use these.
Anyway, my overall point is, if developers would expand the types of games they'd develop beyond the ACSPEs focused on in this article, many, if not most, of these points would become moot. I also think that the emphasis of the effort would move from content generation to game design as you reduced the number of art resources required to produce a title. I see this as a good thing, as the content creation is probably the largest cost component of most modern games, the most time-consuming, and the least able to change dramatically if large changes need to be made during the middle of development to accomodate new ideas.
-BbT
The more a game wants to tell a detailed, interesting story, the less risk seems desirable. For example, the Final Fantasy series usually (starting with FFII) tells a reasonably complex story and gives you a chance to care about your characters. Soul Caliber, on the other hand, strongly discourages caring about anything other than hitting them until they run out of life and die. When a fighting game gets absurdly difficult, it's all fun and good, because it would be boring to win easily, since really all that the game has going for it is the gameplay. On the other hand, getting stuck in FF is annoying, because you kinda care about stopping the villian from destroying/dominating the world and would like to know just how it is that you defeat [Garland/the emperor/Golbez/Ex-Death/Kefka/Sepheroth/Ultimecia/ Kuja/Sin] and what happens then. Basically, if the game asks you to care more about a plot, it should be safer, but if it's mostly about the beating things down then it should be harder.
IANA*
Bosses always have a hidden "trick", something that once you learn it, the boss goes from challenging to easy in about 3 seconds. Once you realize that a certain footwork pattern means "Get out of the way uberattack coming", the boss is much easier, because unless you happen to miss the "tell" (to barrow a poker term), you'll never be hit by the attack. Or if the way to survive the ride through the angry marine base is to take out the platforms they stand on, (one puzzle in Oddworld) the level itself becomes pointless -- it's almost impossible to lose.
On the other hand, there are games (I've seen it a few times in sports), where once the AI realizes it's losing, it suddenly gets much better at the game it's playing. In a fighting game, it might gain some new moves or have a move that takes 1/4 of your health etc. That's annoying, 'cause I'm not losing so much because I suck as because the game is cheating.
I don't mind a game that's hard on its own, but I hate games that are difficult for cheap reasons. I hate not being able to defeat a boss because I haven't figured out the "correct" answer yet -- or realized the tell for the special attack. I hate games that cheat me out of a victory by cheating. If the game is hard because the designer thought out the challenge and made it harder be requiring me to be good at the game, rather than good at guessing the solution that the designer had in mind.
Merge Deus Ex with Oblivion/Morrowind.
A free ranging sandbox game with one main quest, or even several, most of which would have 3-4 different ways to solve it. With a setup like Oblivion, that gives you countless different ways to stat-up.
I would also liberalize the game.
a) you can infinitely jack up the stats of your weapons/armor, and your own skills and attributes, if you have the funds / magical items / ingredients to make it happen
b) the enemy has a high chance of stat'ing up right along with you and a high chance of packing equally jacked up armor and weapons. everything from hapless rats to some guy in enchanted daedric armor, reflect damage/magicka enchantments and all that. oops. time to pick a new tactic for taking him down! enemies can stat up even higher than you, too, so if you're resting on your laurels you can actually fall behind. the game can also spawn random people far stronger than you. I like that idea actually, it makes things more challenging.
c) other NPC's should be able to come up to you and ask for training. Or it should be an option in your dialog - as in, when you talk to someone and they happen to want training, the dialog will come up. you train them, get paid, and get 1/10 or 1/100 progress toward a raise in the relevant skill level. there should be quests to make you capable of training, and then the higher level trainer you are, the more stat progress you get from training someone. Imagine the time you'd sink in the game trying to be a trainer for ALL skills. then that NPC trains another NPC who might come back and be your enemy.
d) repeat c) for selling stuff. Why not go on a quest to buy a physical store and stock it and sell stuff? corrupt cops come by and shake you down and then you have more quests to put them down.
e) romance. yeah, romance. what's wrong with romance? you can kill people, why not have romance? at least then you can actually care about a character rather than just use 'em for stats or whatever.
f) keep the arena combat. please. all games need some kind of arena. kudos to Oblivion for introducing neverending arena combat with monsters and stuff. next time, though, bring us some daedra to play with. 2 dremora and one storm giant. major coolness!
g) tons of side quests. tons and tons.
h) take a page from Morrowind: you can join one faction but not its obviously opposed faction
i) random super bad NPC's come in town and kill random (non plot related) NPC's, get a bounty, and you can collect on it. of course, someone else is also trying to collect, too.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!