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Is The Best Game One You Were Never Intended To Play?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the excel-spy-hunter-still-the-best dept.

Wired has an interesting look at the sport of pushing proscribed boundaries in video games. Easter eggs in games have been around for years, but now finding surprises, intended or otherwise, is becoming a driving force behind the enjoyment of games. "In games as diverse as Fallout 3 and Mirror's Edge, players are pushing to find or create unexpected ways to break past the game horizon, and turn the designers' intentions on their heads. It's only a matter of time before someone releases a game where the best version is the one you were never intended to play. That's only to be expected, says David Michicich, CEO and creative director of Robomodo, the developers of Activision's new Tony Hawk: Ride, and a 14-year veteran game designer. 'Today's news gets old quick — we Twitter, blog, pass viral video. We thrive off the sudden excitement of the latest and most buzzworthy,' Michicich says. 'It's exciting to still feel like you can discover something new. It's stimulation, plain and simple.'"

12 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Vaudeville, Cinema, and Hedonistic Adaptation by kencf0618 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A lot of vaudeville acts got into the movie business (The Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers among them), and they very quickly learned that a shtick that could last for years on the various circuits on the road got national exposure on film -and then they had to come up with new shticks. Games have something of the same dynamic going on with hedonistic adaptation. First the intensity goes up, but eventually the form itself changes.

  2. Already Happened by LeafOnTheWind · · Score: 5, Informative

    See Warcraft 3 and DoTa. The DoTa mod is vastly more popular than the original game.

    1. Re:Already Happened by odourpreventer · · Score: 4, Informative

      I recommend "Thief - the Metal Age". Arguably the biggest modding community on the net. Hop over to Thief: The Circle for more info.

      --
      Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
  3. Yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Unfortunately 3DRealms fucked it up

  4. The only winning move is not to play. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...the best version is the one you were never intended to play.

    Is that you Joshua?

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  5. doing this for years -- house rules by panthroman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Surely lots of people make house rules to certain games, no? And isn't that a game "you weren't intended to play?"

    My buddy and I still play the 17-year-old Super Mario Kart regularly, but the game's evolved with a ton of house rules. Some exampes:
    1 - If you get a ghost, you have to either steal the opponent's current item or the very next one, but you can't just hold onto it waiting for a red shell.
    2 - If you get a banana, you can yell "GAME!" and the other player has to stop. Then you position yourself, and try to hit him by throwing the banana.
    3 - If you have one hit left, your opponent has all three, and you get a green shell...

    This wasn't the game the designers necessarily had in mind, but it's the game we like. Ghosts are too powerful. Bananas are too boring. So we tweak the rules.

    TFA mentions Easter eggs rather than house rules. Easter eggs just can't be what they were before; the internet makes it too easy to learn everything about a game. There's no way the new Zelda will have a secret room that nobody knows about for years, but ~10 years went by before I found out about the secret room in Zelda for SNES. You just can't have secrets like that in popular games anymore.

    1. Re:doing this for years -- house rules by mikael_j · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ah yes, the "house rules", the best way to play pretty much any RTS game.

      I've found that every RTS I've played with others over a LAN has gotten boring pretty quickly, but after adding a few rules (that are enforced by throwing stuff at those who break them) like "2v2, no breaking alliances and no one is allowed to cross the river in the middle of the map for the first n minutes" tends to make the gameplay a lot more fun, I kind of wish they would build such features straight into the games but most times it's just speed, resources, tech level and map when playing multiplayer.

      /Mikael

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
  6. It was called TRIBES by Piata · · Score: 4, Informative

    There was a bug in the game that allowed you to "ski" by hitting the jump button repeatedly. Skiing let you gain a lot of momentum and using your jetpack to climb hills would let you maintain it.

    That bug completely changed the way the game was played and made crossing large open environments effortless. The developers never fixed the bug and instead made it a feature of Tribes 2.

  7. No. by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nethack. The Devs Think of Everything. The best game is the one you didn't think you were intended to play, but were. Or at least can.

    --
    Not a sentence!
    1. Re:No. by jonaskoelker · · Score: 4, Funny

      Nethack. The Devs Think of Everything.

      SPOILER WARNING

      This will spoil a cruel joke the Devs have played on you.

      Once I was playing nethack, I encountered (I think) a fountain. I "use" it, and out pops a genie which lets me wish for any item I want. Naturally, I wish for the amulet of Yendor. I'm obviously shocked and surprised when he gives it to me. Not really believing what I see, I look at my inventory thrice. "Okay, my trusty feline friend, let's head for some moonlight!" (ever noticed how it's always full moon when you play?). Heart racing, I evade or fight off the monsters meeting me on the way. Standing at the stairs on level 1, I let go a deep sigh and reach for my keyboard.

      SPOILER STILL GOING ON

      Congratulations! You made it out of the dungeon alive. Would you like your items identified? (y). You hold: a sword, an armor, 3 rations, and a cheap plastic imitation of the amulet of Yendor.

      I nearly fell of my chair laughing. Truly, The Devs Think of Everything.

      SPOILER OVER, BUT AVERT YOUR GAZE ANYWAYS!

  8. Re:Desert Combat by vlm · · Score: 4, Informative

    I remember back in the days of Desert Combat when I was in early high school, getting the idea of parking mobile AA on the hillside, allowing you to get the gun pointed down farther than being level and using the AA guns against people - was great stuff,

    I mean, I doubt I was the first person to do it, but I'd never seen or heard of anybody else doing it before after playing it for months myself...

    Oh for the lack of history education now a days ... I suspect the great desert fox himself might have invented the technique circa 1941...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_mm_gun

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  9. Counter Strike by Yvanhoe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ha! People tend to forget that counter-strike is a mod for Half Life ! A game that notoriously sucked, in multiplayer mode...

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.