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Gameplay: the Missing Ingredient In Most Games
An anonymous reader writes "Game designer Tadhg Kelly has an article discussing the direction the games industry has taken over the past several years. Gaming has become more of a business, and in doing so, become more of a science as well. When maximizing revenue is a primary concern, development studios try to reduce successful game designs to individual elements, then naively seek to add those elements to whatever game they're working on, like throwing spices into a stew. Kelly points out that indie developers who are willing to experiment often succeed because they understand something more fundamental about games: fun. Quoting: 'The guy who invented Minecraft (Markus "Notch" Persson) didn't just create a giant virtual world in which you could make stuff, he made it challenging. When Will Wright created the Sims, he didn't just make a game about living in a virtual house. He made it difficult to live successfully. That's why both of those franchises have sold millions of copies. The fun factor is about more than making a game is amusing or full of pretty rewards. If your game is a dynamic system to be mastered and won, then you can go nuts. If you can give the player real fun then you can afford to break some of those format rules, and that's how you get to lead rather than follow the market. If not then be prepared to pay through the nose to acquire and retain players.'"
Gameplay is what happens when you play the game.
Duh.
Not entirely true.... Valve's Source and Source 2 engine have succeeded in building different, top-selling games....
This also goes for SCUMM.
I cannot name other platforms, though....
The success of these are probably due to that they managed to set the mood properly for the games.
Quality and pride. So many games are just shoved out as is. Patch later maybe. Day one DLC. Othercrap infested. Activation and hassles to just PLAY. Always on connection required... And so much other garbage that makes the pirate copy a much better deal even if it costed the exact same $.
The suits have taken over gaming. And like everything else in their pursuit of profit above all else... Have turned it to so much crap.
Making sure, or delete the second "is".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why don't game manufacturers hire psychologists to tell them what gamers want and then go from there?
If your goal is to rob your customer of as much money as possible, why not?
I'm playing a pirated copy of the game as I write this. I must say, for a genre whidoesn't havegon'te a whole lot of variety when it comes to game play., this studio really tried in the new stuff to figure out category. I even want to buy it so I can see what the multiplayer is like. Kudos.
Playing slots is stupid even when there is an ever so slight potential to win money. You'd have to be absolutely braindead to want to play them solely for their "gameplay".
Aside the gameplay, games are lacking some difficult. In the golden age (8 and 16 bits), most players never ended a lot of million sellers games, but this not repelled them to keep buying. I remember reading marketing articles saying that they're realized if they lower the difficult, gamers will love games more. But videogame is about challenges!
The article claims that these games are popular because they are hard but it seems that nobody every talks about how challenging they are but instead they always talk about how creative you can be within the game. Both Minecraft and The Sims allow you to be infinitely creative in the way you approach and what you do in the game, and that is what has made these games so popular.
You just constantly keep winning.
I know you are shilling, but this is an interesting point.
You'd think that "constantly winning" would make for a good game, but it does not. Game balance is perhaps the most important thing and getting it wrong in either direction will mean failure. (too easy or too hard)
I agree that games need to be challenging, but the way in which making things more difficult is implemented matters a lot. For example, I remember that there was a mod for Battlefield 1942 where you could fly modern airplanes and helicopters which was actually kind of challenging. I got a great kick out of making tricky manouvers in those things. Then EA/DICE release Battlefield Vietnam, where the helicopters were basically auto-hovering and required barely any skill at all to fly around - extremely boring and lame. The earlier mod with the helicopters is a good example of something that's challenging and fun, but they could've also just made it harder by giving the vehicles fewer hitpoints for example, which wouldn't make it any more fun at all.
Totally agree.
I re-opened my WoW account earlier this month and then after a week, cancelled it.
As a priest, I now have for practical purposes infinite mana. It's boring as HELL. No skill, no challange, totally empty.
WoW is now a game-shaped object, not a game at all.
The absolutely essential core of the game, challange and the possibility of death, has been removed. It was bad enough with inflation (one gold for 20 copper bars - it used to be 2 silver), with mounts at level 20, with the VAST number of flight paths so you can get anywhere instantly (another "cost" removed) - but this change to combat removed the absolutely essential core of the game without which it is utterly unrewarding.
Take a look at most of the games for the iPhone. They are mostly designed to rob you of your money, but in less obvious ways.
Also, pretty much every MMO involves grinding and XP gathering, while you are wasting time (in the very literal sense) and money on them. And unless you are running scams, there is very little profit to be made from MMO's.
I think many modern games are actually just reinterpretations of the old fruit machines, and most folks just don't realize it.
The last thing Minecraft is, is "hard". Even on "hard" difficulty settings, it is still extremely easy.
The difficulty, if any, is using what you have to work with, to make neat things.
For the obligatory "m0d down BSD" spam. Any time now.
Can we please stop circle jerking Notch already?
Notch made a great concept and everyone bought into it, with promises of much much more, but after about 6 months the updates just stopped, he was too busy doing everything possible but working on Minecraft until he finally gave up the ghost and let Jeb take over, who is trying to keep promises Notch refused to. Notch made a lot of enemies because he went from working with his community to make the game what he promised it to be to going on vacation constantly. The game is not a shadow of what it was promised to be and he just got extremely lucky to take off as it did.
Notch is not some Indie Diety who knows all about gaming. He is just a guy who got picked out by 4chan to make his game huge, then when he was expected to keep his promises he fled into the night. Several months after this he announced 1.0 and released the beta with minimal changes (He added a bad boss fight at the end and a Livejournal quality poem for "the end of the game").
If you enjoy Minecraft that is great, but please look into the history of it before you start listening to Notch. All he will teach you is to take people's money, break promises and when people call you on it to run and hide among a bunch of ass kissing children.
The difference being the amount of actions you can perform. When you are playing slots, you press a button or pull the arm and hope the symbols match up. There is no skill involved and no way to get better at the game.
They want games difficult?
Then please explain World of Warcraft and the sheer numbers of active subscribers.
Most players I know get tired of singleplayer quickly - but once they join a multiplayer server there's a social aspect. Also, Tekkit greatly extends the novelty.
I'm working on an HV solar panel to power my mass fab on one server. Three MVs down, seven more to go! The HV is the most resource-intensive item in IC2, perhaps in any mod. I've got a whole factory dedicated to processing a stream of input from quarries and producing fuel to keep them running, almost entirely automated.
A few of us still believe in the old prophecy. Some day there will be The One, and he will find a way to take grinding out of video games. And the old times will come back. and we will have games like zelda (nes) and metroid again.
I can shed some insight here.
Minecraft and The Sims are not "hard" in the sense that you will fail a lot.
Merely that they are hard meaning you start the game with very little understanding in how it works, and then have to master those systems to do what you want.
As you are placing blocks, you have to deal with resource management, your own life, etc.
A game does not have to be hard to be challenging. Nor does being hard make a game challenging.
My favorite example from recent games is one called Demon Souls. Many people say it is hard, and challenging, yet It has one aspect that I love because it perfectly demonstrates the difference between the two, because it is a perfect example of something that is hard, but not a challenge.
It has what used called an arcade coin-trick. A piece of gameplay put in purely to eat your quarters and lengthen time playing, without adding an equivalent value of fun or different playstyle.
The challenging part of the game is learning each individual enemy, how they fight, how you can react, etc. You develop actual skills as the game goes on and your proficiency goes up.
The coin trick is the death and respawn limit. While you can argue it adds a sense of urgency and being careful to the game, one could have done this without such a harsh penalty (loss of all exp, plus time wasted attempting to regain it only to fail at the end). This is an example of a piece of a game that is hard, but not challenging. It is hard because it punishes failure, without adding much extra fun.
So with this in mind, you can see why minecraft and the sims can be considered challenging in that they engage the mind and thought, without being hard.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
The blockbuster games are fun. That's why people play them, and they make a gazillion dollars on the first day of sales. To claim that somehow indies know better flies in the face of reality. Sure occasionally some indies make a decent amount of money, but it still pales in comparison to what the AAA games make.
It's okay to claim that these big budget games are holding the art of games back, or that they don't always succeed in getting the formula perfect, but claiming they're not fun? Maybe they're not fun to a subset of people. But most indie games are not fun for a larger subset of people.
OK, but in real life, how many people are willing to go to casinos and play slots? Or play in the state lotteries?
People LOVE games of chance, even when they know, deep down in their hearts, that they will never win. People also know that in some games, they will never have the skill required to be number one. I am one of those people. I will never be number one. And that is why I like playing games of chance where the odds are rigged in my favor.
In this economy, who wouldn't want to pretend to be rich?
Chess. The graphics aren't great but it's still just about the ultimate game of champions. Beaten only by Gravity Power on the Amiga.
There is no music - home taping killed it.
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One MV down, rather, before anyone points out that you only need eight MVs to make an HV. I got numbers confused.
I bought and played minecraft for many MANY hours, never in competitive or hostile mode or what ever it was called. I played it for the fun of building things from blocks. The challenge wasn't to 'win' but to create a bigger better castle, with better features, and automated functionality. When the game went to release I quit playing it as it changed so much so that it wasn't fun any longer and I haven't played it since.
most games now are designed by psychologists to be skinner boxes, not to be 'fun'. WoW especially does this.
Gambling and gaming are completely different things.
You don't "play" on slot machines or lotteries.
I would argue that a lack of checkpoints rewards cautious and skilled game play rather than "punishing failure" but that's just me. If a game gives you a checkpoint every 5 minutes there's absolutely no reason not to brute force your way through a problem by throwing corpse after corpse at it.
Duh - forgot to log in. Above comment mine.
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
First, there are far more people who play video games than people who play slots or lottery. Second, I wouldn't say people love the actual games of chance but that people are gullible when it comes to money and get rich quick schemes. These kinds of people will even participate in obvious scams like three card monte, pyramid schemes and Nigerian email scams. It all boils down to greed.
Playing games isn't a matter of being number one, it is a matter of having fun and improving so that you will continue to have fun. Nobody is number one at anything. There is always somebody better at different times and to different eyes. The best thing you can do to improve is to seek out those who you view to be better than you and learn, often times by losing many times.
Yes, I said it: nowadays, the CPU and GPU are too powerful, and game designers are hell-bent on 3D and other graphical gimmicks, instead of focusing on gameplay. That's why you'll find much more creative ideas among Android and iOS games. Yes, there's a ton of copy-cat games on the Androis marketplace, but there are a lot of interesting gems.
Most of the games I play nowadays are 5-10 years old, or they are Android games. It's why I also installed BlueStacks on my PC:
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Did I really just see someone claim that The Sims was fun?
It depends on how the game is designed. A game that doesn't have checkpoints can still have situations that can't be passed without using trial and error. Demon Souls has several bosses like that. It even has one situation where you need to kill a character who doesn't attack you and sits vaguely near the boss room, before the boss will die. Congratulations on figuring that out first time around except by luck. It's also quite possible to survive to a boss and then find you don't have the equipment needed to defeat it reasonably, so you have no option but to die. That is not rewarding cautious gameplay, that's screwing the player over no matter how cautious he is.
Demon Souls also has two endings, but you're probably not going to see both of them without going to Youtube, because they depend on one decision made at the very end of the game, but since you can't save and reload your game there's no way to try again with the other decision.
... I can't wait until it is released for Arduino Diecimila.
Most players *I* know think multiplayer is dull, repetitive and full of asshats and enjoy games that offer an interesting story and setting instead. Interestingly, that's the same way I feel.
Your experience (or mine, for that matter) is not necessarily indicative of what most gamers want. We both gravitate towards other players who share our interests, which skews our viewpoint.
Many of the fun parts of online MMOs involve trying to figure out creative ways to do things.
In modern ones, using terrain and obstacles to block line-of-sight is a standard part of battle strategy, but it wasn't always so. EverQuest used to ban people who did that -- anything other than a tank standing there getting a bloody nose was verboten. Stand on a bridge and shoot down -- EXPLOIT ZOMG. ...and EverQuest & friends are now in the also-ran category, you'll note.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Long before "gamification" became a buzzword half a decade ago, those developing scientific visualization or modeling & simulation software strove to make their software applications videogame-like, i.e. interactive and engaging. Now "gamification" means incorporating a Pavlovian reward system. Even "gamification" (if we take that to mean broadly the incorporation of videogame features into non-videogame software) has suffered from the declining creativity in videogames.
"Fun" is generally a bullshit word people use when they can't narrow down what they're really talking about.
"The guy who invented Minecraft (Markus "Notch" Persson) didn't just create a giant virtual world in which you could make stuff, he made it challenging. When Will Wright created the Sims, he didn't just make a game about living in a virtual house. He made it difficult to live successfully. That's why both of those franchises have sold millions of copies. The fun factor..."
Both of those examples sound more like "productive challenge" than "fun".
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/05/its-not-just-about-fun.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Fools idol (the boss you describe) is overcome by exploring the level and noticing the dude saying "i wont interfere i promise" who is right next to the boss. If you are impatient and go straight to the boss without exploring you are punished, but then it lets you escape the fight after the realisation that the boss is immortal so... not that unfair.
It does have it's moments where it requires trial and error, but it overcomes them (for the most part, old hero is an exception to this) with clever level design and tons of shortcuts.
When you complete the game you go to "new game +" and can replay the game with all your epic gear so you can easily get anything you missed the first time (like the alternate ending, and numerous "tendency events" that are hard to get in 1 play through).
It's quite apparent, but i'll say it anyway - i am a huge DS nerd ^_^. I'll admit it's not everyone's idea of fun but for what it aspires to be, it's a very good game.
Where does skill come in?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I asked the same question regarding Angry Birds a while ago. If Minecraft was tuned to the max (native code binary, optimized engine), what would be lowest spec hardware you could make it run on? Pentium III?
Creativity itself can be challenging. For example, try and build a complex machine using redstone in minecraft.
I often find the early gather/survive aspect of Minecraft is the most entertaining. Once you have a safe shelter and the ability to grow your own food, for me the game changes to finding more rare items (diamonds, etc.) and/or improving the looks and/or vastness of your settled property.
Mods become more important the longer you play, IMO, to keep the game interesting. PvP arenas, mob arenas, multiplayer (which basically requires anti-griefing mods), world building tools like WorldEdit, etc..
Re: MMORPGS - when you say gameplay I think game mechanics, the many different abilites of the different classes is "fun" to master. But many MMORPGs sorely lack an engaging, fun way to level up. Its just endless grinding until the end game. And the End Game is where many MMORPGs truly fail. There's definitely a lack of fun factor R&D and innovation in MMORPGs since Everquest. Its all about venture capitalists driving R&D in figuring how to maximize F2P $$ and how to keep them addicted. This apparently & sadly means that immersive and purely fun games like Diablo, Diablo 2, Dune 2, Warcraft 3, Tribes 1&2 are relics of better days of the past. Not being nostalgic here either.
I was just watching this yesterday.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/innovation
I read something about games a while back (I don't remember where) in regards to risk versus reward. As you say, there is a balance to be struck to make a game challenging but not unfair or mindless.
Doom did this well where you would come into a pitch black room with a weapon sitting right in the middle, in the only lit section. Obviously it's a trap, but is it worth springing that trap for the weapon? Smash TV is another game that I think of as a good example, with the prizes appearing everywhere but the hordes of enemies are too.
... allowed movies to be rendered inside videogames and so the game industry now uses hollywood visuals and special fx to attract audiences not the actual gameplay, there's been a shit from playing to watching cut-scenes and what amount to in game quick time events. These are popular with people who aren't very good at videogames (most gamers) hence we've seen gameplay dumbed down and removed over the last 10 years.
Gameplay is what you can do in a game, most modern games are just an inch away from bots playing for you. This video essentially sums up whats wrong with modern gaming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU
> Fools idol (the boss you describe) is overcome by exploring the level and noticing the dude saying "i wont interfere i promise" who is right next to the boss.
How do you get from hearing one guy saying "I won't interfere, I promise" to the conclusion that you must kill this guy to beat the boss. I do not see any connection between these. Or do you actually see the guy reviving/healing the boss or such? You know, some actual action/result connection.
It even has one situation where you need to kill a character who doesn't attack you and sits vaguely near the boss room, before the boss will die. Congratulations on figuring that out first time around except by luck.
This is wrong. In Fools idol boss fight you can leave the room with the boss through the fog. This one boss fight allows it. There are also clues in form of permanent messages (appearing off line) with hints. So all you have to do is pay attention and explore, not rush the boss and die.
It's also quite possible to survive to a boss and then find you don't have the equipment needed to defeat it reasonably, so you have no option but to die. That is not rewarding cautious gameplay, that's screwing the player over no matter how cautious he is.
Once you reach the boss you already opened couple of shortcuts through the level and the bossfight is usually short run away from spawnpoint.
Demon Souls also has two endings, but you're probably not going to see both of them without going to Youtube, because they depend on one decision made at the very end of the game, but since you can't save and reload your game there's no way to try again with the other decision.
Did it ever occur to you that people who like the game could play it twice? Both Dark and Demon soul has great replay value, there are many build you could try, various approaches, challenge runs.
In avoiding the whole thing. It's like a bullet hell game, but the developers went one step further and, instead of having to dodge everything in the game, you must dodge the game itself! Also, learning not to buy crap like that is sort of a learned skill, isn't it? One that lots of people aren't proficient enough at.
Tekkit adds mods without the mod authors' permission. ;)
For a modpack by people that actually respect the individual mod authors, try the Feed The Beast pack.
Oh, and if you think a HV Solar Array takes a lot of resources, wait until you see GregTech machines
I want games to take longer to beat. More content. Harder content even. But i would be ok with a game that took 3 months to beat. Not this beat the game in 3 hours crap.
To be fair, though, Smash TV never really gave back any of the money you put into it... did it?
Arcade games could be considered to be an even worse investment than slot machines. Unless you have kids and need to have the games babysit them while you play the slots. Slot machines are the greatest gaming machines ever devised.
How else can you get rich by having no skill at all? Just think of all the loads of cash you can win at the casinos! Your parents said you were a loser? Prove them wrong!
Go to Las Vegas today and WIN WIN WIN!!!
I would argue that a lack of checkpoints rewards cautious and skilled game play rather than "punishing failure" but that's just me. If a game gives you a checkpoint every 5 minutes there's absolutely no reason not to brute force your way through a problem by throwing corpse after corpse at it.
I won't play an action game unless I can save anywhere, at any time. After every successful jump or shot, if need be. You can see how much tastes differ here: I have no interest in repitition.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Do you feel a sense of accomplishment after having finished reading a novel, or watching a movie? Not every interactive piece of entertainment has to have a sense of accomplishment associated with it. A game can be interactive in a way that's interesting and entertaining without requiring a player to pick up a whole set of skills and really master them. You've missed the parent poster's point entirely. Some people prefer skill-based games, but not everyone does.
Insert self-referential sig here.
but what is 'fun'? to me fun means somethingelse as to another person, for instance, I don't like minecraft at all, it's boring(and not original at all). Some games just get popular for no appearant reason, and even die real quick (but fortunately for the creator put a lot of money into their account).. It's hard to really pinpoint why a games is really succesfull, as fun gameplay is all in the eye of the beholder...
The pinnacle of game design is the old arcade game Robotron 2084. Here's why:
- Put in a quarter, game starts. No bullshit story, no waiting 5 minutes for the game to let me do something. Gimme gimme now.
- Everything is constantly flashing colors. You never saw an 4-bit indexed RRRGGGBB pallette worked so hard. I love that. Fuck realism. Reality sucks.
- Objective is simple but has an element of depth to it. Shoot anything that moves except humans.
- This game has two joysticks, one for movement and one for fire. You have unlimited ammunition and can shoot many fast-moving missiles in any direction. Instantly. I don't have to turn around to shoot backwards. Yes.
- The balance is that you have anywhere from 10 to 100 enemies surrounding you trying to run into you and/or shoot you. So you get to blow up a lot of things. You HAVE to blow up a lot of things.
- So the game is HARD. The unlimited ammo does not help you as much as you think. You are constantly needing to move and keep one step ahead of everything.
- Because there are many things attacking you, and shooting at you, you will die a lot. So you HAVE to rescue the humans to earn extra lives.
- A multiplier is at work when you rescue humans. So the first is 1000, 2000, etc. up to 5000. Starts over when you die. Gives you a LOT of incentive to not just shoot absolutely everything that moves, but keep maneuvering through this always changing morass of robots trying to kill you and humans needing to be saved. Also, due to this, you are always forced to evaluate whether it's better to try to rescue a human or simply let them go. But you must keep an eye on your lives.
It's really the most engaging game I've ever played. Nothing else comes close to it.
I agree with this so much. I too draw a distinction between being challenging and difficult, and I think its the same distinction you are drawing.
You may find me weird for this, but I have played a lot of Runescape. For over 10 years in fact.
This game started out pretty fun. It had crude graphics but was fun.
The game still exists today, but over the years has evolved more and more towards the direction of Farmville on Facebook. This transition happened also while the company making the game transisioned from three brothers who loved to make a game, into a company owned by a venture capital whatever thing, with the original designers leaving to found something new.
Clearly, the game today is designed to bring most revenue to the company not caring how the revenue gets extracted by the players, while in the past it was designed for fun.
It is a shame to see what direction commercial gaming has taken. However, the indie market is, indeed, pretty awesome these days so that makes up for it!
I also just started playing an old game today (already wasted 10 hours on it!), bought for only 6 bucks: Divine Divinity. Really nice game, works in Wine without problems, fast to load, etc..., extremely enjoyable and fun!
I found it hillarious that they used Minecraft and (especially) The Sims as positive examples.
Both are more or less gameplay free sandboxes that almost completely lack gameplay.
They are virtual lego and virtual dollhouse, not games!
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
"Yes, I said it: nowadays, the CPU and GPU are too powerful, and game designers are hell-bent on 3D and other graphical gimmicks, instead of focusing on gameplay."
There are two kinds of gamers. Those who play games, and those who don't. And then there's everyone else in between. You seem to be the 'gamer' type. That's the type who is fond of figuring things out, playing puzzles, solving quests, etc. I would guess that games like Tetris appeal to you as well. While I enjoy that occasionally, but that is NOT why I like modern graphical 'games'.
When I buy a modern 3D game for my PC, I'm looking for a lushly graphical, photo-realistic, and impressively huge immersive environment in which to explore. I want the graphics and sound to be so good that I simply lose my mind in the environment as if I was there. Games like this don't come cheap, so I'm willing to save and spend my money on only the quality ones that matter. Too many 'me too' games are the fast food of the industry. There's a lot of games that just aren't worth the time and effort to play.
For me, the more time and effort a company has put into the graphics and sound, and the more effort that has gone into the character of the world the better. I simply don't play games that are 'just for gaming'. I play games that simulate another environment that I can journey to after a hard days work. Modern 3D graphics games like "Skyrim" are in many ways like reading a good book, a book that becomes your story. In those simulated worlds I can go places and do things I could never do in real life, no matter how much money I had. When is the last time you could go to Hawaii and have the whole island to yourself with ancient castles to explore?
If anything, the game Skyrim's failings were that it wasn't 'good enough' graphics for 2011. The game was dumbed down to make it fit in the console. It's great that modders for games like Crysis and Skyrim can step in and make them better, otherwise we'd be stuck in 2005 era graphics. I will say however that Skyrim, even though an ultimately boring game from the point of view of story and gameplay, pushed the envelope of what is possible.
So the 'list' in order of what I want is:
1. Insanely great photorealistic 3D graphics engine.
2. Huge immersive high quality environment to explore.
3. Story. A background mystery for me to solve.
4. Some baddies for me to take on.
5. Some skills to achieve. Note: NOT UNLOCKS. UNLOCKS SUCK.
6. Gameplay. Something like the Myst series of game play was fun.
So for me there are 'games', and then there are 'simulations'. Games are something you spend a little time on occasionally because you have nothing better to do, and you need to keep yourself occupied. Simulations are immersive 'cyber' environments that tell a story, have gaming aspects, and provide a place for me to get lost in. And they can be huge time sucks. I wouldn't mind spending over $100 USD on a photo-realistic simulation that would take over 6 months to play. Few companies care to go there however because they don't think people like me are out not out there. And they just care for the business of gaming and pushing out the me-too fast food.
Give me real-time ray-traced graphics and a world to explore as good as the intro to Final Fantasy 13...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIqbTw-lio8
Notes:
1. I think PC gamers world over recognize Crysis (the 2007 original) as the defacto standard for which all games of that era should be measured against. FarCry 2 is another. These are games in which the developers worked very hard. It was also the last generation of games that weren't dumbed down to console level. I see that CryEngine 3, and developers, are finally recognizing that we've got to move on. Being trapped in console level graphics just aren't going to get us anywhere in the future. As technology advances, we must constantly try to push the envelope of what is possible with technology. I'll put my money there.
Smash TV gives entertainment for quarters. Slot machines give nothing.
as large gaming companies operates more towards modern business style where the products is just the means to profit rather than the profit is the reward for a good product there are fewer and fewer large gaming companies that allow developers to recover from the creativity lost during college
It's true that once you've "killed" the boss and been told that he won't die, you can leave, but you'll have used up your resources in fighting the boss (particularly healing items, also weapon/armor damage to some extent) and you have to go back to grind for some more of them. Same effect--you need to use trial and error to win the fight, but you can't just restore from a save from before the fight to do the trial and error.
Also, the fact that you can't save means that any sane player would be very reluctant to kill non-hostile NPCs during the process of trial and error--for all you know, killing the NPC could permanently affect your game, and you can't just think "well, I'll kill the NPC and see if it lets me defeat the boss, if not I'll restore from a save from before I killed the NPC".
"Don't fly what you can't afford to lose."
The problem isn't the distance to go to get to the boss, it's that if you go up against a boss and don't win, your resources are gone because of the penalty for dying (or in this one case, because even if you survived and was told the boss is immortal, you used up your items). This means that you can't keep going straight to the boss no matter how close the spawn point is. You have to waste time getting back everything you lost first. In games with saves, you could reload from a save instead.
...and many of them are fantastic.
From the moderately complex games like Settlers of Catan, to the simple but intensely fun game Flux; there are hundreds of games in the world that don't have system requirements.
If you want to look at what makes a fun game, first look at non computer gaming, because a computer game can sell because of lots of things before fun even gets considered. It will sell based on marketing, graphics, studio, theme, setting, style, sequel status, etc; all long before the concept of "is it fun to play" come into the equation.
Board and card games, tabletop role playing games, even theater of the mind games, all of these have to sell based on what the game is. Very few of these games sell at all unless the reviews are spectacular, and if you read those reviews they are based on enjoyment for all the players (both winners and losers). Many many computer/console games are based on the fun-factor of defeating other players, and in very few of them is losing rewarding or fun. There is no sense of community like there is sitting around a table with people, so you didn't share a game, you are focused purely on your own selfish goals.
There are some amazingly fun computer/console games, but they are few and far between. It's not because the studios and developers have lost the plot, it's because they players have become too self-centered.
well, it's because slashdot is populated with apple-loving, cock-sucking, non-geeky, thickies.
oh and the fact that flash games are put together by people that actually like games and gameplay.
whatever happened to html5 btw LOL
Reminds me of another article:
"Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players."
Notice his article does not contain the words "fun" or "enjoyment." That's not his field. Instead it's "the pattern of activity you want."
There's a much simpler way to cut all the bullshit. Just make the game that you want to play. If you think, "Ooh! Wouldn't it be cool if ____?", then do it. There's not a single successful game that didn't start out with that exact phrase (in your language of choice).
Also, forgive the self reply, but STOP FOCUSING ON BEING SUCCESSFUL. You don't make that shit happen, it happens on its own. Trying to ensure adoption = lame boring games.
Demon Souls also has two endings, but you're probably not going to see both of them without going to Youtube, because they depend on one decision made at the very end of the game, but since you can't save and reload your game there's no way to try again with the other decision.
You mean I wouldn't want to replay the game?
That's how I'd describe a game that sucked. Deus Ex had multiple endings. I replayed that game twice to get the other endings and in Deus Ex, I could have just loaded my save at the start of Area 51 to get them. The fact is I wanted to replay the game end to end... And I've replayed it more than just 3 times in the last decade.
Same with System Shock (1 and 2), Half Life, Star Control 2, why do I keep playing these 10+ yr old games... Because they are just that awesome. I haven't re-installed Modern Warfare in over 5 years.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The first and only MMORPG WvW I will ever play!!
Gee, I wonder why people play them then...
Maybe it's because sandboxes, lego and dollshouses have emergent gameplay which can be really fun!
That level in Doom would have been the ultimate risk vs reward scenario/dilemma , except you couldn't bypass it in order to progress, from memory. The Pavlov's dog in me had to have that new shiny weapon one way or another! :)
Sorry, but this conversation can't even happen without mentioning Alternate Reality.
Click the link and read about it - the Technology and Gameplay sections might be particularly interesting/relevant. Dig up the disks/ROMS and play it on your old computer or an emulator if you can. (Yes you can!)
I know of no game that set "the bar" higher, or earlier. And nothing more than an 8-bit computer was required.
Some days I really wonder what happened to the computer industry (and gaming with it)....then I remember about Microsoft. Them and their legions of knucklehead IT manager/customers that gave them power spelled the end of the competitive computer industry (Apple, Atari, Commodore, etc) and replaced it with PC cloning. That's the last we saw of innovation. Apple is the only survivor of that era....and while theirs is the best computer available, even their computer is a PC these days.
Sad. Hey, at least we have phat grafix cardz!
-Matt
Minecraft... [is] not "hard" in the sense that you will fail a lot
...what game were you playing? On several occasions I've had a surprise Creeper ruin my day. And there is nothing more frustrating than dying underground with an inventory full of ore, golden apples, and your diamond pickaxe and running back only to either die again, or find that your items are just plain gone.
Some things I find missing in most games is ways to tweak the difficulty or other factors that would allow me to enjoy playing it a second time. ... ... ...
I would like more than easy/medium/hard. The problem is mostly that the easy/hard part is delivered by AI 'cheating'. Needs more bullets to the brain to kill an enemy, or the enemy gets lots more resources or
Something that would make a game much more interesting is settings like this:
FPS: number of enemies, skill of enemies, AI (enemies working together), how much stuff you can carry,
RTS: handicaps and bonuses, AI difficulty, aggressiveness, the level in wich multiple AIs work together against humans or try working with humans,
Being able to set these things will give different players what they want. It would also add to replay ability. (Play a round with lots of weak enemies can be fun while a round with limited but very hard enemies could be really challenging.)
Decades ago now, Diablo 1 came out and it had random maps. Every time you play it you play different maps, random enemies and find random gear. Replaying an FPS and you know what door some enemy will jump out of, what gear you need to save up on or what ammo type you have plenty off. ...
Added randomness would really keep the challenge and fun in replaying a game. Certainly when it is combined with the extended settings. I realize this is harder to do in a nice looking 3D environment than 2D, but you had a decade to do it
and genuinely interesting and inventive mechanics, play Demon Souls and/or Dark Souls. They are not even that hard, they just reward your betterment as a player.
(Certain type of player required).
You can thank me later.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
I wasn't referring to a single instance in Doom. Players were confronted with these choices throughout the game, whether it be weapons, health, ammo, etc.
And I am with you. A nice, new, shiny weapon was too much of a temptation to pass up.
As someone who played the game: "Resources lost" is a very relative term. Or to put it bluntly, if you managed to exhaust EVERY resource in that fight, you're not doing good enough at being equipped in general or at evading the boss's attacks.
And, if you're not looking around after the first or second time the boss revives to try to figure out his gimmick - including the offline messages - tough, you're failing the challenge. But seriously, Fool's Idol is only that resource-draining barrier if you've made a completely one-dimensional character (A melee character is going to have to charge recklessly here and hide to chow down on healing items; it's feasible he could run out of healing items and thus have to go 'gather more', but a spellcaster should have MP regeneration by this point, and archers who don't carry around 10-30x the number of arrows they think they need...are just silly. Arrows are cheap and light. And if you're an archer, running out is oh so painful.)
Learn some damn game theory before you call yourself a game designer.
Do I hear a condescending tone there? Me, I'm with the GGP in that I like my games to be beautiful, engaging, easy interactive movies. My competitive spirit is getting all the workout it needs at work, and whatever energy I got left after that, my 1yo daughter has first claim on.
So when I grab an hour or two to play a game, I want beautiful and fun, and yes I want guaranteed progress, as I simply have no time or energy to try over and over again.
Not saying my way is better than yours, to each his own - it's just that people with my kind of priorities, regarded as a group, probably have a total budget for purchasing games that is at least comparable to that of people who have the time and inclination for really hard gaming challenges; thus, a lot of games lately accomodate my priorities, and I think that's a good thing.
Play Darksiders one and Darksiders II for an all-around perfect game with plenty of content that fits logically together, is fun and comes with breathtaking graphics.
A lot of recent games (Think Assassins Creed III, Mass Effect III, Halo III and Dragon Age II) just focus on one gimmick, do that one well as a sales argument and let everything else slide. It's hard work to make it all fit together, but occasionally someone manages.
Thank you for connecting to what's missing from almost every current art form and modern hobbies. I've suspected all along that it's not just that I'm getting old. It's that all technology has been done more by the MBAs than the engineers, more for the clueless mainstream than for the people who love it and is willing to dedicate long hours to it. Computers, the Internet, mobile connectivity, music, movies, home audio/video, are all focused on the masses because they must make billions. Therefore they are unappealing to the really dedicated enthusiasts. The only technical hobby that still has some appeal to me is photography. For some reason it's still possible to buy a decent SLR and take the time to learn and get better at it. There is, as the original poster says, still some challenge there.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Does anyone else miss games like Duke Nukem 3D, DOOM, Secret of Monkey Island, Super Mario Bros 3? Free roaming environments where you'd have to wander and explore and backtrack, find keys and powerups, kill bad guys, solve puzzles. So much good gameplay, and best of all, so much replayability. That's the biggest thing I hate about modern games: once you beat them, not as fun to do it again, and considering they cost TWICE as much as they used to, pretty big rip off.
Looking forward to the new Carmageddon coming out, I tell ya what!
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
It's certainly not a bad thing for a game to be fun, and certainly preferable to a game that isn't fun, but the *really* important thing, even more important than being fun, is to make a game that is profitable
Funny thing, though... is that if the game is fun enough, it will generally tend to have the longest lived profitability. So it's often possible to target profit indirectly by reaching instead for fun. The correlation between fun and net profitability is certainly pretty strong, but not ubiquitous, however. In the end, however, the only thing that matters is whether or not the revenues generated from the title will pay the salaries of the dozens or hundreds of people who worked on it, so the ultimately important factor is not so much how fun it is, as much as whether or not the game will make money.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I remember the fun I used to have with a lot of old games, where the developers weren't afraid to mix it up a bit and throw in some targeted humour.
Nowadays, most games are a bit too general, and a bit too PR. They're often stodgy and inventive.
The "Mass Effect" series, despite some shortcomings and issues with the ending, was worth my money. The gameplay was engaging without too much grind, and the dialog was great with quips from Joker etc. It reminded me a lot of the "good ol' days" with games like Space Quest et al, but with more action.
Other games can be nice to look at, but there's often little that makes them stand out other than the shiny factor. Games often become fronts for "item stores" or other such things.
With ME4 upcoming and the initial trilogy story-arc ending (apparently you don't play as Sheppard), I'm hoping that the devs will find a happy medium between bringing a bit more closure to the ending of ME3 and not dragging into sequelitis.
Remakes on very old games may come along nicely, where a new paint job but tried-and-true gameplay may win out. The trend towards 3d games may help this as model packs etc can be updated for a minimal cost.
Yeah, right.
For all the posters who tink a game means one thing and nothing more, read Reality Is Broken.
Tetris is a real computer game that cannot be won. Games are where humans put _voluntary_ impediments in their way
The original article is essentially complaining about the difference between games people like. Chess is considered a more hifalutin game than Checkers. But Checkers is more popular. It's like how the New York Times is supposedly the 'best' newspaper in America but the National Enquirer is the most popular one.
A game designer who make games is a better game design than one who writes articles.
No mater how bad the game.
upid. I don't know what you are doing in a game when you are playing. Isnt that called gameplay? or am I assuming he means, unique gameplay? If that's the case then it is not true. What games are missing now is STORYLINE. From Skyrim, Borderlands, Assasins Creed, Fallout, others recently released. They prioritizes gameplay, graphics and not the story. Can you list recently released games where the game immerses you with the Story rather than the gameplay? I can only think of one, slender. This is what a perfect game needs, gameplay, story and graphics. A triangle or trifecta of some sort. Most games will go, 40% graphics, 40% gameplay, 10% story = FPS, Skyrim, fallout,etc will go 50% gameplay, 30% graphics, 20% gameplay. Which is why I miss JRPG games. JRPG games( 50% story, 30% gameplay, 20% graphics) will immerse you with the story rather than the gameplay or the graphics. The bad thing these days is that JRPG games are turning to sandbox/western-style rpg like fallout. I miss the feeling when you finish a game and a little bit disappointed because you have finished it and the story will not continue anymore. And just to be clear, I like Skyrim and similar kind of games, but I am reminiscing the PS1 days where there were a lot of variety when it comes to games. Now its all wander the lands, FPS and such.
for the past few years.. Killing Floor and League of Legends. It's all I need, but the resurgence in adventure gaming thru KS has peaked my interest in that genre again (especially the old Sierra designers).
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-slashdot-account Stop visiting Slashdot.