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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An MMORPG needs to be crafted in such a way that the players feel challenged, but never actually like they are losing. They need to always be progressing to greater things, higher levels, better gear. And never going backwards.
Contrast to, say, EVE Online. How many players do you think ragequit forever after spending their fortune on an utterly awesome ship, only to then lose it all due to a mistake or sheer bad luck?
One MV down, rather, before anyone points out that you only need eight MVs to make an HV. I got numbers confused.
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.
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.
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.
Zynga does.
... I can't wait until it is released for Arduino Diecimila.
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..
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.
Personally I think they were both underrated and very awesome games. I remember reversing time in timeshift and jumping in a trench with a shotgun killing 30 guys without them realizing I was there. Much better gameplay than typical health regenerating unreal-based third person shooters.
... 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
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.
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.
It seems that many game companies already exploit a psychologist in their game design process. Valve has a position open, too. :)
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.
Raids today are as challenging as they've ever been. Anything else is filler.
The only challenge raids have ever posed is finding enough people able to press buttons at the right time who aren't complete morons.
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?
Smash TV gives entertainment for quarters. Slot machines give nothing.
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.
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.
Gee, I wonder why people play them then...
Maybe it's because sandboxes, lego and dollshouses have emergent gameplay which can be really fun!
The good news is, the gaming industry caters to your tastes. The bad news is, well, the same :/
As mobile CPUs and GPUs improve, Android games are headed in the same direction. There already are some cheesy 3D-ized games for Android, too. Not sure about iOS.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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! :)
Heh, you have to feel sorry somewhat for an AC who would say something like that. Unless he's trolling of course :) ...proud non-raider with over 20 years of mmo gaming. Haven't raided once. Can't even stand to hear the term.
WoW was a huge success commercially due to 3 main factors:
1. The Blizzard name
2. you could run it on a toaster
3. it appealed to non-gamers, who didn't even know what 'mmorpg' meant & was aimed at them as an online gaming entry point; housewives who's sum total gaming experience was Tetris on a dumb phone fell in love with WoW, for various reasons (another whole discussion)
The only challenge raids have ever posed is finding enough people able to press buttons at the right time who aren't complete morons.
Seems to be the true point today, they're forgiving because people cried that they couldn't experience the endgame content. Go back to the days of EQ or even WoW 5 to 7 years ago and that wasn't the case. Simply "pressing buttons at the right time" wasn't enough. It was more like herding cats.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.