Is 'Safe' Gaming The Best Kind Of Gaming? 126
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?"
Beat the game? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's good, I might finish it.
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I tend to see any game I don't want to uninstall in the first 15 min to be a good game. If it make me want to launch it again in the same week, it is a very good game.
Of course, I DL demos whenever I can before considering buying the game, and I don't even try to finish at least 3/4 of them.
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On the whole, if a game can be "finished," I'm not interested in it at all. Give me open ended, skill based games with infinate replaybility every time.
If I could "finish" playing the flute, why would I even start?
KFG
Re:Beat the game? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly my point. You see, there is more than one song. There's even more than one type of song. Heck, I can even. . . invent my own!
An unscripted RTS can be varied in thousands of different ways to give a different experience every time, just as a flute can be played differently.
Myst was dead for me in one evening.
But even with just one song it need not ever get boring, because there
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I would have to argue that this applies to games, too. There is more than one game. There's even more than one type of game. Heck, I can even invent my own!
Even in scripted games, there's almost always more to do. Beat the game
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There is more than one musical instrument.
KFG
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On the whole, if a game can be "finished," I'm not interested in it at all. Give me open ended, skill based games with infinate replaybility every time.
If I could "finish" playing the flute, why would I even start??
Damn good point. I much prefer games like Neverwinter Nights and Age of Empires to games like Silent Hill or Myst. I see the former as games and the latter as interactive fiction, kind of like those "you pick the ending" books that used to be popular before computers.
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If I could "finish" reading a book, why would I even start?
Re: It's not just a question of difficulty (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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Good God, this is especially annoying in racing games (EA racing games do it a lot). You're kicking ass for the first three laps of the race, but then on the last lap, the AI goes from being 10 seconds back to being 1 second back in a matter of about 2 seconds, even though you've not messed anything up at all. I'm sorry, but that's just imposs
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But I do hate games that cheat - sports games where basketball players suddenly become 99% accurate when the shoot the basketball, or the football players somehow run slightly faster than yours.
But the worst is game level designers who use what could only be considered a flaw in the game engine as a way to add difficulty. Some games it's just trying to walk along
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The article says this too:
The reward for playing a game has to be the game itself. We often overlook this fact, making the reward the ending or leveling up or getting to explore new areas.
Me, I've a very low boredom threshold, and if I'm not having fun, I'll stop playing. This happens in most "explore the dungeon" type games; when Link has killed all the baddies in an area, I'm running around trying to spot the doorway or switch I must have missed, and just getting from one end o
How about both? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Doom 3 was a challenging game. It was awesome. However, found that I had to stop playing it during the week. After stressing out all day, the last thing that was a good idea for me was coming home to pants-crapping session. So Doom became a weekend game for me. Easier games are good for me when I just want to pop a beer and
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It took me about a year to finish it, and the expansion pack is still unfinished.
As opposed to HL2 which I finished in 2 weekends (it get's boring really quickly when you get the gravity gun) and then forgot about it.
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I Prefer games with skill level controlls. (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy answer: (Score:3, Informative)
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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That pretty much shaped my understanding of adult life.
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You are wrong, Ikaruga, at least the Gamecube version, gives you more and more continues the longer you play, up until a point where you have unlimited continues, so given enough time (~7 hours) everybody should be able to complete the game. Some of course while dieing a lot more then others.
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Yeah, because they make modern Tetris too damn easy [ytmnd.com]. But did it really take you an hour to get 200 lines?
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There's no game which isn't beatable in X hours though; given long enough anyone can beat any game.. Except Ikaruga.
Many individuals dont' have the mental or physical skills to win certain games. For instance a friend of mine has never finished warcraft 3 without cheats, he simply lacks the ability to multi task to the degree nessacary for some of the harder levels. Even on easy he can't do it
resi4 (Score:2)
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While I'm not saying "ZOMG YOUR WRONG TO PLAY THIS WAY!!", don't assume the game is trying to screw you over. It's just punis
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Difficulty levels. (Score:5, Interesting)
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!)
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But seriously, I would much rather have had fun playing it more than once than settle for 5 hours of entertainment, tops.
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I agree there are problems with Oblivion's levelling, but isn't the position you'd expect a thief to be in? If a warrior character was having the problem, it would b
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But my friend still does it, and is one of those who beat the game within 48 hours of bringing it home. I never quite understood it, but maybe he's just
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I still can and do play through on normal or Heroic without memorizing a thing, and it's different every time, even if the plot is the same, and I like it that way.
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And replayability of Halo is always good.
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Still, my favorite gameplay comes from games like Natural Selection. It doesn't need good AI, it's online. Not much plot to get in the way, they just focus on mapping and balancing the gameplay.
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Casual, but not looking for a free ride. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Multi-Player Handicapping (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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Great idea
I am becoming more of a casual gamer and when playing HL:Deathmatch I get pasted so easily that it isn't any fun for me, some sort of league system might allow people to play at their level and also provide some sort of goal for the individual t
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Unfortunately the next Battlefield incarnation (2042?) is going the other way.
The career mode will be tightly linked to in-game upgrades and capabilities.
This means that the non-casual players, who play longer and get better at the game, get access to better equipment. This means they have the advantage of superior equipment AND the advantage of greater experience.
I see this widening the gulf between hard-core and casual players, and as someone that doesn't want to spend 20 hours a week on any given game th
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Usually the only frusterating time in an online game is learning how to play and getting through that initial ass beating you are going to receive when you sign into a server. We all know it's coming, and you really have to just hope the game is fun enough to endure it before you can start handing out judgment.
But what happens in ranking systems is they tend to appease the more talented players by allowing them to find good gam
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Wow, and I thought eating nothing but MRE rations for a weeks at a time in the Army was brutal. The ones you're describing sound even worse! What branch were you in?
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Bean Burrito? I'd have KILLED for a bean burrito meal.
Ham slice was the new hotness back in my day. Now get off my lawn!
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A "tier"-system is certainly possible, but I believe there are some problems with it that needs to be taken into account.
The biggest problem is that while it MATCHES players based on skill, it SEPARATES based on the social web. When I play BF2 I want to play it with friends, I almost never go out and play it by myself (though I'm sure many do and maybe even prefer it that way). This can be alleviated by not treating "a player" as the atomic unit, but maybe a "a small team" -- creating a whole new class of
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Difficulty be damned (Score:1)
Remember "Nightmare" mode...? (Score:2)
That ability to push yourself again, when you'd gotten used to the game, is hardly new, but it really felt new when id did it.
The Sandbox element of a lot of games is great
I have a better idea (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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Some of your suggestions smack of Fable (which was a
wow, talk about underrated (Score:2)
I haven't even heard of one MMORPG that isn't infamous for bullies/grievers and their rotten admins who help them out. I don't like subscribing/paying for abuse. That's what marriage is for, folks. MMORPGs are like a marriage minus the occasional sex *grin*. (Ok, well getting out of a MMORPG is cheaper.)
Also, I would never ask for an Oblivion-like game to be multi player. If I wanted that I'd play a MUD or MMORPG.
BTW Dot hack for the PS2 was pre
It's not a matter of "easy" (Score:2)
- Puzzle adventure games, where missing an item early forces you to restart the entire game to be able to win
- Simple action games, where dying enough times (running out of credits) will force you to start over
In contrast, c
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Games where you continue from the spot just arn't hard enough to enjoy IMO. I can more or less God mode my way through it. Where as if we turn the tables and make it so I can only quick save or have to use check points, then I'll fight that little bit harder to survive and hence I'll get more of a thrill when it goes well and "punished" more when it goes poorly.
Remember games are by their nature a carrot and
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This enables anyone to play and 'beat' the game, but only those with a little skill and dedication can master it.
In addition, after you've
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So in some places it's good, but lego star wars isn't about the gameplay, it's about awesome lego men and loads of little jokes and secrets.. Hence it doesn't matter if you die or not unless you're trying to unlock everything.
Plus you forgot to mention the "tap button, block everything" jedi god mode
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Is there fewer souls to shoot each time you die? And after a while (yeah, I'm incompetent with the controller) they started to dive at me, and I think they were trying to kill me again. But the demo wasn't long enough to see, and I haven't gotten very far since I rented it.
But yeah, also a nice way to handle it.
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Stupid powerups (Score:2)
Knights of the old Republic on the other hand is rewarding every time. I'm not putting huge effort in, but there is something to do every
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A fine example of why I think GTAIII and onwards are wonderfully made games. It is about fun, I could spend 15 minutes beating up cops or sp
A mix of variety and challenge! (Score:1)
Author's concept of "game" seems narrow (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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Now granted many of those are Strategy/RPGs, which means leveling, etc. And if that's what you meant
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action: 80
action/adventure: 15
adventure: 2
driving: 9
rpg: 31
sports: 7
misc: 16
strategy: 10
So out of 170 titles, we have 26 that are misc or strategy; the remainder are dominated by action & rpgs. Granted, this doesn't include very many import titles, but for what the average gamer can buy in a store, this represents pretty much all of them. I've owne
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To me tons is "enough to keep me busy". And the GBA has definitely done this. There are more games like AW. Fire Emblem. That game is even more pick up and play friendly as you can just turn off the system. Only problem is it introduces the risk (going back to the article) of insta-death, which introduces the risk of wasted time. Plus there is lots of levelling in Fire Emblem as it's a Strategy/RPG. Same with FFTA, Tactics Ogre, etc. So you're right that if RPGs don't coun
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What hidden rules in RPGs or Fighting Games? (Score:2)
And I don't know what hidden rules any of the Japanese RPGs have. There's always some NPC who wants to interrupt you and tell you all about them, before asking you "Did you get that? (y/n)".
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They do now. Wasn't always the case. And even with this knowledge (which still takes a long time to completely learn, at which point you can begin to actually begin practicing in an attempt to become good), the knowledge of what moves work well against others, or what blocks will succeed, can only be determined by trial and error (or reading enthusiast websites). Contra
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RPGs can, for the most part, be broken down into many tasks which the player must complete. Some of these tasks may be optional, but in almost all games a certain number of tasks will be required for the player to progress in the game. Even in a MMORPG, you must often complete a certain task to progress further, such as kill a certain monster or open a certain portal in order to move to the next environment.
The author is proposing that each of these tasks should have multiple
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Actually, I do. (See my post above). I have plenty of games to play on the other platforms in my house (GC, XBox & PC) - too many, in fact - there are at least 4 untouched demos & discs for each system lying around waiting for me to find the time to play them. I see the GBA as a chance to play games when I've got a little spare time in between life's other activities - riding a plane, waiting at a doctor's office, etc. Of cour
Difficulty as the Inverse of Plot (Score:2, Insightful)
Not better or worse, just different (Score:2)
Here's a little freeware game I made for a Ludum Dare http://screamingduck.fileburst.com/TTN.zip [fileburst.com]
It's sort of like lemmings only with tiny ninja. Of course Ninja are more hardy than lemmings. In this game they cannot die at all. That doesn't mean that it's easy to get them home. To beat a level takes a long time of careful placing of influencers and watch
That's what difficulty levels are for (Score:2)
If you tie diff level to some unlockable goodies (but PLEASE make it eye candy, not something essential), even better. But what really puzzles me is games that allow you to go "god mode" after you've beaten the game on the hardest level. I just ask WH
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How about... (Score:1)
Empirical evidence (Score:2)
The popularity of World of Warcraft suggests the latter.
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By easy, I'm assuming you mean that it is eventually possible to do almost anything. This is different from easy meaning that anyone can do it on the first try.
I suppose my point is that even World of Warcraft has multiple failure points,
Lego Star Wars (Score:2)
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Variable Difficulty Levels (Score:2)
Nothing bothers me more than a game that's way too hard and doesn't have any options to change the difficulty level. Great games like F-Zero GX have just been ruined by that. I've never seen a highly anticipated, graphically beautiful, accoustically amazing, what-should-have-been-first-rate game drop to the $19.99 bin than F-Zer GX. It's so sad that all they would've had to do to make that game a success was to add a simple difficulty setting.
I miss the A/B switch on my old Atari.
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That's odd. I was not aware that every track could be played at four difficulty levels. I don't recall seeing any options to change that. In any case, whatever the default setting was, it was not fun (as opposed to the previous F-Zero games, which I was a huge fan of).
I prefer a game that has more content available (Score:1)
Say No to Kids... (Score:1)
Hard as hell please. (Score:2)
For people that don't want this challenge, there are always walkthroughs that can spell out exactly what needs to be done, but I don't think the game should do that for you. And I t
That one really hard spot (Score:1)
Console games seem the worst in this regard, and I can remember a number of PS2 titles that I enjoyed playing until I came across a boss monster whose "trick" I couldn'
Well (Score:2)
Adapt. That's best (Score:2)
Then if the player starts blowing through the level, raise the difficulty again.
There co
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I was actually thinking of Dead Rising while I was reading your post. I love the control system, the engine, the graphics and the basic premise - they are all great. But the amount of repetition is just rediculous and I stopped playing early on because I got bored of playing the same sequences over and over, so early on in the game.
On on
Shoddy analysis from a "hard core" gamer (Score:2)
Thank god this guy is only a grad student [gamasutra.com] and not actually designing games.
He's seriously advocating that it's reasonable that if you fail at a risk in the game, the game should become harder. A valid idea for some short-length games, like a PvP game of Quake or Starcraft, but insane for longer and especially single player games. That sort of stupid game design is why many people bounce on the quick save key every five minutes. To take the most common example, mainstream first person shooter design. "O
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"He's seriously advocating that it's reasonable that if you fail at a risk in the game, the game should become harder."
He's not advocating that the game becomes harder, quite the opposite, in fact. What he's advocating is that the player should be able to choose between taking more high risk paths, or more low risk ones. High risk paths are more intense, and more difficult, meaning they are more likely to result in a penalty shoul
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My post roughly followed the order of the original article. On page one the author definately suggested that risk is good, and that current common risks are money, increased difficulty, having to restart the game, and time. He then goes on to blow off wasting time as "not a real risk". After ignoring that restarting the game directly translates into wasting time, and increased difficulty indirectly does he goes on to spend the rest of the article bashing washing time. The implication is that the other thr
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My post roughly followed the order of the original article. On page one the author definately suggested that risk is good, and that current common risks are money, increased difficulty, having to restart the game, and time. He then goes on to blow off wasting time as "not a real risk". After ignoring that restarting the game directly translates into wasting time, and increased difficulty indirectly does he goes on to spend the rest of the article bashing washing time. The implication is that the other three