Just Let Me Play! 633
Gamers with Jobs complains today about the thick layers of 'work' many games put between you and the fun nowadays. Instead of having 'secret areas' or 'unlockable modes,' he argues we should just be able to play the game we purchased. From the article: "I play games to escape. To go somewhere else. But our industry has so ingrained this concept of 'earning' our fun that the best is somehow always saved for last. Like modern day Puritans, we've convinced ourselves that we are not worthy of that for which we've already paid. Sinners in the hands of an angry god, we don't deserve our fun until we pay in blood."
But wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But wait (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had several racing games that won't allow me to drive certain cars until I do something that requires more free time than I have. Every time I've played a game like that, I usually end up shelving it after a few days, because I just don't have the time to put into unlocking anything, and playing the game with just the basic level cars gets boring real fast.
When it comes down to spending time with the kids, working, spending time with the wife, and playing games, the playing games is always going to come in last.
At least give us the option of allowing things to be unlocked without having to spend hours doing it...
Re:But wait (Score:5, Informative)
Really, sounds like you should check out gamefaq or something before you get the game to see if the unlock coads are listed. Problem SO-ZIZLED!
Re:But wait (Score:3, Informative)
Or unless it's a game where the unlock codes are dynamically generated based on your hardware serial number.
Or unless it's a game that you bought overseas a year before it comes out in the United States, so it's not there.
Or unless you're good at a game and you're farther along than anyone who's bothered to post codes on insert-web-site-here.
Or unless the web site posts codes for a version of the game on a console other than yours and they're not interchang
Re:But wait (Score:5, Interesting)
But the article whines about not getting to see everything a game has to offer, which is a little bit different. Yes, the racing game that refuses to give you the cool cars until you finish first in every cup is artificially making itself "longer", to the detriment of those of us who can't pour that much time into it. But should I be able to tap in some code buttons and immediately be able to jump into all the hidden, secret levels of a platformer? Or for that matter, should I be able to say, "ok, I've played this adventure game for 5 minutes, give me everything and stick me at the final boss battle"?
Ironically, the article rips on the notion of games being measured in hours, which is absolutely valid. Pac-man has great gameplay but it's nonsensical to talk about how "long" it is. But it's by that same measure that the author would like to be able to "have access to everything". With a book, you can skip to the last chapter if you really want to, but that's neither the way the author would want you to read it nor the best way to experience it. In a video game, the magic is not in the linear literary work but in the "live", interactive experience. The progression of a game itself is not the storyline it may or may not contain, but that by the time you finish it (if it even has an ending), you're interacting on a relatively deep level. The play itself is the progress, not which map you get to see or what car you drive. And that kind of progress doesn't have a proper analog if we talk about flipping to the last chapter of a book. It's an experience, which really doesn't map well to "let me have it all right now".
I've played through each of the Metal Gear Solid games a few times. The story is always the same (with some minor branches depending on the player's actions), but it's a different experience every time. At first, I was just awful at playing the game, was lucky to walk ten yards without getting caught, was just terrible at battles, and used the "Very Easy" which let me get quite a bit out of the game anyway. Now I play through on "Hard" with the option that if I'm spotted, it's game over. Totally different gaming experience. I know all the bosses, I've seen all the maps (except maybe some very tricky secret spots, which I think is great, no game should have to disclose everything) but the game goes on because I can play it differently now. It's a more complex game by miles and miles than Donkey Kong and its four repeating levels, but growing into the gameplay works exactly the same way.
Maybe the problem is that so many games don't provide good compromises like that. Every game probably should have some manner of easy mode that lets you experience basically everything the game has to offer, if only on a shallow level. Once the player is more familiar with a game and its mechanics, that's when the real game progress is happening, but we've been trained to think of games in terms of "hours" and "endings", so maybe more developers need to throw us a bone. Ikaruga (great game) could really use an infinite-lives mode to let sucky players get to the end, because getting to the end isn't the point, learning to chain kills and navigate swarms of obstacles artfully is the point. It in fact has such an infinite-lives mode, but you have to play the game for X number of hours before you have access to it. The requirement is actually not totally unfair if I remember right, but it's definitely higher than it should be. For those of us who want to reach the end, let us. If that's what it takes to hook us on the gameplay and get us really into it, it will be worth any compromises a cheap-way-through makes to a game.
I wholeheartedly agree (Score:3, Informative)
It may make some sense in an adventure or RPG game that you can't see the last level without playing the rest of the game-- but at the very least, no multiplayer gam
Re:But wait (Score:5, Funny)
1) spending time with the kids
2) working
3) spending time with the wife
4) playing games
I suppose she should be happy she beat out "playing games."
Re:But wait (Score:5, Funny)
Playing games with her #2 slot can be fun too.
Re:Bingo... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the article is about is not work, but what I call trial-by-boredom, a term I came up with during my years of tabletop playing. You know those DM's who insisted that you describe exactly what you were doing every step of the way to detect traps, looks for monsters, etc, etc, until the group lapsed into a coma and then he sprang his dastardly trap. Yeah, that crap. When I ran it, every room had something of interest, and I described it from the point of view of experienced adventurers ("That table looks a little to thick to be made of just solid wood--you probably want to take a closer look at it.") When running a game, you have to take into account that the player, who is isolated by the interface or by your description, has a much lower bandwidth of information than his character, who is right there on the scene. This is my ongoing problem with Neverwinter Nights campaigns. The DM, having designed the dungeon, thinks that everyone knows what he does. He drops an oblique hint, then kills the entire party in frustration because they didn't pick up on his casual clue.
In MMORPG's, trial-by-boredom consists of all crafting, and rare-spawn rare-drop hunting. Most crafting should by done offline by the character after you log intentions for what you are doing till you next log in; you get to work to select a range of difficulty versus money earned--the more you earn, the less you learn, and to learn a lot, you have to pay for materials wasted and the craft master's time. The best items should always be player made. As for the rare-spawn, rare-drop syndrome, all rare components should be obtainable by pyramid style quests: you get X from A by doing his quest, turn in X's to B to get Y's, then turn in some Y's to C to get what you want. Rare boss monsters should be ransomed, not killed. You fight through the guards and the elite champions, till you get to the king, who lets you choose the ransom you want. This is the way it worked historically. You get to choose what drops, and instead of the one dragon scale that you auction to the 50 people in the raid, you get a dragon scale for everyone in the raid, guaranteed (you just beat the dragon to a standstill till he submits, after which he gives you part of his last moult.) Of course, you might also get a dragon scale from a dragon for bringing him a few pounds of his favourite berries, which happen to grow in hostile territory...
Also underplayed in MMORPG's is the social aspect, which is where you may interest more women. Find and deliver a cure for a rare disease for the nephew of the King of an enemy race, and you may gain right of passage into an enemy city, under the proviso that you keep your sword sheathed. Bring a bottle of good brandy to a notoriously tough guard, and he may wink at you and let you pass unmolested from then on. Make the Paladin the toughest character in the game--but require him to have a high reputation to advance, which can be gained only by helping other players. Become a merchant who trades in rare goods across enemy lines, and secure safe passage in areas no one is allowed to go, allowing you to act as ambassador.
Make each server retain it's own history, with each significant advance (a newly discovered formula, area, technique, or treaty) bear the name of the original character who initiated it (such discoveries are subject to chance, so few characters will have more than one or two.) Allow the actions and choice of allegiance of characters to change the world, so that those servers dominated by evil characters become fly-blown wastelands where even food is expensive, and those dominated by good players become lush gardens (use algorithmic tex
Re:Bingo... (Score:4, Insightful)
I like your ideas but I am going to have to be a wet blanket. Your ideas may be appropiate for a single player RPG, but would be problematic in a MMORPG.
I have had this discussion with other players about the _ultimate_ mmorpg. I always come back to three major conditions:
I imagine many people have dreamed of their ultimate game and the ease of its creation. Few think about development capital, hardware purchases, database maintenance, 3D modeling and animation, artwork, marketing, play testing, network connectivity, story writing, community communication, billing, etc. When you consider these factors and more, it is amazing these games are made at all much less updated regularly.
Re:But wait (Score:3, Insightful)
I most certainly DO have a life now and it is most certa
Re:But wait (Score:5, Funny)
Must have been bitten by a Republican.
Re:But wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But wait (Score:2)
Re:But wait (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe video games are the same way. I'll stick with Solitaire (spare the stroke jokes please).
Games with no unlockables suck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Games with no unlockables suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should you be forced to play the same boring content over and over just to get to the content you do want?
Re:Games with no unlockables suck (Score:3, Interesting)
How is that better than having all the content open and you choose what to play when you want?
Re:Games with no unlockables suck (Score:5, Interesting)
You buy a DVD for a movie, you can skip chapters all you want - or you can watch the behind the scenes spoilers, etc all you want.
Games, for all of their supposed 'non-linear' capabilities, force us to go from level 1 through level 5000 one, by one, by one...
This might be the way that YOU want to play the game, but designers should provide consumers with the option to choose.
Just because a game lets you unlock everything if you should so choose, does this make it less valuable or a 'rip off'? We, the game playing public, who, I might add pay publishers & developer salaries, should have the option to choose what content we have access to, what we see etc.
Note that this doesn't necessarily preclude having easter eggs or secret content that only a hard-core junkie that plays the game & searches every single corner & clicks on every pixel of the screen would find, but at least lets me get my $60 bux worth of entertainment out of a game...
Re:Games with no unlockables suck (Score:3, Insightful)
Complete disagreement (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Complete disagreement (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Games with no unlockables suck (Score:2)
Re:Games with no unlockables suck (Score:4, Interesting)
I buy a car game because they have screenshots and demos of a supercharged Camaro that sounds great and runs great. When I come home, I start the game, only to find out I have to spend the next 3 evenings working my way up, driving POS cars like a Ford Fiesta or a Honda, before I can touch the cars that made me want to get the game in the first place. By that time, the game has already gotten monotonous and in some cases outright boring.
I get car games to drive cool cars. I've had enough experience with POS cars in real life, thank you. I don't need to do it when I want to "escape".
Let me play the game with what sold me on the idea in the first place. Don't hold it over my head. Don't use it as a carrot to get me to stay playing something I don't really like that much, just to get to the part I want.
The good thing about car games, is that they have a much longer lifespan than games that have storylines. For example, I'm still playing an old PC game called 1nsane, but Indigo Prophecy I only played once and I have no desire to play it again. So the cheap game with lots of playability has gotten hundreds if not thousands of hours of playtime from me, while the story driven game that probably cost 100 times as much, only managed 20 or so hours of play... because it was linear.
I'll take a non-linear game over a linear one any day and twice on Sunday - because a non-linear actually CAN be played twice.
But what about the 'games' we play at work? (Score:3, Funny)
Don't forget to read the whole article. (Score:5, Funny)
Bad attitude (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad attitude (Score:2)
Re:Bad attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad attitude (Score:4, Interesting)
What has *that* to do with unlockables? The fact that you CAN go back and collect all the coins, or stars, or clear out every dungeon and get your completion score to 100% doesn't bother anybody. If someone likes that sort of exploration/replay/whatever style of play, that's fine. The reward is seeing that high score, or 100% complete, or whatever.
The problem is when you HAVE to do that in order to access other major parts of the game.
If the unlockables were simply "even harder" like having to beat it on hard before you can do it in impossible, or you unlock races against Porsche GTs where you have a Toyota corolla, or you have to run a time trial with even less time -- those aren't bad unlockables.
The problem, to make an extreme example, is when you aren't allowed to use the Porsche GT until you've beaten the game driving stick without any paint scratches. And then to use the Ferrari Enzo you have to beat the entire game AGAIN, with the Porsche GT driving stick without any scratches, with the ebrake on.
And -then- with the enzo you can finally make the jumps required to unlock the UFO, VW miniwan, cement truck, and the bonus science fiction space-themed track.
Those fun features really shouldn't be available only to people who pissed away an entire summer on the game (and those who cheat).
Re:Bad attitude (Score:3, Informative)
If a game gave you everything at the start once you got bored with the game that would be it.
as opposed to a game with unlockables where I have to subject myself to doing things I don't like (and being bored) to access more of the content I already paid for? Hello? This is a game, it's supposed to be entertainment, I already have a day job, and the last thing I want is having to be made to "work" when all I want is sit on the couch and relax for a bit with some mindless enterta
Re:Bad attitude (Score:3, Informative)
No. Respectfully, I won't think of it that way. Often times, I only really like 1 or 2 game modes. For example, in a game like Time Splitters, I tend to go for Capture the Flag with a bunch of bots in Arcade mode. As far as I'm concerned, I shouldn't have to play through X hours of story mode, and Y hours of challenge mode before I can play my C
IAWTP (Score:5, Interesting)
*burp*
Cheat codes and god modes (Score:3, Informative)
Google "cheat codes for [insert game name here]", and you will get all that you seek, Grasshopper. Walkthroughs abound. Also, many games have various difficulty settings. Start at the "I am only an egg" setting.
zero to playing (Score:2)
Damn right... (Score:2)
1) If its a shoot-em-up I want heavy artillery
2) If its a military game I want to get to the fighting bits quickly
3) If its a strategy game I want to be able to decide that I want to skip a bit
Does this "ruin" the fun for me? Hell no, because I play games to relax not to demon
All fun and no work... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't have to "work" for the fun, the fun won't be as good.
Re:All fun and no work... (Score:2)
I think at least in part that that's why the EA sports line does so well. Put it in and you can play. If you want your own franchise, and cheats, and all that stuff you can get it, too, or you can just start playing.
Re:All fun and no work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All fun and no work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All fun and no work... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the relationship is more complicated than that. Not only do people achieve maximum fun levels for different amounts of work, but there are other factors that skew the curve. TFA seems to be suggesting that the amount of tim
To be fair to the original article poster (Score:3, Interesting)
1. No genre is more crap-flooded and treadmilly than MMPORPG's. Those are real work. Nobody who plays these will argue that they don't need more fun stuff to do and less work.
2. We need more 10 hour games. The last RPG I had time to beat was Xenogears, and that lasted about 70 hours. It was a great game (until they ran out of money), but it needed to be a lot shorter to fit in a real lifestyle. If an industry guy like me can't find time to play games through to the end, who will?
3. M
Re:All fun and no work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Rephrasing what you said:
A payoff with no challenge is not as compelling as a payoff that you've beaten a challenge for it.
What the author of the article is pointing is the tendency in many modern games to force the player to do work to get access to a great deal of the game's content.
The thing for casual gamers is, they have enough work already in real life and they don't have the available free time to go out farm kabots (or whatever) for several hours to get to the n
my thoughts exactly! (Score:3, Interesting)
Although, I was a little disappointed when I just beat the New Super Mario Brothers for my DS. It took me 3 days of playing on the subways and trains and the only thing I really unlocked in the end was luigi.
I was kinda hoping to unlock something really spectacular. The minigames were the same as Mario64DS, and when I found a hut where there was something I could buy for a whopping 20 star coins, I was hoping it would be some new gamestyle or perhaps SMB1 in its entirety, but instead it was just new wallpapers for the touchscreen.
although I haven't managed to get to 3 of the worlds, so I"m working on that. perhaps I'll take a look at gameFAQs... no. scratch that. I wanna figure it out myself. it's more fun that way.
Catch 22 (Score:5, Interesting)
Guitar Hero does it pretty well, but they still make you play through the Career mode to open the basic playlist. So if I want to show a friend how cool Guitar Hero is and the full song list, I have to bring my memory card as well - otherwise he gets the first 5 songs and that's it. But the gameplay is fantastic and highly addictive.
Battlefield 2 is good with unlockables. All classes are available at the start and you can gradually unlock more weapons for those classes, which are generally minor upgrades over the stock weapons. The gameplay suffers from the same problems as other online-only games - namely cheaters and the "Internet Fuckwad" theory.
There's definately a balance, so hopefully there's not a new wave of games with no unlockables - they're fun and add a good deal of playtime to otherwise straightforward games.
Re:Catch 22 (Score:3, Insightful)
Why such cheap carrot dangling when it's definitly NOT necessary?
Re:Catch 22 (Score:5, Informative)
The few games we've made in the past that simply gave the player everything from the start were reprimanded by critics and players alike for having no replay value. And it was a fair criticism: you're done before you start. There was no sense of progression or purpose to them. The progression can be light and the purpose can be hollow, but you still need a purpose for the player's activities in the game.
Even if the gameplay is the most fun you can imagine, you still have the feeling that there is nothing pulling you along. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel may be worth traversing for itself, but you still have to put a light at the end.
The fact that people want these things shows that they're great motivators. And motivation is what you need to help make the player the best darned guitar player they can be, both in life and in games. Without motivation, the experience falls falt. Striking that balance between keeping stuff away and rewarding the player is delicate... it can't be too frequent or things feel like they have no value, but it can't be too sparse or else you really are simply milking the player for game time. And milking the player simply for game time is something we studiously avoid, and will continue to avoid in the future.
Also, you don't want to overload the player with too many options too soon, or they won't know what to do. Even having too deep a songlist too early will confuse. Maybe it won't befuddle the seasoned rocker / gamer, but it does befuddle a lot of people at playtests.
BTW, if you're stuck at a party without a memory card, try Yellow, Orange, Blue, Blue, Orange, Yellow, Yellow.
Re:Catch 22 (Score:4, Insightful)
Once I managed to toast my DDR save somehow, and wham-bang, most of my favorite songs are suddenly unavailable. Losing my grades I can deal with; those are pretty easily replaced. Losing the unlocked songs was a major PITA. (And in DDRMAX2, which is the game that I lost, the only, sole, and singular way to unlock the songs is to play through 300 stages, IIRC, a matter of weeks at any sane speed, even with my wife helping.)
Meanwhile, in DDRExtreme 2, which I've played a lot, I still don't even know how many songs there are that I paid for and can't play. My wife and I are "well above average" amoung "everybody who has ever played DDR", which is to say we can routinely get through Standard mode songs now, but by DDR standards we're still beginners. The unlockable technique is to play through various challenges, and we've pretty much gotten to the point where we can't progress any further, and I know there are more songs in there. It annoys me when I think about it.
(Besides, at 6'4", I've come to realize that I am rapidly approaching the point where it simply doesn't matter how much better my brain or my muscles get; I'm not certain I'm ever going to be physically capable of doing Heavy for most songs. I've just got too much leg to move around to do it as quickly as smaller people.)
The sibling post from cgenman points to the solution, I think; go ahead with your unlockable scheme, but provide unlocking codes for those of us who just want our songs, damn it, or lost our save file (which happens!). This probably applies more to Guitar Hero and DDR-type games than most.
Elite and Revs (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, questions raised by these two games are not really answered by the modern practice of having almost everything secret in ways that cannot be logically figured out or logically encountered. Most of the time, people will get bored with looking for illogical stuff. If the game needs it, the player will lose interest. If the game doesn't need it, the player won't bother. Either that, or they wait for the information to be published on the Internet. Regardless, the secrets aren't adding anything and actually detract from things.
To me, logical sequencing and obviously in-character progressions are fine - even if they are secret. The secret nature isn't the important bit, though. They fit in that universe, they belong there, they make sense there, and they add to the feel of being there. It doesn't disrupt the flow - you aren't constantly switching between "playing" and "hitting things at random". I don't see any problem with such features and would expect them in many types of game. If these are a problem for the original article author, then we're definitely differing on what makes a game a game.
Another example from Way Back When - Level 9's text-based adventure games. These usually had one or more segments that were "massive", at least for the user. What they involved was a set of rooms that were re-used repeatedly, producing the illusion of a near-infinite space. They used some combination of colours and/or numbers to represent where in this virtual space you were. Once you realized that the space itself was a puzzle, it became fun to figure out how the system worked and, from that, infer where any secret exits would logically be. This fit with the dynamics of the game, so it just flowed naturally.
If I'm emphasising flow, it's because I believe this to be the characteristic of not only a good game, but also of a good strategy in a good game. To me, the number of secrets, the level of thought required, etc, are side issues. They alter the flavour of the game, but that's not what makes it good. Unlocking the logic of the game should be the chief puzzle, and once that has been conquered, the rest should largely follow.
The old ladders-style games had a very simple logic. Once you understood the timings, you didn't automatically master the game. That took practice, and each progressive level required greater precision. When this was done well, it kept the game interesting, because understanding was not the same as solving. It wasn't just ladders games that did this. The nastiest game in history has to be Firebird's Firetrack. It was a scrolling shoot-em-up that was FAST. After a game, you'd have to sit for several minutes until the walls stopped moving, and that was just the first level. Subsequent ones were faster and deadlier. Thinking wasn't an option and reflexes were too slow. If it actually had anything more to it than this, it could easily have thrashed anything else out at the time.
This is not to say that all older games were good. There was plenty of **** out there. Far TOO much. It's also not to say that no new games have this quality to them, but the percentage is far too low. There's no real complexity or challenge to many of them. Such games are difficult because they're obscure and not because of a titanic struggle for supremecy between coders and gamers.
I believe it would be easy enough to test t
Re:Elite and Revs (Score:3, Interesting)
This Is SiN... (Score:2)
World of Warcraft (Score:2)
Silly Dog... (Score:2)
When the bell rings do you salivate?
How many sites and magazines are there, all gushing at the wonders of the next treadmill you will:
All for what? Seriously, I thought gamblers were obsesse
I definitely agree with this... (Score:2)
If you're going to make the game that impossible at least put in some cheats to unloc
Don't know about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I think this is rubbish. Work is a four-letter word (especially around here), but the truth is that people don't enjoy things they don't have to work at. Entertainment is no exception. Even movies... anyone who truly enjoys movies would hate a movie that didn't require at least a little bit of thought. I personally don't enjoy a movie unless I have to see it a couple times in order to catch everything (you know, like Enough and Break Up).
Take the work out of games, and all you have is 10 minutes of running from start to finish. How's that supposed to stroke anyone's ego?
Re:Don't know about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
I GUARANTEE the answer will be "much more than when i was working 40-60 hours a week".
I didn't say anything about being overworked. I'm talking about the effect that doing no work has on someone. If you accomplish nothing, you will absolutely not feel happy and fulfilled. Humans (and animals in general) are wired to work. Even people with so much money that they would never need to work a day in their lives still involve themselves in projects.
Fulfillment does not come from lack of work. It comes from the degree to which one can choose his work.
If you don't accomplish anything, there's a very high chance you will fall into deep depression. One of the first things people being treated for depression are told is to involve themselves in things; i.e., do work. And that has nothing to do with money. Fulfillment can't be subsidized.
WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
I WANT EVERYTHING AND I WANT IT NOW! GIMME GIMME GIMME!!
Unlockables are ment to give you an extra way to enjoy the game. Something fun to extend it after you've already finished the main game. If you want everything handed to you on the plate right at the start of the game then you're not the type of person these features are aimed at.
Unlockables are aimed at people who want to get a perfect rank in every level, who wants to finish the game only using the basic weapon and who wants to try playing HL2 through with just a crowbar and a rocket launcher. If you're not this crowd then you have to accept that some parts of the games might not be to your taste.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:WTF (Score:3, Interesting)
I am a gamer, with a job. I work 40-50 hours a week. I have a pregnant wife. She's rather demanding (and will proudl
Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be fine - if I didn't have to pay for it, either. I'm a gamer WITH A JOB too, and I don't have time for that crap either. So why exactly should I have to pay for content that's only for people who still live in Mom's basement and don't have any social life?
Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it sounds more like he's 30. When you're 12 you can afford to piss away 100 hours a week on a video game to unlock all the specials, because when you're 12 you have parents to cook and clean and provide a roof over your head. When you're 30 you suddenly need to care for your own kids and that means you spend 100 hours a week working. If you're lucky you have 2-3 hours per week to play video games.
The game writers ar
Maybe its just the author? (Score:2)
Maybe its more about the author's attitude toward gaming in general than the fact that there is something wrong with "unlocking" new content. If the game is good enough, then the unlockables are just bonuses that boost the game to an even higher sta
We NEED levels! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Level" is a nice, conservative, bland word, it evokes no emotion. As soon as you start having to explain your progression through a game in terms of what you're actually doing...well then the ESRB win don't they, and your dirty little secret is out.
Heh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Games could include everything from step 1. But then there's no sense of accomplishment. There's no sense of "oh man, I'm about to unlock/progress/complete". It's just a bunch of puzzles that you can ignore if you like. I've seen games released like this. They're not fun. Nobody plays them.
Even the games he mentioned - Battlefield 2 and GTA - have a sense of progression. In Battlefield 2 you can get better at the game and better at defeating people - since it's competitive, this drive is a lot stronger than in singleplayer games. Not only that, but the game *does* let you unlock "new weapons" if you play enough. In GTA, completing missions occasionally unlocks new cars and abilities. In the latest GTA there's even "skill levels" that you gain through repeating actions!
If he wants everything to be accessible, he should look for cheat codes or trainers. They exist for practically every game out there. But he'll be bored.
New? (Score:2)
Re:Mario (Score:3, Interesting)
All of which required you to WORK to "unlock" them. You had to locate the secret exits, work out the puzzles. You had to press the button before you were rewarded with a pellet.
It's not as if you get presented with a Level Select screen as soon as you power on the game for the first time ever. Or a "Skip the game, show me the ending sequence" menu option.
see the end? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Jumpers For Goalposts (Score:4, Funny)
Polish your walking stick? What kind of games do you play? I hope you don't let your nephew play games like that. He's too young.
Re:Jumpers For Goalposts (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of game developers have worked with the feature of dynamic difficulty. Max Payne (released 2001) was the first game that prominently featured dynamic difficulty. Max Payne had enemies that would adjust their aim to be better or worse, depending on your health and hit ratio. If you were able to get through a section of a level without taking many hits, or using many health-kits, you would find less health kits at the next check point, and the enemies would be scoring more powerful blows. The end result was that the game played very smoothly. Both myself (an avid gamer) and my father (a horrible gamer) were able to play through the default setting of Max Payne and say that we enjoyed it.
Racing games have had dynamic difficulty for quite a long time. Ever wonder how enemy cars were always able to catch up to you when you were in first place, but no matter how horrible you played, you could always catch up to them for a great photo finish? Thats the dynamic difficulty in action.
Now, there are some very bad examples of dynamic difficulty, too. In the game Crimson Skies, the player is given the option to skip a scenario entirely after failing it a certain amount of times. Thats probably a nice addition, but its not a very good way of adjusting the difficulty. The player knows that he is unable to leap a hurdle, and the game just lets him skip the hurdle entirely. The player is missing content by skipping the level. Some people may find that eases the frustration of being unable to beat a level, but its a horrible way of making the game "easier". The goal of a game is to enjoy the gameplay, not rush to the end. Skipping levels does help a player get closer to the end, but the missed gameplay can never be made up.
Unfortunately few large developers take ADD implementations to heart. SiN episodes (recently reviewed on
The only examples of well-implemented dynamic difficulty that I know of are limited to first person shooters and role playing games. I don't know of any platformer, strategy or action game that provides dynamic difficulty.
Re:Jumpers For Goalposts (Score:3, Interesting)
These negative feedback systems are absolutely key to getting a game balanced for a diverse skill group. Final Fantasy Legends III on the game boy would let you return to life with 1/2 of the levels you had earned since the last save point, so that you were set back a little but
Do compute value, multiply or divide by time? (Score:3, Insightful)
If a game takes more time, does that decrease the "dollar per hour" ratio, so it's a good thing?
Or does it raise the cost, because cost is a function of money AND time?
I'm in the latter camp. I buy a game mostly to use a new bit of interaction. Having additional time that isn't matched by additional novel interaction just cranks the cost up. Novel interaction can be control modes, missions, weapons, enemies, but it has to be something, and it has to be diverse enough that it feels novel, not "this mission the guard is around the SECOND corner"
And I have more free cash than free time in general. People the other way 'round, like students or the unemployed, probably have an opposite opinion.
Fine line (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, no challenge is usually no fun (see the complaints about "Kingdom Hearts 2" being too easy).
So it's the balance that's the issue. Probably the best game that gets that "right" was "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". Challenging, but never felt impossible, plenty of side quests (mask trading, finding all of the golden spider-things, racing, etc) - but I never felt like I *had* to do the side quests to win - they were a truly added bonus.
Too often, though, these "side quests" becomes necessary to beat the game it seems. I don't want to spend hours level grinding - I want to *play*, so if you have "extras" that I can work for - fine. Just don't *make* me do them if I don't want to.
Kind of like watching "The Matrix". If I do my homework about mythology and the Bible, I'll get more out of it - but I shouldn't need a seminary degree just to enjoy the movie.
Handholding (Score:5, Interesting)
The best games are those which throw you into the midst of things and let you figure out how to play (if the game is too complex to be learned in this fashion - especially if it's a console game - then the control scheme is probably overly-complex). Usually this means that the beginning areas of the game are a bit more forgiving (think of the early levels of the original Starcraft/Warcraft, Fallout, or Doom games). Killing rats for the first 30 minutes is fine, but having to read/listen to a whole bunch of instructions on how to play, followed by being allowed only a single action before again being given instruction is annoying. I've found it particularly hard to immerse myself in Japanese tactical RPGs for this reason - the only ones I have ever enjoyed are Shining Force 1 and 2 on the Sega Genesis.
Another look at things... (Score:3, Informative)
DOA Xtreme Voleyball the worst in this regard (Score:3, Informative)
Why not lock, instead of unlock? (Score:5, Interesting)
Compare to the movies where the hero usually has all the good stuff in the beginning and then ends up in more and more difficult situations, usually with less and less weapons.
How about creating a game where you get all the weapons in the end, but extra ammo is so rare that have less and less weapons as you progress through the game. This would add another dimension to the game since you will have to conserve your ammo.
It would also help out with some other problems that these games suffer from:
In most games today, the player gets better and better at playing the game throughout the game since he's getting more practice. He's also gettin gbetter and better weapons which means that the game designers have to come up with ridiculously powerful enemies at the end of the game. Often that is no enough but they also have to add ridiculous numbers of these enemies. As someone who would prefer a little realism in his games, this is something I really don't like.
Now, imagine if instead the difficulty only went up slightly but your means of defeating these ememies were reduced more and more as you rpogressed through the game. Not only would you be able to play with all the cool weapons right from the start, but you would also have more challenging game play.
I hope there are some games designers that would pick up on this idea, since I feel that it solves not only the problem of locked weapons, but also makes the games more realistic and prevents the need to add too powerful enemies.
Re:Why not lock, instead of unlock? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some movies are like that, some are the other way around. In any event, ammo starvation sucks. This is a hilarious read on games [pointlesswasteoftime.com] see number 13.
Re:Why not lock, instead of unlock? (Score:3, Interesting)
I expect this will bother a lot of people, that the perceived power level of the weapons will go down over time, but as the kind of person who had a hard time running anything other than a sniper through the Fallouts, I'm looking forward to it. Doing a lot with a little is more fun than spraying things down.
That said
This is why I like Oblivion (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong angle (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont mind needing to defeat a bunch of badies to unlock the roundhouse kick. (At that point it's the game's way of saying "Okay, you've proven that needing to use a non-epic move would just be tedious. Here's a way to rush through the tedious parts to get at what's more fun for your skill level")
The problem is needing to unlock all the minor powers and abilities and areas the game is unplayable without.
At least San Andreas, rather than just saying "You can't go there", just shoots at you if you try.
You're a highly trained killing machine (Score:5, Funny)
Extortion (Score:3, Interesting)
The major difference is that YOU NOW HAVE TO PAY TO UNLOCK the game you already bought if you want to bypass the system. Previously, there always was cheat codes that you could find on the Internet or in game magazines. Now, you have to call a costly support phone number to get unlocking codes !!!
Examples of such extortions: Colin McRae 04 (the game, not the man), TOCA...
Level balance (Score:3, Interesting)
I know at least three children (not mine) that played the game and gave up before they even got to the first mission - they ended up just playing the free play mode all the time. I could complete 90% of the missions without having to even look at the manual, learn the controls or anything else - the other 10% I would learn how to get past when I needed to - don't make me have to perfect every maneouvure before I can play Mission 1 - Get from A to B.
"Unlocking" isn't a bad thing, unless it's done badly. To follow with the same example, once you'd completed that Driver training course, the next 5 or so missions were trivial to complete. The rest provided minor challenges to help you improve. However, the last mission was utterly impossible and totally out of proportion to the rest of the game. I gave up on the last mission after 50 or 60 attempts without even coming close, yet had walked the rest of the game.
Stuff that's "unlocked" by convoluted means (i.e. completing the training course on Driver, finding a secret area, etc.) should NEVER be required to complete the game. You should be able to play front-to-back without having to find a single secret - Doom, Quake, Mario Bros., all the classics follow this pattern. A secret should be just that - something there for someone's who's looking that's not going to hinder someone who's not. Bonus points, extra lives, new worlds are rewards for finding a secret - they will make it easier or more fun to play and replay the game but should NEVER be required to get to the end.
Games designers are not in it to "kill" the player at every opportunity, it's too easy. Players also get bored if they are doing simple, repetitive tasks over and over again. Provide challenge but alway show a glimpse that it's do-able. You can make that jump if you had used THAT platform, you can see the key on the other side but how do you get there, if you'd found that secret power-up that hard bit wouldn't be quite so hard.
Balance is the HARDEST thing in any game to get right. Examples of some that "got it wrong" would include:
Driver
Black & White (let's make a big fuss about having a creature and how to use him and then take him away from the player almost immediately).
Serious Sam (point, shoot, wait for things to die)
Incoming (See Serious Sam)
Two Reasons... (Score:3, Interesting)
Negative reinforcement has been proven time and time again to attract and hold humans, slot machines are the prime example here. And everyone can easily see the artificial expansion of gameplay time.
The thing is that almost all of the best games of all time do not employ these tactics, or if they do they are ansilary. In Katamari Damacy you have the same game in the beginning as at the end, just different scale. In God of War you are slicing enemies from the first second and the first boss battle is just as badass as the last. The entire game is rewarding, regardless of your level in the game and it doesn't need to be extendedby limiting power to the player and slowly allowing the player to gain more powerful weapons to fight more powerful enemies which just results in the same gameplay throughout the entire game.
There is nothing more annoying than to fight the entire game with a pickle fork only to get the flaming onyx sword of awesomeness at the very end of the game so that you get to use it for 12 seconds and then the game is over.
This is where the Wii should be able to finally end a lot of this horse shit. When developers don't have to pad their games to 20 hours of gameplay to make them "worth" $40-60, and instead make the entire game fun at maybe 5-10 hours for $10-25. I know what I would pick.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, that's when you've hacked into the code and disabled things or given yourself invulnerability or great wealth and then the whole thing gets dull.
The entertainment of a game is its challenge to achieve success. Too easy and it's dull, too hard and you give up, inexplicable (i.e. just when you thought you made it the rules change) and you beat your head against a table.
The ideal is to find a game you really like and stick with it, rather than whatever piece of crap is fashionable among the sheep these days. Amazing how many people I see playing board games, now. Check out the Empire Builder series from Mayfair, great stuff.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah... (Score:3)
The Right Way: Oblivion. Masses of stuff is locked away from the player, but there's enough interesting things to do at the lower levels that you just don't care.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Applying grammar (Score:4, Funny)
[ ] Make the link to your own example
[ ] Explain why you implied that the subjunctive was relevant to sarcasm
Re:Applying grammar (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
This of course assumes that a) the locked content in any way adds to the fun of the game, and/or b) that the process of unlocking the content is actually fun. The vast majority of games with unlockable content don't give a good enough incentive to do so because the features add nothing to the game once it has been completed (yippee! I get a new costume for my character when I'm NEVER playing this game again!!!) They also fail at making the tasks actually fun, and a lot of times the tasks are repetitive and boring and serve no other purpose than as a length-extending feature to be plastered onto the back of the box.
The only kind of people who find this fun are those with whatever compulsive collecting impulse people possess who continue to play MMORPGs long after they have ceased to be about anything but collecting loot.
The author definitely has a point, and it's not that games are too hard or that he sucks at them. Most of this "unlockable" content is just garbage filler to add features and playtime (which in most cases is already too long.) The real point is that most games just aren't that fun and adding on crap that makes you replay large portions of them over and over is even less fun.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or the opposite way, the modern games have lost contact with people like the author. And there are heaps of those (just look at the whole retro [retrogames.com] gaming [mamedev.com] scene [mameworld.net]), not exactly a couple of geezers dreaming of their youth - there is a market here.
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes sense in Oblivion. Oblivion is an RPG, so it's sequential. It doesn't make any sense for Oblivion to be any other way, and people not wanting to unlock content will have the sense to not buy Oblivion, because it's by its very nature a time sink.
But Project Gotham? An arcadey game like that ought to be its own reward. What logical reason is there for keeping the fun cars from me? The badges and achievements system has nothing to do with unlockable content, and I will agree that it is a good part of the game. In fact, it could be just as good if they didn't force you to race uninspiring shitty cars for several hours. If you don't have much time on your hands, those several hours will take weeks to accumulate.
And I know from experience that Project Gotham is fun without the car unlocking treadmill. After a few sloooooooow laps in some crappy learner car, I thought "Fuck this". So I copied it to my HDD, found the data files, and edited the prices of all the cars to 0. Rebooted, bought up every single car, and have had a great time ever since with the fun goal-oriented reward systems that you yourself describe. You know, the ones based around gameplay. Apart from that first race, I haven't touched the low end stuff. Maybe that will provide good (if a little hardcore) replay value later on. All of the fun, none of the unlocking of content.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hmm (Score:3, Funny)
Re:hmm (Score:3, Informative)
If not being able to guess the code or not wanting to survive level 12 to get to the cool monster on level 13 are seriously detracting from enjoying the game, then cheat -we're talking personal entertainment here, not real-world finance.
OTOH sometimes figuring these things out is part of the fun, then avoid spoilers and cheats.
Its that simple.