Why most people don't finish video games

[mrowakus]

The way you put it makes this almost sound like artists should compromise their work at all costs for the sake of capturing their audience .

Allow me to make a statement: The artist that fails to intrigue his audience in any way is either a talentless hack or in training.

Even in art you have to hook your audience with something. Art without audience, is non-existent. Funnily enough in most visual arts the initial impression is very significant if not the most important factor for reception.

Let me make another observation A game does not have to be art to be good.

A hook in this case can be defined as pretty much anything internal to the work (internal, as in not the amount of money one paid for it, for example) that makes one continue to interact with the work (read it, watch it, play it).

Yes.

And if one doesn´t find anything such in there and stops, it still doesn´t automatically make the work bad or its beginning "hook-less". It may simply mean that, at least for the time being, one´s preferences are incompatible with the work.

I disagree. While the initial impression doesn't doom the product, a bad "hook" or lack of thereof is a significant flaw that should count against it.

Not really, I think. Everything may be ok, as long as it doesn´t make you stop, period.
Writing style may be enough for books. Art direction or quality of writing may be enough for games. For example.

So art direction and writing are your 'hooks' then? Granted intriguing art direction and dramatic events that push the game forward may be enough to to hold ones interest.

I really enjoyed Brazil. Someone else didn´t and stopped watching 20 minutes in. Does it mean Gilliam and co. failed their duty, or not?
The only objective failure here is compatibility check in the "someone else"´s case and I probably wouldn´t be happy if Gilliam and co. would have adjusted their film for the sake of that "someone else".

I and others are not arguing that everyone should have the same viewpoint or should be intriugued by the same thing. Besides, I myself was more referring to the need to learn the game mechanics for 5 hours in order to enjoy the game

I´ll leave other media aside since it would likely unnecessarily clog up the subject.
I don´t think the accent on "duty" to provide hooks in the beginning is all that relevant, really.

I think it is - especially in case of games which are primarly a form of challenge, contests of wits nad skills - not art for the art's sake.

Instead of potentially compromising their work for the sake of using game´s beginning as a showcase for full game or hooking customers right off the bat, developers´ duty should first and foremost be to provide sufficient and honest info about their game externally.

You lost me here. How making things intriguing and interesting from the start could compromise the authors' work? How having non-repetetive, creative stuff to do throughout the experience endangers their vision? And how providing infro externally could protect their achievement?

Customers´ "duty" to themselves should be to check this info out before obtaining the product. And there´s of course also journalists´ duty to inform about these products sufficiently, honestly and independently.
Well, don´t we have a lot of failures here .
Ideally, one should be able to determine if a game is worth investing one´s time to finish it before obtaining the full product.

Ok, you are referring to the misinformation and hype-driven sales policy where while proclaiming that Skyrim is the next best thing since mashed potatoes, only 2% of its buyers are actually going to finish it.

It seems that we are talking about same stuff but on differen layers. Anyway, agreed.

I´m gonna believe you that in the case of Bayonetta the first 15 minutes indeed provide enough info to determine whether the game is one´s cup of tea or not, but I´d say that doing so in the case of cRPGs this tends to be difficult.
For example, in a game that takes player character(s) from level 1 to level 30 and has combat in the spotlight, you usually have to trust developers on encounter design and character development for a while, if the main reason why you started the game were its supposed tactical intricacies.

Of course you won't see full tactical depth of the game 1 hour into it. However, remember that at the start you have only minor grasp of the rulest. If during this first hour of gameplay all you is partaking in repetetive, boring, run-off-the-mill gameplay (e.g. combat) it's odds on that the game won't sport any intircasies at all later on. On the other hand if the combat seems intriguing, let's you use some unconventional mechanics (e.g. combining spells), then chances are it could develop it something awesome.

I´ll give you a counterexample. Planescape: Torment. Now what.
(Not that I personally consider mortuary boring, I really dig it actually, but more than once I´ve seen other people mentioning it as a boring introduction after which the game becomes a lot more fun.)
I wonder if you´ll manage to reconcile this statement in a way other than saying that the people who found mortuary boring, but enjoyed the game afterwards, suck at assessing the game´s qualities .

Well, I was going to use PS:T as the example of good exposition. 2 minutes into the game you have mystery full setup, you are intrigued by the location, your companion, and are eager to learn more about the world. Then you go ask around and learn more about the setting which rewards you with new quests, companions, their history and all. Excellent use of 'hooks' throughout the gameplay.

As for the rest of the topic, I think that, at least nowadays, the main reason why people don´t finish video games isn´t the lack of "hooking material" in the beginning, but simply failure to maintain interest throughout. Developers are actually pretty good at this initial hook business, but the games tend to not live up to them later, repetition probably being the most usual culprit.

Yes and no. I disagree that these days developers are any good at 'hooking-up'. Sure they often start their games with some dramatic events - but they are of no significance to you. ME2 sequence where whole Normandy blows up - is walking across one corridor meant to make me care about the ship being blown off? Or in DA2 a character dying - everyone's acting like you should care except you don't.

I agree, however, that the devs are poor at 'hooking-on'. As I said before - their design decisons are formulaic. They cannot marry discreet elements of the game to form gameplay. You can easily imagine using music and graphics (also art direction) to reinforce the theme in creative fashion creating intricate gameplay. Things like that can turn a simplistic hack&slash into something exceptional (Diablo I). Not today it seems.

 

[Vii Zafira]

Allow me to make a statement: The artist that fails to intrigue his audience in any way is either a talentless hack or in training.

Even in art you have to hook your audience with something. Art without audience, is non-existent. Funnily enough in most visual arts the initial impression is very significant if not the most important factor for reception.

Let me make another observation A game does not have to be art to be good.

 

[Kz3r0]

Art is its own reward, art for the sake of art is the purest form of art.
But, by its very nature, is useless to discuss true art.
You can put art in context tho, or discuss the artistic content of something, without mentioning that if the artist wants to convey something and fails is its own limit.
But usually 'artists' want fame and money, the rest is wankery.

If something don't click from the beginning means that is not well conceived or designed or executed.
It's funny that people talk about art without realizing that a work of art is such as a whole, with some minor, very minor, flaw.
Poetry is the best example of the perfect balance that a true work of art should have.
The Divine Comedy is almost inhumane in this regard, or the Aeneid, from which was modeled after.
Or look at a statue, a statue couldn't have a good head, bad legs and a so so torso and still be called a work of art.
Still there are people who think that they can legitimately call art , or 'great',a book with terrible chapters, a movie with a lot of banal sequences, or, a videogame with hours of boredom.
But the answer is much more simpler, artistic pretenses are the refuge of failed entertainment.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

It really explains why the kind of games I enjoy are almost a dying bread.

Tell that Bernd The Bread ! http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_das_Brot

Who of you would have the patience to sit down and learn the rules of a really complex strategy game or turn-based game? These games START to get fun after investing a lot of hours just to learn the gameplay rules. If you don't know what's going on they are not going to be fun.

A new online article of the German gaming mag "Gamestar" says a similar thing : Games which are complex and don't come with instant gratifications have almost died out.

Take the game called "Outcast", for example. "Unplayable" would be the verdict of modern gamers !

The mentioned article also says that games in general - and RPGs as well - have become more and more action-oriented and fast - and use storytelling mechanics which are meant to be effective in bringing the game's content to the player.

More action-oriented, fast-paced ... "I want everything and I want it now !"

Skyrim, the article says, is one of the few left examples of games which are selling DESPITE being not-so-easily-accessible.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Art without audience, is non-existent.

You miss the fact that art was not originally art.

Sometimes, only mere cunning examples of just crafting work were DECLARED to be "art".

Take the Dogon and their Art, for example. Plundered by Colonialists.
(There's an exhibition on them and their art going on right now http://www.kah-bonn.de/ausstellungen/dogon/index.htm - and they are KNOWN within the "art market" !)

 

[Kz3r0]

Skyrim, the article says, is one of the few left examples of games which are selling DESPITE being not-so-easily-accessible.

Skyrim, being your run of the mill Bethesda hiking simulator is more accessible than any other game out there.
And it's pretty obvious that games that rely on a prior knowledge of their rules appeal at a very specific audience, and that they need to lower the entry level stick if they want a broader audience.

 

[mrowakus]

You miss the fact that art was not originally art.

Sometimes, only mere cunning examples of just crafting work were DECLARED to be "art".

Take the Dogon and their Art, for example. Plundered by Colonialists.
(There's an exhibition on them and their art going on right now http://www.kah-bonn.de/ausstellungen/dogon/index.htm - and they are KNOWN within the "art market" !)

So you are saying that once audience was found that was intrigued by it, it became the art? I don't see how that denies my statement.

Besides, let's not discuss art here. As I said - games need not be art to be good. The question of games being artsy has nothing to do with the thread title (except for the fact that both art and entertainment need to evoke interest to be effective).

 

[Fnord]

It kind of reminds me of something someone had as his signature on that other forum. Paraphrasing, it was about how if you only play a game for a couple of hours and don't like it you can't say it is bad because you did not play it enough, if you did play up to halfway through before leaving you can't say it is awful because you haven't seen all of it yet, and if you did play it to the end, you can't say it was awful because you obviously enjoyed it enough to finish it.

One of my favourite literature teacher always said that any author whose book you need to force yourself into reading even for a single paragraph has failed you as an author, and to the ovens it goes. Your initial reserve of interest, curiosity, enthusiasm, or hype should be more than enough for the author to capture you in the web of her or his prose and world, and if your original push is not enough for the author to do so you, like, there are far too many good books to read out there as to waste time with writers who aren't compatible with your own taste and interests.

The same can be said about videogames. There are no really great games out there that need more than the initial rush forward to capture you into its spell, and it is responsability of the designer to present the game in a compeling and intriguing way during that first encounter between work and reader. The reader has no duty towards the developer and the work other than opening it and reading the first few pages.

In other words, if they need an extra incentive to continue forward the game can be said to be badly designed. Even fifteen minutes are more than enough to give the player a good taste of the gameplay, the mood, the flow, and the plot, as well as to trap her imagination with vague promises of coolness and awesomeness to come. That doesn't means you need to throw everything cool into the beginning, not to go in medias res and the like. No, but the author is bound to find a way to make you want to learn more, see more, and experience more before you run out of attention. If they can't it is not your fault but theirs.

I don't fully agree with this statement. Truly good games, movies and books hook up the audience no more than 5 minutes into them. If you have to read 100 pages into the book for something interesting to happen or play for 2 hours for action to start, chances are the authors bonkered one of the most important aspect of entertainment - introduction.

I strongly disagree with you. Some games (books & movies) requires you to invest a fare amount of time and effort into them in order for them to become interesting, and there really could be no other way to do it. These are also often the most rewarding games (books & movies).

Take for an example Crime & Punishment. It is a very slow started book, in fact the first 100 or so pages are not very interesting, but the book had to be written that way. In order for the rest of the book to have the same emotional and intellectual impact as it does, the book requires a long character introduction, you need to really understand why the important characters act and think as they do, what drives them, and what their values are based around. And this takes roughly 100 pages. But once you get past the first 100 boring pages, the book really starts to shine, it becomes interesting, you can really relate to the main character, as he commits a terrible deed, and then has to live with it. You understand why he did it, what drove him to do it, and the contrast between the way he acts and thinks before and after the deed is an important part of what makes the book so interesting. I won't spoil it, it is a book that has to be read.
And this is a book that really can't be judged before you get past the first 100 pages. You can't tell if this will be a book for you until you get to the post-deed part.

And the same holds true for many games. One of my favourite games, Victoria: An empire under the sun, is another one of those games that requires a substantial amount of time & effort in order for the game to shine. And before you have a good idea about what is going on, and get a good understanding of exactly how deep (and rewarding) the game is, it just seem like a boring mess. I remember some reviewers at the time of release complained about the game "just playing itself". These are people who did not understand what was actually going on, and how many subtle changes could have a long term impact on the game and what happened. Victoria 2 improves a bit on the user friendliness and initial appeal, so the original game was clearly not perfect in this regard, but that game is also one that left a poor first impression on a lot of people, people who could potentially have loved the game if they had stuck with it. And this holds true for almost every complex strategy game that I've played, be it Dwarf Fortress or Europa Unversalis. And if you don't already have a good grasp of what is going on, and/or have the initial hype to drive you forward, chances are that you won't stick with such a game without a prior investment.

*edit, minor addition*
X-com, as you use as an example, is comparatively easy to get into and get a feel for. While X-com is, at its heart, a rather deep & complex game, X-com has a style that makes it easy to introduce the games concepts early on, without overwhelming the player. You will have a good idea about if you will like X-com just an hour into the game. Not all games have this luxury, because they, by design, needs everything to be available from the get go (this is often the case with grand strategy based around the real world, in which technological advancement won't so much add new things as change old).

Let's talk a concrete example, of Jagged Alliance 2.

To be frank, Jagged Alliance 2 left me with a horrible first impression. I disliked it from the get go, the graphical style did not appeal to me, some concepts were not properly explained and my very first attempt at the game did not last very long (though as the graphical style left such a poor first impression on me, I might have been trying to find more faults with the game). Then I joined this site and was swept up in some of the hype surrounding this game. So I decided to re-evaluate my opinion, to see if my first impression was incorrect. Again I hated the game early on. But then it started to grow on me. As I invested more time and realized just how deep the tactical system was, I fell in love with it. And I really don't want to admit just how much time I've spent playing that game during the last week. Too much, that is for sure.

Take a loot at this video, at this video, or, even better, at this video for examples. What's so shallow about them? How far you believe you will be after an hour?

I do have a love for shmups (be it bullet hell along the line of Touhou, or more pattern memorization based games along the line of Ikaruga) but I would not really consider them to be the best examples. Shmups by their very nature tends to put all their cards on the table very early on, you know what the game will be all about at around the point where you get a feel for the first boss. I would not consider them shallow, but nor would I consider them very deep either.



So exactly when can you judge a game? When you understand it. And no, I won't try to explain exactly what I mean, because there is no proper way to do that.

 

[Vii Zafira]

Shmups by their very nature tends to put all their cards on the table very early on, you know what the game will be all about at around the point where you get a feel for the first boss. I would not consider them shallow, but nor would I consider them very deep either.

It depends on what are you calling their cards.

If you mean the mechanics of the game, yes. However, in that sense chess puts all its card upon the table the moment you learn to move the pieces.

However, if by all the cards you mean all the challenges you will face as you face new opponents and all the maneuvers you will learn to use the basic mechanics and rules to do, be it from observing other players or by yourself, then a given shmup hasn't shown all its cards until you have defeated the true boss in the highest difficulty level in a "no misses" run. I.E: Until you have "Mastered" it.

So I believe they are a good piece to use right now. Because, either

1. Mechanics have no direct involvement with depth and thus you, objectively, don't need to spend a long time playing before starting to understand the game and enjoying it.

2. Mechanics have a direct involvement with depth and thus whatever role playing game she's thinking is deeper than chess.

I am a bitch.

I strongly disagree with you. Some games (books & movies) requires you to invest a fare amount of time and effort into them in order for them to become interesting, and there really could be no other way to do it. These are also often the most rewarding games (books & movies).

Fair enough. However, books have other ways to hook the reader. For example, writing and flow. Style, ambience, mood, and atmosphere. Etc, it isn't just "the plot" that makes a book.

In the same way do games work. It isn't just mechanics or plot that make them. Hooking the player just means "something" must make them go into the deeper reaches of the game, "something" being art style, awesome music (Umineko, I'm looking at you!), an interesting setting, funny and witty dialogue, or anything you can get away with using.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

And the same holds true for many games. One of my favourite games, Victoria: An empire under the sun, is another one of those games that requires a substantial amount of time & effort in order for the game to shine. And before you have a good idea about what is going on, and get a good understanding of exactly how deep (and rewarding) the game is, it just seem like a boring mess. I remember some reviewers at the time of release complained about the game "just playing itself". These are people who did not understand what was actually going on, and how many subtle changes could have a long term impact on the game and what happened. Victoria 2 improves a bit on the user friendliness and initial appeal, so the original game was clearly not perfect in this regard, but that game is also one that left a poor first impression on a lot of people, people who could potentially have loved the game if they had stuck with it. And this holds true for almost every complex strategy game that I've played, be it Dwarf Fortress or Europa Unversalis. And if you don't already have a good grasp of what is going on, and/or have the initial hype to drive you forward, chances are that you won't stick with such a game without a prior investment.

*edit, minor addition*
X-com, as you use as an example, is comparatively easy to get into and get a feel for. While X-com is, at its heart, a rather deep & complex game, X-com has a style that makes it easy to introduce the games concepts early on, without overwhelming the player. You will have a good idea about if you will like X-com just an hour into the game. Not all games have this luxury, because they, by design, needs everything to be available from the get go (this is often the case with grand strategy based around the real world, in which technological advancement won't so much add new things as change old).

As a fellow Paradox Grand Strategy game afficionado (with Hearts of Iron III being my favourite Paradox title and maybe the best example for what I'm about to say, being most complex and the hardest to learn), I contend that the only thing that requires an initial investment for the player in this type of game is learning the interface. For a title like Europa Universalis III it can be done very quickly, in a matter of minutes. For a more complex game, like Hearts of Iron III, it takes much more time, but still this is not a matter of hours. Additionally, the player already expects a complex game with many options and is willing to invest time in order to learn the interface, but once the interface and options are familiar, the game should be fun, rather than chore.

It follows that a complex game requires a lot of attention from the developer in providing an intuitive user interface and that user interface often makes or breaks such a game. If a game has a very complex interface, reading the manual and/or completing a tutorial may help the player to quickly adjust to the interface and start having fun right away.

X-Com is probably one of the best examples of a quite complex strategy / tactics game where UI design is concerned and is an example to follow (though it has its flaws as well).

To be frank, Jagged Alliance 2 left me with a horrible first impression. I disliked it from the get go, the graphical style did not appeal to me, some concepts were not properly explained and my very first attempt at the game did not last very long (though as the graphical style left such a poor first impression on me, I might have been trying to find more faults with the game). Then I joined this site and was swept up in some of the hype surrounding this game. So I decided to re-evaluate my opinion, to see if my first impression was incorrect. Again I hated the game early on. But then it started to grow on me. As I invested more time and realized just how deep the tactical system was, I fell in love with it. And I really don't want to admit just how much time I've spent playing that game during the last week. Too much, that is for sure.

At what point did the game start to appeal to you and how much play time did it take? What was it at the beginning of the game (except the visual style) that bothered you? did the beginning differ from your expectations of the game?

I really don't see any logical objection to a sound design principle that the game needs to draw the player in from the beginning and keeps motivating the player through the game all the way to the end.

P.S. Regarding Crime and Punishment: I found the book interesting even from the beginning, it hasn't taken me a hundred pages to become intrigued, but I'm very much in favour of Dostojevski's style of writing, which I find not overly complicated, yet descriptive and meaningful. As an opposite example, I have never been able to enjoy Tolstoj's War and Peace, though I gave it too much time. It was as boring at the page 200 when I finally quit reading it as it was on page 1. However, I've already explained why I don't consider possible slow development in books justification for tedium in games, so I consider this off-topic.

 

[DeepO]

There is absolutely nothing that qualitatively sets apart the atmosphere, the writing and the gameplay (which heavily relies on reading the text and choosing roleplaying dialogue options in addition to combat) in the Mortuary from the same features in the rest of the game. From the opening of the game, you are exposed to the "weird" setting, characters and plot, verbose writing of high quality for a computer game and unchallenging combat. This continues throughout the game.

Are you sure about that?
Mortuary is a pretty enclosed area, whereas afterwards you get a big city to explore and a more diverse portfolio of characters to interact with.
Joinable companions belong among the biggest strengths of the game, but in the mortuary you only have Morte who, besides being a flying skull, by that time may otherwise seem like your usual sidekick mainly used for comic relief and with no real depth.
The story starts with amnesia, which is a cliché regardless how well the game actually utilizes that and I don´t think one can assess how well the game does that just by playing through mortuary.
Someone might also say that TNO´s story really hits its stride only after meeting Pharod.
As a side note, I distinctly remember some people claiming the combat encounters in Hive are difficult . For those, the mortuary combat encounters probably weren´t indicative enough, or they simply went through the mortuary without engaging in any combat at all.

Basically, while the mortuary may be a good indicator when it comes to general presentation, it may not be enough when it comes to some concrete qualities which may be crucial to one´s enjoyment.
If you don´t enjoy reading a lot of text in computer games, the experience in the mortuary should be enough for you determine the game isn´t for you.
However, if you enjoy games with good stories, I don´t think you can determine whether PS:T´s story will live up to your standards just by the mortuary experience.
Etc.

If what I´m saying above is true, then mortuary would be by your logic a case of bad design with which I would personally disagree. I like that the game doesn´t open up fully right in the beginning and I like that some of its qualities reveal themselves slowly.

I simply cannot accept that, without an elaborate response by one of such people to the question: "What can change nature of the game has changed in the nature of the game between the Mortuary and when it became fun, and at what point did that change occur?".

Well, just as expected .
Such people do exist though as some posts in this thread, for example, indicate.

And by duty I was mostly referring to an idea from literary critique in which the reader can't be held accountable for losing interest in a given work, nor for disliking it. In other words it isn't the duty of the reader to read something she isn't enjoying, but the duty of the writer to make the book enjoyable for her. If she is in the intended audience and fails to enjoy it, the writer failed at conveying what he wanted to convey. If she is not in the intended audience and fails to enjoy it, no one's at fault and they were simply not made for one another.

Agreed. However, how you define, and how broadly so, "intended audience" is pretty important here, because it´s a fuzzy thing.

Say, I´ve written a book intended to interest fans of detective stories.
Some didn´t enjoy it simply because I´ve set it in the present.
Ok, we could say I´ve written a book intended to interest fans of detective stories set in the past.
However, some didn´t enjoy it because I´ve written it in the first person form.
Hm, well maybe I´ve written a book intended to interest fans of detective stories set in the past who don´t mind it being told in the first person form.
Some were bored after first few pages, because they don´t enjoy books that utilize heavily descriptive style I´ve used.
And so on.
The point is, this

If she is in the intended audience and fails to enjoy it, the writer failed at conveying what he wanted to convey.

is in my opinion only true when the intended audience is very precisely defined with all major aspects covered.
Sometimes when writer fails to establish engaging relationship with a reader, it may be simply because such reader, while being a member of a target audience in a broad sense, wasn´t member of it in a more particular sense.

You are misunderstanding the point, so I'll use an example closer to the games you may know: At the beginning of Xcom you lack access to most tools you will use, to most enemies you will face, and to most situations you will need to solve. You don't need to know that, however, to decide whether or not it is your kind of game after playing a couple of missions, nor do you need to have finished it before saying this game isn't for me. You will neither know the story, for example, but you can decide if the mood and the atmosphere work for you or don't, and if you are interested in knowing the story to begin with.

I don´t think there was any misunderstanding, really.
I wasn´t disagreeing with you, just noting that some specific aspects you may have started playing a game for, may take more than 15 minutes to flourish.
If the only reason why you started a game was because it´s supposed to be tactically intricate and such game isn´t tactically intricate in its first few encounters, sometimes you may be doing yourself a disservice if you shelve it, because the game may have been actually trying to make a point by making its initial stages simple.

However, saying "She should have mastered the game before dropping it" is placing the guilt on the player for not liking the game. That's not logical, as it implies a duty towards the game that doesn't exist to begin with.

Yes.

Allow me to make a statement: The artist that fails to intrigue his audience in any way is either a talentless hack or in training.

I disagree. While the initial impression doesn't doom the product, a bad "hook" or lack of thereof is a significant flaw that should count against it.

Judging by the above it seems to me like you approach this from a somewhat absolute standpoint, whereas I consider this hook stuff more relative, however

I and others are not arguing that everyone should have the same viewpoint or should be intriugued by the same thing.

here you seem to be on the same wave with me .

A perceived bad hook or lack of thereof may be simply a case of "incompatible" audience, not artist or game developer being a hack or in training.
And as I implied above, assessing what kind of audience stuff is for is not straightforward.
Even less so in the case of art, where some artists may even go as far as to define (consciously or not) their intended audience simply as "those who´ll enjoy it" and I don´t find anything wrong with that.

So art direction and writing are your 'hooks' then?

Not necessarily, but these may be something that makes up for a "slow beginnings" for me, yes. But we´re not talking about me here, we´re talking about "people".
From your post it seemed that you consider promise of challenging gameplay as the only way to make up for slow beginnings, I claim that from "people´s" perspective pretty much any aspect has some chance to do so.

You lost me here. How making things intriguing and interesting from the start could compromise the authors' work? How having non-repetetive, creative stuff to do throughout the experience endangers their vision?

It shouldn´t if they go right way about it, but I think the main point of the beginning should be … the beginning, not necessarily a segment devised in a way that helps players to decide if they´ll enjoy the whole game or not, this info should be primarily delivered "externally" in my opinion, via demos, previews and, secondarily, reviews.
That doesn´t mean I think beginnings have a right to be boring by design, of course .

Well, I was going to use PS:T as the example of good exposition. 2 minutes into the game you have mystery full setup, you are intrigued by the location, your companion, and are eager to learn more about the world. Then you go ask around and learn more about the setting which rewards you with new quests, companions, their history and all. Excellent use of 'hooks' throughout the gameplay.

I do think mortuary is a great exposition, but there are people who don´t, even though they ended up enjoying the game. Perhaps it was a case of "slow beginning" for
them .


Also, I don´t know whether this was already pointed out here or not, but there´s a whole nuanced continuum between enjoying a game greatly/ being totally hooked right from the start and not enjoying a game at all/ being off the hook shortly after start. This is obviously obvious, but still, some points may become watered down when there´s no place for maybes among the either/ors.

 

[Vii Zafira]

Agreed. However, how you define, and how broadly so, "intended audience" is pretty important here, because it´s a fuzzy thing.

Indeed. It is mostly to be used as an argument against getting hurtful and insulting over tastes. Say, a more reasoned way of saying it is nobody's fault and that if anything it is the author who should have made his game to my tastes if he wanted me to play it instead of a free pass to insult the author or developer.

So if, for example, I'm the kind of girl who considers T-Ara one of the best bands ever and you come and tell me to give a chance to Immortal or Manowar, it isn't my fault if I don't like it. Yet most of the really emotionally invested metalheads out there would say, like, "You are a commercial and shallow whore and wouldn't know true and deep music with a message if it were to punch you in that uppity nose of you with fists made of TRUE AND PURE METAL! And you are the reason we can't have nice things MADE OF MANLY LEATHER AND SHARP STEEL!" or something equally stupid instead of, like, "Cool, no hard feelings."

And the same irrational thingie has happened once or twice in this very thread, it's just less obviously ridiculous because they aren't so over the top as metalheads tend to be. Gee, people has even been accused, implicitly or explicitly, of being at fault because they are busy and thus can't invest several days worth of gaming time in every single game the other side likes, and thus are guilty of less games like that being made or something.

I don´t think there was any misunderstanding, really.

Alright, that was my fault indeed.

 

[mrowakus]

I strongly disagree with you. Some games (books & movies) requires you to invest a fare amount of time and effort into them in order for them to become interesting, and there really could be no other way to do it. These are also often the most rewarding games (books & movies).

Take for an example Crime & Punishment. It is a very slow started book, in fact the first 100 or so pages are not very interesting, but the book had to be written that way.

I don't know bro. To me that 100 pages were quite good introduction into the setting on 19th centurey Saint Petersburg - which was in itself intriguing for me (though it couldn't have the same impact on Dostoyevskis' contemporaries). Raskolnikov was also the character that I could easily identify with. It was good enough reason to go on.

Another good example of good 'hooked' slow start is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". The way the narrative is presented as a story within a story, with various stories within that in between… This mode of narration alone warrants recognition. I love how the information about Kurtz is dosed to the reader through a caleidoscope a characters, how the tension is build and you expectations slowly rises, how when Marlow finally meets his nemesis(?) it gets only more mesmerising, how no definite answers are given in the end. Masterful.

Make no mistake. I am not against slow beginnings in the sense - actions, explosions, "epic" music or STFU. The reverse would be more true. I am, however against not giving anything meaningful to do to the player or making the game repetetive and boring for the sake of introduction. Have you played Final Fantasy XIII? Do you know what nightmare it is to go past 20 hours? And in the end it turns out there was no damn point to it? How it feels to be locked from actual gameplay only to go one huge corridor watching cutscene after cutscene after cutscene?

Similarly it's difficult to say yourself: "it will tun better once tutorial/chapter 1/2/10 is over". NWN ain't become any better throughout its gameplay. Same with Kotor. I feel no obligation to read a book/ watch a movie / play a game that bores me to tears. If I am not getting it 2 hours into game, why should I persist on? As Vii said, I don't have any obligation to get bored - it's the author/director/developer that's supposed to entertain me. Can I really trust you that it will become better? As a matter of fact, why should I at all?

Not to mention that 2 hours are enough to finish watching a full movie, read 100 pages book, so it should be enough to pass initial judgement of the game (No, I am not arguing here for shorter games).

Games are, as the name implies, based on the player actually doing something meaningful to surmount a challenge. Give me something to do, and it better be something creative, satisfying, and giving sense of accomplishement. Games are interactive by their nature, and taking away control from the player or restricting him in hamfisted fashion is simply betrayal of the medium. Ok, it may develop slowly, but at least let me do the developing bit - don't lock me in endless repetition and inanity with some vague promise of fun some time later.

For that reason, I also don't buy saying - "but you need to learn the rules". Learning rules is fine by mine, provided there's some reason to, some incentive for doing it - other then "you paid the moneyz, now suffer". There are the games of yesteryears that throw loads of stuff at you, then throw you into deep sea. That's all fine provided that there's something to pull you into the game - sometimes, theme, art direction and music are enough. As a wee kid I finished Betrayal at Krondor with an English dictionary on my lap - so good were the "hooks" in the game. I was learning everything about it, the rules, the use of spells, the combat, even goddamn English, because I had very good reasons to - from start to finish. This was the right, masterful approach.

Obviously it wouldn't work if the game didn't have a consistent theme, good music or art direction (for that times - I played it in 1997 for the first time though). If you do not to spark at least a flimsy flame of interest in entertainment you clearly are failing at it.

 

[Fnord]

It depends on what are you calling their cards.

If you mean the mechanics of the game, yes. However, in that sense chess puts all its card upon the table the moment you learn to move the pieces.

However, if by all the cards you mean all the challenges you will face as you face new opponents and all the maneuvers you will learn to use the basic mechanics and rules to do, be it from observing other players or by yourself, then a given shmup hasn't shown all its cards until you have defeated the true boss in the highest difficulty level in a "no misses" run. I.E: Until you have "Mastered" it.

So I believe they are a good piece to use right now. Because, either

1. Mechanics have no direct involvement with depth and thus you, objectively, don't need to spend a long time playing before starting to understand the game and enjoying it.

2. Mechanics have a direct involvement with depth and thus whatever role playing game she's thinking is deeper than chess.

I am a bitch.

What I meant was that, at least to anyone who is familiar with the genre, most things about the games game mechanics will be almost immediately apparent. You will get a sense for how the game makers expects you to play it, based on your movement speed, hit box size, bomb/ultimate behavior and enemy bullet patterns. While new things might get introduced later on, they are almost always just variations on the same theme. The first boss of Perfect Cherry blossom is not all that different compared to the last one (apart from the obvious fact that the last boss will shoot out far far more bullets to dodge and have slightly more complex gimmicks). Nor is the first and last boss in Ikaruga all that different, they both follow the same basic ideas, though the last boss in ikaruga shoots a lot more and faster (and thus forces you to flip polarity more often). And yes, I've beaten both perfect cherry blossom (the first Touhou game that I played) & Ikaruga, and loved them both. Shmups have simple and often rather obvious mechanics, but they require a lot of skill to master. Comparing a shmup to a very complex game is a bit like comparing Go to World in flames. While Go is obviously a far less complex game from a mechanics standpoint, it requires no less skill to master. But at the same time, you will get a good feel for how deep Go is from just playing it once, while WiF requires a large time investment in order for you to see how deep the game is (most first timers tends to just throw their armies forward in WiF, and they tend to get obliterated while doing so).[/QUOTE]

As a fellow Paradox Grand Strategy game afficionado (with Hearts of Iron III being my favourite Paradox title and maybe the best example for what I'm about to say, being most complex and the hardest to learn), I contend that the only thing that requires an initial investment for the player in this type of game is learning the interface. For a title like Europa Universalis III it can be done very quickly, in a matter of minutes. For a more complex game, like Hearts of Iron III, it takes much more time, but still this is not a matter of hours. Additionally, the player already expects a complex game with many options and is willing to invest time in order to learn the interface, but once the interface and options are familiar, the game should be fun, rather than chore.

It follows that a complex game requires a lot of attention from the developer in providing an intuitive user interface and that user interface often makes or breaks such a game. If a game has a very complex interface, reading the manual and/or completing a tutorial may help the player to quickly adjust to the interface and start having fun right away.

X-Com is probably one of the best examples of a quite complex strategy / tactics game where UI design is concerned and is an example to follow (though it has its flaws as well).



At what point did the game start to appeal to you and how much play time did it take? What was it at the beginning of the game (except the visual style) that bothered you? did the beginning differ from your expectations of the game?

I really don't see any logical objection to a sound design principle that the game needs to draw the player in from the beginning and keeps motivating the player through the game all the way to the end.

P.S. Regarding Crime and Punishment: I found the book interesting even from the beginning, it hasn't taken me a hundred pages to become intrigued, but I'm very much in favour of Dostojevski's style of writing, which I find not overly complicated, yet descriptive and meaningful. As an opposite example, I have never been able to enjoy Tolstoj's War and Peace, though I gave it too much time. It was as boring at the page 200 when I finally quit reading it as it was on page 1. However, I've already explained why I don't consider possible slow development in books justification for tedium in games, so I consider this off-topic.

Paradox has become a lot better at making their games accessible, both through a proper tutorial, and also an increased amount of (optional) automatisation. The first Victoria sadly had both a dire manual & tutorial, and the game failed quite miserably at explaining its concepts. Not only did the game hide many of its mechanics, but it also required a good understanding of the political structures that were present during the Victorian era, or at least what the different things meant. I have to admit that when I first played Victoria an empire under the sun, I did not know what Jingoism was (I was still in high school back then, and English is not my native language). All this added up to a rather frustrating initial experience. But there was also a lot of factors that were hard to fully grasp for a new player, like the effects of railroads on your economy, when/if colonization actually is worth it, how the market actually works and so on. There is a lot of blind fumbling going on for a new player to that game.

You are right in the regard that most player who buys a game like that knows what to expect, and are prepared for the initial learning curve. But imagine a person new to the genre, who picks up a game like this on a whim/recommendation from a friend or magazine. Learning to play a Paradox game is a time and effort investment, one that many are not prepared to make, because they don't know if the effort will be worth it.

And in the same vein, a game can look very interesting (to a person who likes the genre), give a great first impression, and then turn out to be far less than it seemed to be. Just look at Master of orion 3. As a person who loves turnbased micromanagement, the game looked like heaven. But anyone who has spent a good amount of time with the game can tell you that it is a deeply flawed game (which is not immediately apparent).

I did not start to really enjoy Jagged Alliance 2 until around the point when I grabbed the first city & mine. It was not until I got a feel for the strategy aspect of the game (and not just the tactical aspect) that the game really grabbed me. It was also around this time that the effects of sound & light became more apparent, and how it could be properly used to your advantage (in the first fight you can just blast your way through things, it did not feel more challenging than a fight from Final Fantasy tactics advance (which is a rather shallow game with a few good ideas)).

A game should of course try to make the early game as interesting as possible, without compromising any of its core concepts, and this is something that game designers have gotten a lot better at as time has passed, but I just feel that some genres are at a severe disadvantage here compared to some others (an action game can draw you in from the get go, and make things seem fun and interesting, while a very complex strategy game basically relies on the persons expectations to make him/her spend enough time with the game for it to really show its full potential). And you always need to look at things from an outsiders perspective here. If you know what to expect, then you can get past the early parts, but if you boot up Victoria as your first grand strategy game, only having played RTSs along the line of Command & Conquer before, then chances are that you will find the complexity and steep learning curve offputting.

And this brings me in to the subject of Crime & Punishment. This was the first of the heavier classical books that I ever read, I did not know what to expect, and I found the first portion of it to be boring, probably in large due to my expectations when it came to literature. Reading The Idiot was not nearly as hard, and I never felt that I had to force myself through any of the slower sections, because I had a good idea about what to expect.
In the same vein, a game like Wizardry might seem rather offputting to a person who has never played that kind of CRPG before, who is used to games like Mass Effect (which I do consider to be a good game). A first time Wizardry player, who has little experience with CRPGs from that particular era will probably be overwhelmed and frustrated by the game, while a person who has played plenty of older CRPGs won't, in large due to him/her knowing that you need to put up with a little bit of pain early on for the reward that comes.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Are you sure about that?
Mortuary is a pretty enclosed area, whereas afterwards you get a big city to explore and a more diverse portfolio of characters to interact with.
Joinable companions belong among the biggest strengths of the game, but in the mortuary you only have Morte who, besides being a flying skull, by that time may otherwise seem like your usual sidekick mainly used for comic relief and with no real depth.
The story starts with amnesia, which is a cliché regardless how well the game actually utilizes that and I don´t think one can assess how well the game does that just by playing through mortuary.

This is qualitative, not quantitative difference. To put it bluntly, what you see in the mortuary is a text intensive game, and if you like text intensive games and like the writing that you have been exposed to, as well as the atmosphere of the game and the combat, and if this is the kind of game you like, you'll like it. If you don't, you don't.

Someone might also say that TNO´s story really hits its stride only after meeting Pharod.

This represents about 1/4 of the game, if I remember correctly. This can only be if their expectations of the game somewhat changed and if those expectations had such a strong influence on them, like for the guy in the topic you've linked. To me, this is quite foreign and cannot be explained in a rational way.

As a side note, I distinctly remember some people claiming the combat encounters in Hive are difficult . For those, the mortuary combat encounters probably weren´t indicative enough, or they simply went through the mortuary without engaging in any combat at all.

You need to kill at least one zombie to get the key, so everyone engaged in combat. Also, thugs in the Hive waylay you at every corner, and those are still at very early stages of the game, no more than half an hour into it.

Anyway, only combat encounter in the game that needed tactical approach to beat it was the one with Trias, but this is off-topic, so we'll leave it at that.

Basically, while the mortuary may be a good indicator when it comes to general presentation, it may not be enough when it comes to some concrete qualities which may be crucial to one´s enjoyment.
If you don´t enjoy reading a lot of text in computer games, the experience in the mortuary should be enough for you determine the game isn´t for you.
However, if you enjoy games with good stories, I don´t think you can determine whether PS:T´s story will live up to your standards just by the mortuary experience.
Etc.

If the story is absolutely crucial to your enjoyment to exclusion on all else (including the presentation of the story, i.e. quality of writing, that is important for the momentary enjoynment), then you could be correct (but in that sense, when exactly does the story become "good"? This is difficult to define even for a particular game) . But, there is a good chance that a person enjoying the story will enjoy the presentation (writing and atmosphere), hence enjoying the game in almost every moment.

I would compare it (note that I'm comparing the process of perception, I don't claim that a particular game is or is not art, in fact I agree with Mrowak's statement on the subject) to looking at (or listening to) a part of the work of a complex work of art. When you see or hear a part of a complex work of art, you have a good idea of its style and its appeal. Further exposition can enhance your enjoynment up to the peek of beholding the work of art in its totality, but if you didn't like its style at the beginning you probably wouldn't like it at the end.

If what I´m saying above is true, then mortuary would be by your logic a case of bad design with which I would personally disagree. I like that the game doesn´t open up fully right in the beginning and I like that some of its qualities reveal themselves slowly.

If PS:T was a good game only if the story as the whole is considered and the way the player (who likes adventure / RPG hybrids with good stories, writing and atmosphere) was exposed to it didn't result in a player's enjoyment at the time, that would be an example of bad design (in terms of pacing - there are other aspects of design where PS:T is flawed, but they are not pertinent to this discussion). I, as a player, who among other factors like those features, have enjoyed playing it all the way, supporting the idea that it is well designed. If a player who doesn't enjoy strong elements of PS:T finds the game lacking, it won't be relevant.

Well, just as expected .
Such people do exist though as some posts in this thread, for example, indicate.

For the only one that explained his change of heart, it is obvious that either his initial lack of enjoyment was the result of a significant influence of wrong expectations (as he stated himself), or the guy has deluded himself thanks to peer pressure into thinking that he finally liked the game. In any case, he seems like an individual whose opinion can easily be influenced.

Also, I don´t know whether this was already pointed out here or not, but there´s a whole nuanced continuum between enjoying a game greatly/ being totally hooked right from the start and not enjoying a game at all/ being off the hook shortly after start. This is obviously obvious, but still, some points may become watered down when there´s no place for maybes among the either/ors.

But there is a threshold where the continuum is broken: at the point where alternative forms of spending time become more attractive and that's where a game is abandoned in pursuit of other forms of entertainment.

 

[mrowakus]

Judging by the above it seems to me like you approach this from a somewhat absolute standpoint, whereas I consider this hook stuff more relative, however

Well, it is 青き真実, so until proved otherwise, of course it's the absolute truth (in before self-denial).

A perceived bad hook or lack of thereof may be simply a case of "incompatible" audience, not artist or game developer being a hack or in training.

Good point, but it also may refer to "watered-down audience" - if you try to please everyone, sooner or later you will end up with repetetive, boring, uninspired gameplay that is easy to hype into the heavens, but unbearable to endure.

Or it may be simply the case of game being "bad".

And as I implied above, assessing what kind of audience stuff is for is not straightforward.

My original point was that people don't finish games because there's nothing in them to "hook up" and "hook on". There are instant gratifications that quickly prove to lack any substance - hence people drop them incomplete. One could say that the audience is so watered-down, there's really no audience at all. Everything is solely hype-driven.

Even less so in the case of art, where some artists may even go as far as to define (consciously or not) their intended audience simply as "those who´ll enjoy it" and I don´t find anything wrong with that.

Fair enough, but I will return to this point later on.

Not necessarily, but these may be something that makes up for a "slow beginnings" for me, yes. But we´re not talking about me here, we´re talking about "people".
From your post it seemed that you consider promise of challenging gameplay as the only way to make up for slow beginnings, I claim that from "people´s" perspective pretty much any aspect has some chance to do so.

You see when I say gameplay I mean the "marriage" of all elements of the game - its graphics, art direction, music, theme, story, exploration, combat, characters everything - they are all subservient to gameplay. They all create gameplay - in some ways they are gameplay. As in the novel the mode of narration, the characterisation, the theme, the plot all serve the story, in games those abovesaid elements should serve the gameplay.

I highlighted in some previous posts that one of the faults of contemporary developers is complete inability to make all those ingredients work together. Now when I say that art direction can "hook" me into the gameplay I fully expect that it will one of the parts reinforcing it, not the only thing it works on. You can have the prettiest pictures on earth but when all you do is popping some moles again and again, there's no chance in hell you are going to finish this abomination.

It shouldn´t if they go right way about it, but I think the main point of the beginning should be … the beginning, not necessarily a segment devised in a way that helps players to decide if they´ll enjoy the whole game or not, this info should be primarily delivered "externally" in my opinion, via demos, previews and, secondarily, reviews.
That doesn´t mean I think beginnings have a right to be boring by design, of course .

Agreed.

Also, I don´t know whether this was already pointed out here or not, but there´s a whole nuanced continuum between enjoying a game greatly/ being totally hooked right from the start and not enjoying a game at all/ being off the hook shortly after start. This is obviously obvious, but still, some points may become watered down when there´s no place for maybes among the either/ors.

Shortly after the start is fine with me - but not 2 hours into the damn game.

 

[Vii Zafira]

While Go is obviously a far less complex game from a mechanics standpoint, it requires no less skill to master. But at the same time, you will get a good feel for how deep Go is from just playing it once, while WiF requires a large time investment in order for you to see how deep the game is (most first timers tends to just throw their armies forward in WiF, and they tend to get obliterated while doing so).

Indeed. However, doesn't that in itself brings down the arguments we were trying to bring down?

1. Good strategy games START to get fun after much time has been invested.

Go and Chess are the very definition of great strategy games, yet they are easy to learn and, thus, can be fun from the very first game as long as you aren't playing against someone far above or below your own level of skill.

2. People make the investment to learn chess not because it is fun but because it will be fun once you have mastered it.

Go and Chess are fun from the very first game if you know the rules and your opponent is about the same skill level you are.

3. This is somehow related to a new trend towards instant gratification.

Considering how old Go and Chess are…

4. Games whose rules you can learn in an hour are shallow.

I.E: Go and Chess are shallow. If I have to forward an actual argument against this one I'll go on a rampage.



It can also be argued that given there are such elegantly designed games as Go and Chess available a game that has no more depth yet is much harder to learn is, indeed, designed worse than the simpler ones of equal depth, which was one of our arguments to begin with.

You can argue, then, that this complexity is part of what makes that type of game enjoyable to begin with, and I will give that point to you.

However, then it can be argued that, therefore, that complexity brings pleasure to those playing such a game, and thus those going through the trouble of learning to play such games are enjoying their time with it as that complexity is exactly what they are looking for in entertainment, which destroys the "suffering is necesary for true fun" argument in an explosive paradox, complete with entrails flying and blood spurting everywhere.



And you are my hero. I have gotten to the point where I can clear Embodiment of Scarlet Devil with little effort yet I can't reach Yuyuko with more than a single life in Perfect Cherry Blossom, every single time. Words can't describe how much I hate Youmu, once I got to her without lossing a single life in the entire game, yet when I finally got to Yuyuko I still did with naught but a single one!

Well, it is 青き真実, so until proved otherwise, of course it's the absolute truth (in before self-denial).

Don't cheat! You should also warn them that if by the end of the round all blue text hasn't been denied you win by default and they stop existing, otherwise is really unfair when they go *poof*.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Paradox has become a lot better at making their games accessible, both through a proper tutorial, and also an increased amount of (optional) automatisation. The first Victoria sadly had both a dire manual & tutorial, and the game failed quite miserably at explaining its concepts. Not only did the game hide many of its mechanics, but it also required a good understanding of the political structures that were present during the Victorian era, or at least what the different things meant. I have to admit that when I first played Victoria an empire under the sun, I did not know what Jingoism was (I was still in high school back then, and English is not my native language). All this added up to a rather frustrating initial experience. But there was also a lot of factors that were hard to fully grasp for a new player, like the effects of railroads on your economy, when/if colonization actually is worth it, how the market actually works and so on. There is a lot of blind fumbling going on for a new player to that game.

In that sense, Victoria was a badly designed game. You have gone out of your way as a player to find enjoyment in it, but if you didn't, it would be the fault of the game and the people who designed it. It is also obvious that Paradox is aware of such design failures in their games as their newer games are much more intuitive than the older ones.

You are right in the regard that most player who buys a game like that knows what to expect, and are prepared for the initial learning curve. But imagine a person new to the genre, who picks up a game like this on a whim/recommendation from a friend or magazine. Learning to play a Paradox game is a time and effort investment, one that many are not prepared to make, because they don't know if the effort will be worth it.

The young lady above has addressed this already, by stating that, in the game with complex rules, learning the rules should be fun itself (when it comes to learning by playing). Effort doesn't necessarily imply lack of fun, in fact the most satisfying things in life take effort.
As for a person new to the genre, I would probably recommend playing EU 3 first (out of all Paradox games) for such a person, due to the mildest learning curve. I would not recommend HOI 3 to a person new to grand strategy genre, unless that person is already a fan of other types of strategy games and is interested in the World War 2.

And in the same vein, a game can look very interesting (to a person who likes the genre), give a great first impression, and then turn out to be far less than it seemed to be. Just look at Master of orion 3. As a person who loves turnbased micromanagement, the game looked like heaven. But anyone who has spent a good amount of time with the game can tell you that it is a deeply flawed game (which is not immediately apparent).

That points to one of the reasons why people abandon games. A game can stop being fun at any point if it's badly designed. Once you realized that MOO 3 is bad, you've stopped playing it and that's it. Thankfully, I've followed recommendations and haven't even tried playing it (while I liked MOO 2).

I did not start to really enjoy Jagged Alliance 2 until around the point when I grabbed the first city & mine. It was not until I got a feel for the strategy aspect of the game (and not just the tactical aspect) that the game really grabbed me. It was also around this time that the effects of sound & light became more apparent, and how it could be properly used to your advantage (in the first fight you can just blast your way through things, it did not feel more challenging than a fight from Final Fantasy tactics advance (which is a rather shallow game with a few good ideas)).

Fair enough, you obviously have high expectations of a tactical combat game and that along with your dislike of the visual style made your experience prior to that less enjoying. However, if the main problem was lack of challenge causing lack of fun, you should have put it on Insane difficulty (I'm not there yet and I don't think I'll ever be, I play 1.13 on Expert).

 

[Bostur]

A very interesting and qualified discussion you guys have going.

Indeed. However, doesn't that in itself brings down the arguments we were trying to bring down?

1. Good strategy games START to get fun after much time has been invested.

Go and Chess are the very definition of great strategy games, yet they are easy to learn and, thus, can be fun from the very first game as long as you aren't playing against someone far above or below your own level of skill.

I'd like to challenge your view on chess. In my experience chess only starts to become really fun after the player has acquired some skill, a process that can take months. I haven't played much Go and found it to be a rather dull game, I suspect that is because I haven't played it long enough to 'get' the strategic concept. I think the games you mention are perfect examples of games that require a fairly large time investment before they pay off, but in return they pay off much more than games that are more accessible.

It's a bit of a holy grail to create the game that is "Simple to learn, hard to master". Many claim they do it, but only very few games actually get anywhere near that goal. In practice there is probably some tradeoff between having complexity that creates depth and lasting gameplay, and simplicity that makes the game easy to get into.
A lot of simple board games suffer from the symptom that the game can almost be mathematically solved, or said in another way that a perfect strategy can be defined. It's the same concept that is very apparent in tic-tac-toe, if both players play perfectly the game will always be a draw. Many video games suffer from the same symptom in my experience, very often an optimal approach can be made. This is quite apparent in many fan-made game wikis.

The quest to design a simple yet deep game is a commendable goal, but in general I think we must accept that to achieve depth we also get a fair amount of complexity. And well, complexity can also be fun in itself.

 

[Vii Zafira]

I'd like to challenge your view on chess. In my experience chess only starts to become really fun after the player has acquired some skill, a process that can take months.

I guess it comes down at what do you mean by "really fun".

I did say, myself, that the more you play, and thus the more you understand the flow of the game and the way those mechanics you first learned can be twisted into many maneuvers and tricks, the more you will enjoy the game and the more fun you will have.

It is pretty obvious, I believe, that facing higher level opponents in games involving higher level maneuvers guided by higher level reasoning and hidden behind higher level tricks is going to be more fun, more enjoyable, and more entertaining. No one's disputing that.

That isn't the protestant side's argument, though. their argument is, instead, that deep games begin their relationship with the player by being boring, unenjoyable, and simply not fun, and that it isn't until the player is well into mastering both game and metagame that it will start being a pleasure to play.

That's what they have said. I quote, now,

"Because a lot of the best games, movies, books and so on even these days require some investment before they become enjoyable. If you pirate a game and don't like the first 2 hours you might just drop it."

I.E: If they aren't enjoyable until then, and you aren't going to like them at all until you have invested a given amount of time and effort on them.

And just to make sure no one will accuse me of misunderstanding or taking out of context when the going gets rough:

1. If the stuffie in question began its relationship with the consumer by being enjoyable and then it went on to become more and more enjoyable there would not be a need to invest time and effort before they become enjoyable.

2. If the thingie in question began its relationship with the consumer by being kind of fun and then went on and on to become more fun as it is played and learned those evil pirates would keep playing the game after those initial two hours as they would be having fun to begin with.

So we can easily declare that the other side's point is that the games they are talking about are not enjoyable, at all, until the player has invested enough time and effort on them. We can also declare that this includes any enjoyment to be had from learning the game, as if the pirates were having fun learning the game they wouldn't be leaving to begin with. And this also includes all enjoyment to be had from the social context in which the game is played, as those magical pirates would not stop playing if they were having fun with the people they are playing with as MMOs have shown once and again.

Therefore, their point is that you must suffer deep games before you are rewarded with fun, which is one of the most incredible manifestations of protestant work ethic I have ever seen. However, keep in mind I'm not trying to be mean or insult anyone by saying that. I'm just kind of surprised there are people trying to apply that ethic to having fun, that's all.

Anyway, let's keep going. The charming, fashionable, totally in, and truly adorable side's argument, meanwhile, is that people enjoys those games in some way and thus keeps playing to become better at them. Then, as they keep playing and becoming better at them, they have more and more fun that keeps them going and inspires them to ever greater efforts to become even better and thus have even more fun.

That doesn't mean the game is super duper fun when they first begin playing. Instead, that means the game is kind of fun when they begin playing and learning the game, and thus they say "imagine all the fun I will be having when I am really good at this".

Which takes us to another declaration, now mine.

You can't become really good at something you hate or dislike without an external agent that motivates you instead of enjoyment and fun.

And that's under the descriptor of work, not play.

So the point isn't whether or not a game becomes more enjoyable the more you play and the better you become, but whether you are receiving any enjoyment from playing, from learning, or from being with your friends before mastering them. If you are, then the other side's argument is false.

I think the games you mention are perfect examples of games that require a fairly large time investment before they pay off, but in return they pay off much more than games that are more accessible.

I believe the correct idea would be that those games reward investment, not that they require investment. I.E: You can have fun playing chess without first mastering the game, otherwise there wouldn't be chess clubs at school, old guys playing chess in the park, and family members playing chess when they meet. They have no intention of becoming grand chess masters, yet they play because they enjoy it for one reason or another.

However, that doesn't in itself denies that the closer you are to real mastery the more fun you will have. And yes, I do accept that the fun you will have once you become really good at it is in a completely different level than the fun you had when you started, just like the fun you will have when playing a really hard shmup once you become really good at shmups and are dodging like a butterfly is of a completely different level and nature than the fun you had back when you started and were crashing nose first into colorful bullets the size of a barn.

So I'm just arguing against the elimination of fun, love, and passion from the equation.