“GothicGothicness“ said:
After reading a lot of the comments here, it doesn't surprise me most games out there are fairly shallow instant satisfication kind of games, which takes about 1 hour to master their systems.
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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.
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In the interest of brevity, irrelevant opinions of the „this is why we cannot have nice things“ kind and personal attacks have been omitted from the quote.
There is difference between grasping the basic functions of the system and mastering all its aspects, but even basic functions should result in the player getting intrigued by the gameplay and starting to enjoy the game. This is what well designed system and user interface should accomplish. As the game progresses, challenge should be increasing, requiring the player to resort to more advanced tactics, supported by the system.
Let's talk a concrete example, of Jagged Alliance 2.
Jagged Alliance 2 is in my opinion one of the best games ever made. It is also known as one of the most challenging tactical combat games, especially with 1.13 community mod.
After starting the game and choosing basic options, the player is presented with two video sequences establishing basic plot and motivation for the player character. Then the player is presented with a laptop – like strategic interface, where he can hire mercenaries, create his own mercenary character(s), and access further information about the situation (recon reports and emails) if necessary. Screens for hiring mercenaries and creating mercenaries show that different mercenaries with different abilities and different character traits. Hireable mercenaries seem like distinct personalities from the start. After hiring the mercenaries and shutting down the laptop, the player is presented with the strategic screen showing the map of Arulco. Strategic orders can be given on the screen and tactical combat can be entered from it.
After entering the tactical combat screen, the player has already been exposed to the general atmosphere of the game. In the tactical combat screen, the player is exposed to the tactical interface and to an actual conflict with the enemy forces. While the initial conflict is quite easy and is over quickly, through it the player is familiarized with the basics of combat and his familiarity with the atmosphere (with mercenary comments) increases. At the end of the initial conflict, the player knows the user interface, knows the atmosphere of the game and knows the basic features of the gameplay. This is more than enough for the player to decide whether this game interests him or not, and doesn't take much time.
Completely mastering the gameplay, naturally, takes time and experience (otherwise there would be no challenge). Maintaining the challenge throught the game is another task that a game designer needs to accomplish to motivate the player to complete the game.
Jagged Alliance 2 is an example of a well designed challenging tactical combat game, which quickly informs the player what kind of the game it is and the fun starts immediately and never ceases until the game is finished.
An example from another end of the RPG spectrum has already been given: Planescape: Torment. For a more extreme narrative oriented example, one can mention the adventure game Dreamfall. That is the game where practically all the gameplay is in the form of the narrative. This is also clearly conveyed in the opening part of the game: the player is presented with a strong story with very low interactivity and no challenge from the start. However, the story is presented well enough that, assuming that the player enjoys that kind of game, grabs and won't let go.
One has to take into account the additional fact, that the player probably has some external knowledge about the game before, and can make an informed guess, based on similar good games, of how much time should he should invest to become familiar with the game enough to enjoy it (for a well designed game, the upper limit the time spent familiarizing the player with the user interface, which reveals the importance of well designed user interface). For some games it can be shorter than 15 minutes, for some it may take more, but no well designed single player computer game takes hours of tedium before suddenly becoming fun.
So far not a single counterexample of a game that is boring at the start and magically becomes a good game at a certain later portion has been given, and even if it was given, it would still be an example of bad design.
I also disagree about card-games, chess and other such a things! People make an investment to learn it because they know it'll get fun later on.
First of all, the mass appeal of chess is that its rules are very simple and can be learned instantly, and yet those simple rules lead to a huge number of tactical options. That means that fun can be had at any level, as long as the opponents' skill is comparable. I remember having the same kind of fun (and sometimes the same kind of frustration that comes with loss) playing chess against my grandfather and father at a very young age as I had playing against ranked players in my later years. You don't need to be Kasparov to enjoy it.
Second of all, and this has already been mentioned, single player computer games are radically different experience to social multiplayer games.
This can be applied for a lot of things, people spend time practicing they don't enjoy because they know it is going to be fun later on.
No, this only applies to goal related activities: competition and work.
“Alrik Fassbauer“ said:
The disagreement here comes from partial misintepretation of what I wrote. My claim was only that the game, as partly visual medium, can convey the atmosphere much more quickly than a book. It may take you 15 minutes to read the opening chapter of the book, while in a visual medium the same information can be presented in a few minutes. I agree with you that a good book, with the use of imagination, can more often than not do it in a better way, but that is not pertinent (we can know that there exist the games that convey the atmosphere well and the existence of related books that may do it better is not relevant to the claim). What is important to consider is an additional aspect of games with respect to books: gameplay.
mrowakus said:
While I agree with your saying that books are a different medium than games I think it still pays to draw parrallels between them both.
For instance in the "learning of the rules" of a game one could see "learning of the rules" of a story - how is it structured? Why is it structured in this way? Does this peculiar mode of narration serve any purpose? Similarly games, require some experimentation - what you can/cannot do? Where can you go? Who can you interact with? What does this button serve for? etc.
Having said that, there always needs to be a 'hook' - regardless of whether we are talking about a novel, film or video game. People need something to intrigue them, draw their attention, inspire them, make them look forward to next occurence. Slow beginnings are ok, provided that there's expectation or promise of some dramatic event, or - in case of games - some reasonably challenging gameplay.
I agree with that, good books can show how to intrigue the player in terms of story. Positive examples are useful in this case, but nature of the game medium precludes the transferability of examples of slowly developing books to the medium of games (the fact that books take longer to set up the world by the virtue of reading being a slow process).
A beginning part of the book has to accomplish the task of defining the „world“ and important characters of the book, while setting up the plot. An beginning part of the game, in addition to that, has to expose the user to the preferably intuitive interface and, most importantly, to the basics of gameplay. Exposing the user to actual gameplay is what takes the most time and effort, as the atmosphere and the story sort of come along for a ride due to the nature of the medium.
As for the rest of the post, I'm in almost complete agreement. There is also the additional unfortunate fact that modern games fail even in particular departments, with badly written formulaic stories and badly designed systems.
To sum up, what the well designed single player computer game has to offer, in addition to well implemented specific components of the game is:
- an introductory part that efficiently and quickly exposes the player to the atmosphere, the user interface and the gameplay
- a cohesive game (atmosphere + story + gameplay)
- progression in challenge
- frequent incentives and rewards for the player
If the game fails to provide that, there is a good chance that it will arrive at the point where the player is no longer having enough fun (meaning the player has better alternative use of free time) and will be abandoned.
