Rampant Games - the Hardcore Gamer's Manifesto

Originally Posted by Menigal
To me that's just bad game design/lazy padding. If I ever have to stop playing, either by dying, having to do something, or running into a game-stopping bug, and later replay a lengthy section of the game soley because of a ludicrous save system, then I usually stop playing the game. I know this, so if I if know a game has a system like this, I generally don't spend my money on it.

If someone thinks a game is "too easy" or "too short" if they can save whenever they feel like it, then they can restrict their saves however they want. My time's too valuable to me to play through the same 10 minutes of game again because I died or had to go help my wife with something, though.

I know it sounds annoying as hell, but it really works for Hard Reset. It sort of hearkens back to those 8-bit NES games we grew up playing in the 1980s.

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
It's a requirement for some engines / toolsets / publishers that their logos have to be unskippable for X seconds. It's part of the contract. No joke.

Sounds reasonable, although it also sounds (in my ears) like a "gefundenes Fressen" (a found occation, or something like that; it's difficult to translate) for conspiracy theorists.

Thinking this further, I'd expect a contract detail claiming that someone' own logo display time should not be longer than someone else's (a tool provider's, for example) logo display time.

People tend towards this stuff, especially lawyers.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer

12) Keep the world's environment as logical (according to the world's rules or at least according to common sense) as possible and don't create situations with "parachuting enemies" [like in Dragon Age 2] where the gamer is left wondering where they all come from ? Or why we didn't kill the boss but only his/her 5th body incarnation ?

Very good one.
I hate it when the game breaks against its own logic.
Its a massive immersion killer.

C

11) In addition to keeping the cut-scenes short, make them easy to pause, review, or at least check out the summary and critical exposition / explanations revealed in the scene. Because when the wife enters the room and needs to talk, she does like having to wait until the cut-scene is over.

11 above is a big one for me. I'd like to edit it to also include the following:

In addition, include a text box where current in-game events and dialog are recorded for later review. It is an axiom of the universe that the wife ALWAYS walks in at a critical moment, demands my full attention, and when I return my focus to the game I have missed some kind of critical information.

The cherry on top is that my last save was from 20 minutes ago so if I want to know what I missed I will have to load that save game. And if I do load that save game, chances are that by the time I get to the moment I had missed earlier, my wife will be back, again, at that very moment, demanding my full attention.

I'm fairly sure all wives have built in alarms that light up and flash red like a police car whenever husbands are at a point in a game that is un-interruptable because the amount of times my wife demands my full attention at those specific points in time is downright uncanny.

Wives interrupting uninteruptable moments in a game really MAKES ME MAD!

1) No pandering to casual gaming stereotypes. No gratuitous kittens or ‘cute’ cuddly characters.

I may be misreading it but gratuitous cuteness has nothing to do with pandering to casual tastes and stereotypes, as a quick glance to Death Smiles, Subterranean Animism, Gundemonium Recollection, or Trouble Witches can show. I doubt they were planning on making games more hardcore than those mentioned, yet all of the examples belong to the genre commonly referred as cute 'em up, which can be described as shoot 'em ups with everything turned so gratuitously cute as possible.

Or see Etrian Odyssey, 7th Dragon, and Labyrinth of Touhou for examples in the role playing game genre.

It's all good except replace the hardcore with casual.

30 minutes of gaming time? save anywhere? no grind ?

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
It's all good except replace the hardcore with casual.

30 minutes of gaming time? save anywhere? no grind ?

That´s because in the articles it´s actually called "bite-sized hardcore manifesto".
As I understand it, there are two main elements which sorta define "hardcore" in regards to computer games - demands on time and demands on intellect/skill - and "bite-sized" appears to mean games which retain the latter while cut away the former.
The very first point is pretty stupid though.

O, haha I thought it was the list that was bite sized…. o well, makes sense in that case

Hardcore gamers enjoy games that are

1) interesting
2) fun
3) challenging
4) ergonomic
5) inventive
6) surprising
7) intelligent
8) bug-free
9) resourceful
10) have choices with consequences



Special case crpg:

For cooking a crpg you need:

00) making choices with consequences, perhaps complex moral choices
01) character development / many stats with an impact on the game
02) finding / buying / selling lots of different equipment (unique items, rare items)
03) a good nonlinear story - interesting main quest
04) great challenging dungeons / locked doors / chests / traps
05) riddles / hard too find secrets, items / mysteries
06) lots of fun, humor
07) cool spells
08) lots of conversation, conversation options to solve quests and avoid combat
09) (round based) interesting challenging combat with many options
10) memorable interesting NPCs with a background
11) NPCs with a schedule
12) fantasy world with conflicts to solve
13) different races (groups, guilds) with various occupations
14) chance of winning prizes, medals, houses, ranks …
15) deadly cool arch-enemies
16) making weapons and spells
17) many (not necessary) side-quests
18) much world interaction / manipulation / interactive surroundings
19) eastereggs
20) free world, setting borders with harder to beat enemies and hard to find items (keys), only.
21) good (non breakable) economy model
22) many different groups with different goals -> choose your friends and enemies
23) for party crpgs: interesting (funny) dialogs with your (intelligent) partners
24) surprises and twists, more than one story path
25) …Scantly clad vixens

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
11 above is a big one for me. I'd like to edit it to also include the following:

In addition, include a text box where current in-game events and dialog are recorded for later review. It is an axiom of the universe that the wife ALWAYS walks in at a critical moment, demands my full attention, and when I return my focus to the game I have missed some kind of critical information.

The cherry on top is that my last save was from 20 minutes ago so if I want to know what I missed I will have to load that save game. And if I do load that save game, chances are that by the time I get to the moment I had missed earlier, my wife will be back, again, at that very moment, demanding my full attention.

I'm fairly sure all wives have built in alarms that light up and flash red like a police car whenever husbands are at a point in a game that is un-interruptable because the amount of times my wife demands my full attention at those specific points in time is downright uncanny.

Wives interrupting uninteruptable moments in a game really MAKES ME MAD!

Absolutely SPOT ON!! Couldn't have said it better myself. And on the rare occasions when that doesn't happen, the phone usually rings!!

F10 ftw