Who killed videogames?
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They have to be...
- single-player,
- story-based campaigns
- with a target completion time under 30 hours
- and a Metacritic score above 85%.
This way, I can play 5 to 10 games per calendar year without a dramatic dent on my social or professional lives. I've been doing this for the last 3 years and my annual gameplay time is probably somewhere around 100 hours.
Some tricks:
Convince yourself that all side quests are for losers without better things to do. That may or may not be true, but it's helpful to avoid spending way too much time on any particular game. Aim for the ending credits & then when you get there, stick the game back in its case and put it on the shelf. Don't leave it in your console.
Don't even try the multiplayer versus modes. Just don't do it. Pretend that menu option isn't even there. Those modes are intentionally addicting.
And if you really prefer multiplayer, or if you simply can't avoid that attractive menu option... then set an alarm before you start playing. Press snooze when it goes off, finish your round, and then STOP PLAYING. If the snooze alarm goes off, turn the console off mid-round.
Try to find great co-op games & schedule time with a friend to play them. This lets you overlap human-contact time & gaming time.
I'll have to see if I can cajole some people into it.
Additionally, if I don't personally rate a game as more than '90%' I trade it in.
While I agree that side quests usually are waste, what is the purpose of your playing? Is it because it's fun or because you have to finish? One could argue that the main quest is also a form of side quest and only for losers without better things to do...
If you go for finishing side-quests, you may not feel satisfied until you've finished them all. That can take considerably longer and be considerably less worth-while than the main game. (e.g. saving princess and defeating nemesis vs. collect all 500 random blue hidden items. Both fun, one takes far less time, and is more "worthwhile".)
Of course, that's quite a different thing to timesinks like "find all 400 hidden widgets" which can get pretty tedious...
Some games explain story elements in the side quests, for example. Others add additional gameplay experiences. When I buy a game, I buy it to enjoy it, not so I can ignore 50-75% of it, and as long as I'm enjoying the game (rather than playing purely because I feel I'm missing out on something, even though its not enjoyable), I want to get the most out of it. Especially if it was an expensive game (though I normally only buy games on offer).
Besides, most games have terrible endings, so its more about the journey (the quest, the side quests) than the destination (ending credits).
Its all about fun and enjoyment. Plying a game when you don't enjoy it is stupid. Also, if you have X amount of time to play games, then playing for longer than X is obviously bad, regardless of if you enjoy it or not, but the same is true for watching TV, playing sports etc etc. Everything in life must be balanced.
With time, It was becoming more and more difficult to find innovation. Until a point in which I mostly lost interest. Except for some occasional incredibly polished games based on established gameplay mechanics, or the rare little innovations that pop up somewhere.
I think that what may open up the space for innovations again, are new interface paradigms, like immersive virtual reality, or AI. What stops these innovations from being realized, are non-viable budget requirements, and a market flooded with worthless games.
There has been a huge indie golden age in recent times & I'd argue we never had it as good as now in terms of innovative games.
Batman, Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War, Splinter Cell, LA Noire, Assassin's Creed, GTA, Dead Space, Bastion, Red Dead Redemption, Shadow Complex, Splosion Man, Braid
- Half-Life Series
- BioShock Series
- Fallout Series
- Deus Ex Series
- Elder Scrolls Series
Those are the ones that immediately jump to mind. I'd hate to have missed those. There are plenty of awful games out there, but there are also some wonderful storytellers advancing the field first mapped out by games like zork.
I'm not a big fan on limiting game play in this way, but I also recognize that different things work (or don't) for different people.
In related news:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1983234,00.htm...
South Korea Cracks Down on Gaming Addiction
He was pleased last week when the government ordered what
it calls a "nighttime shutdown" for gamers: the Ministry
of Culture, Sports and Tourism directed the operators of
the three most popular games to block people under age 18
from playing games between midnight and 8 a.m. starting in
September. Another rule will significantly slow down the
Internet connections of young players if they engage for
too many hours into the night, rendering the more
graphics-intensive games unplayable, and several other
bills are pending in the National Assembly that could
restrict kids' gaming habits even further. "It's a great
idea," says Yoon. "Video-game addiction is having bad
effects on our generation. The kids have to study and grow
up eventually."Studying addiction is just as much of a problem in South Korea as gaming addiction is. South Korean children spend a ridiculously high amount of time in class, most of it used very inefficiently. Taking away what scant leisure time the children have and devoting it to more studying is going to have a net negative effect, not a net positive one.
Why are these kids being allowed to play games at those hours? Sounds like bad parenting to me.
There are people who spend vast amounts of time watching, training for, and playing games like football. I haven't ever heard someone say that is unhealthy and a bad thing, even if football is all they ever talk about and use their free time for. Where is the boundary between Football, Chess, D&D, SC2, Quake, and WoW? When does it transition from a healthy interest to a waste of life? Why is the line drawn there?
That's where the line is drawn.
This is the first media-neutral definition of games that are worth/aren't worth playing obsessively that I've seen, and it actually makes some sense.
I had friends that spent 2 hours a night, saturday morning and sunday morning playing organized football (soccer). Their grades were always low because they rarely completed the assigned homework. They had no social life in football season, literally no social life. I had a friend who would be grounded if he got an after school detention, because it meant he missed an evening practice. He didn't get punished because he'd done wrong, he got punished because his dad wanted him playing sports.
I played video games. I had lots of free time to socialise with friends, my grades were always excellent. Me and my friends would get together for gaming parties, 8-player C&C games, Halo 4 player deathmatch tournaments, etc. I spent most of my time interacting with people. Even when I was at home playing games, half the time I was online with my high school friends.
Why is there a line drawn in allowing parents to forcibly confine their children into organized sports because a very slim minority that don't get serious injuries and manage to play in the top 5 percentile MAY be scouted and then MAY get picked to play for a professional team. If not, they're just a loser that spent way too much time playing a game and achieved nothing.
At least video gamers tend to lead a life because they need money to buy games.
It may be true that video games are addictive, but so are cigarettes and alcohol and the majority of addicts lead normal productive lives because these minorly addictive substances require money. This money requirement means people work, which mean people socialize.
Most gamers I knew as a kid had paper routes or mowed lawns for money. Why? Because money bought games. The kids playing sports didn't have paper routes, they didn't have the time. They never did a job until they graduated highschool.
Myself at 15 was working as a video game reviewer. It was a job that gave me video games.
If you fail to get into the NFL, you can at least coach. No one is going to pay you to coach them Halo.
Football intuitively seems healthy, whereas Farmville seems perverse and almost purely destructive.
We can safely say that Farmville is addictive because it is designed to be addictive, and succeeds at invoking addictive behaviors. People who play football/watch football don't seem to do so addictively.
Come on, are you being serious? Are you trolling?
I completely agree, which is why I included it!
My personal experience has been that Chess is treated in much the same way. Sure, they might be happier with that person having picked Football, but nobody would ever call them addicted to Chess.
I agree that Farmville is an abomination; I disagree with calling it addictive. Sure, you can demonstrate that people will abuse games (I'm unsure about Farmville, but this certainly applies to ones like WoW) to avoid real life and to make themselves feel better. Taking away their computer may result in them exhibiting withdrawal symptoms such as irritability. The same is true of movies, TV programs, books, computer programming, and almost any sort of entertainment.
People can play games for many different reasons. A few:
- casual, healthy entertainment
- competition, like regular sports sans muscles
- a way to avoid dealing with life
The 3rd is a problem, but is not exclusive to games, and is generally ignored if you use something like books. That said, many video games are perfect for being used for avoiding life; IMO due to the easy immersion, repetitive interaction, and satisfying rewards.
That said, while I understand the desire to play as many different games as you can in your limited time. Some of us prefer to spend less money or effort looking for games and really savor those that have long playtimes and replay ability.
By this, what I really mean is: when someone finally gets sick of Farmville, is he going to move on to the next Farmville, or is he burned out on the genre for good? Seems like there should be a "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" dynamic at work with players of these games. Which would mean that the genre is destined for oversaturation and burnout, and that there will be diminishing returns awaiting any marginal entrants into the field.
I'm sure the genre, as a whole, is still growing by leaps and bounds. But do we have any leading indicators about the playerbase? Such as their likelihood to be investing in more than one time-sinkey social game at a time? Or their likelihood to pick up another after quitting the first?
I'm not wishing for the demise of the genre, but rather, am hoping that it'll hit a plateau from which it will be forced to innovate, experiment, and evolve. Seems to me that the cold, reductionist design philosophy of addiction-by-the-numbers should eventually dig its own grave in the form of mass player burnout on games produced as such. Then again, that's never happened with casinos. So this may be woefully naive thinking on my part.
I probably spent as much time playing the Ultimas, King's Quests etc as any hardcore addict spent on whatevervilles. Probably not as much money on a single game but certainly 1000s over the years.
As have I, though certainly without the rote compulsion of a ____ville player. (Granted, I have watched friends and relatives zombified by World of Warcraft, and despite the surface layer of complexity separating it from ____ville, it's got the same dynamics at play).
Call me nuts, but whenever I play a game, I'm at least having fun playing it. There may be timesinky aspects to it, and I may play more than a healthy amount, but it's not a morphine drip into a virtual IV hooked through my controller and into my arm. I believe there's a difference between most games and ____ville-type games, and that the difference is felt, at least subconsciously, by the player of the latter. He knows he's getting conned, but he doesn't care. My question is whether or not that dynamic can last indefinitely.
IMO farmville is its (and its unofficial predecessor, Diablo) direct evolutionary successor - the same stuff, refined to its essence.
Surprising that the next evolutionary step in that dynasty (the slot machine) came first!
It's not that you're nuts, it's that you're mistakenly assuming the other people don't enjoy these games. It's us who don't like the games they play, not them.
I was in college (can't remember which year, probably my junior year) and my roommates and I were all hooked on Diablo II. So were our friends across the hall. We'd often play together as a group on the LAN, but we also enjoyed playing independently. We all played on headphones so as to not have the sounds of several simultaneous games clashing.
One afternoon, we were all playing simultaneously but independently. I decided to take a break, paused my game, removed my headphones, and stood up. Then I heard it: the sounds of rapid clicking coming from my roommates' mouses (and the mouses of the guys across the hall--we usually kept our doors open). I had decided to take a break right then because I had just leveled up, and that fact combined with the sound of the clicking gave me a moment of clarity: the whole game consisted of me clicking a mouse as fast as I could in order to make an arbitrary number (experience points) go up. Everything else is just embellishment. The fundamentals are: you click the mouse, the number goes up.
I felt like one of those lab rats or monkeys that has two buttons: one that delivers a serving of food, and another that stimulates its pleasure centers. They starve to death because they neglect the food button in favor of the pleasure button. Except I was worse, in a way: I wasn't getting a jolt to my pleasure centers, I was just watching a meaningless number get higher. Of course, I wasn't completely neglecting my well-being, either, but I was wasting a lot of time that could have been spent on more rewarding pursuits.
I uninstalled the game immediately and gave it away as fast as I could. I didn't give up video games, because not all games are such complete wastes of time, but ever since then I have set the bar very high for any game I play (similar to the post by snprbob86 about strict selection criteria). I'm especially watchful for signs that a game is just an exercise in "repeat simple task, increment arbitrary number."
My initial policy was to look for old games that had been so successful that they were re-released in new bargain versions. For example, my senior year I bought a jewel-case pack of Fallout and Fallout II. Basically, my thought process was: If it's so good that they're still pressing new CDs, I'll give it a try. Of course, I still had to apply my "repeat simple action, increment arbitrary number" filter, because Diablo and Diablo II were released in a similar way.
I still generally only play older games. It makes it easier to tell the good from the bad (plenty of reviews) and it saves me money. EDIT: Another advantage of old games is that when you buy a stinker (and you will, no matter how picky you are, occasionally buy a game that turns out to be no fun at all), you don't feel the same pressure to finish the game anyway that you might feel if you had dropped $40+ on a brand new title.
After college I removed the Windows partition from my computer and stopped dual-booting, so ever since then I've only played games that I can run on Linux. I prefer games that actually have Linux versions, but I run plenty of stuff on dosbox and even some stuff on wine. I played a lot of Neverwinter Nights: it has an amazing community that still produces new modules even today. I'm also a big fan of Descent (all three versions). For a long time, my main criteria was only to pick games that really resonated with my imagination (and, of course, apply my filter to avoid exercises in "incrementing the number"). For example, I'm a sucker for steampunk so I picked up Arcanum, and it was excellent. I couldn't get it to run on Wine, but I wanted to play it so badly that I set up Windows on VirtualBox so I could play it.
I like first-person shooters, and find that they're not as prone to the "incrementing" problem; ditto for strategy games. Story-driven games are generally immune to that problem, but can fall prey to a different problem: excessive linearity (i.e. you might as well just read a book). About four years ago I went on a kick where I re-played a bunch of old Sierra adventure games on ScummVM. I think that there are some indie developers out there now making similar games.
We had our first kid three and a half years ago, and as a result I've had to change my gaming habits yet again (work also got way busier at about the same time, so it's not just the kids). I now prefer games that I can play for short spurts. I was playing QuakeLive for a while, but got bored with it eventually (and all the trash talk didn't help). I re-discovered nethack (I still suck at it, but that doesn't make it any less fun), and you can't go wrong with minecraft. I played Steambirds on Android, and that was a lot of fun but didn't last long. Also on Android I've found a couple of pretty good games that remind me of "Incredible Machine:" "Clever Contraption" and "Electric Box."
EDIT: I forgot to mention Wii! There are a lot of Wii games that are just plain crap, but there are a few real gems. Wii Sports Resort is simplistic but still lots of fun, and fits great with my "short spurts" approach. It's also something my wife and I can enjoy together with our eldest. The only really "serious" game I've enjoyed on the Wii was Red Steel II (don't play the first one--it was awful!).
If you want to play an absolute gem of a game, go grab Cave Story. It's free, and it's "fun", in the most distilled form.
It's one of those games that makes you wish you could wipe your memory --- just to re-play it again for the first time.
http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=416
Why did Pixel make this game? Like, why the fuck? The amount of loving attention to detail that went into this game indicates that the man, beyond a shadow of a doubt, possesses the mental fortitude befitting a researcher in a facility in Antarctica, delving into the permafrost, seeking the Cure For All Cancers. Why did Pixel bother making a videogame, when God had given him this situational opportunity to Literally Save The World? At the very least, the man could have sought out the Ultimate Toothbrushing Solution — a three-second-a-day quick rinse that eliminates the need to brush your teeth, while also keeping them sparkling white. (It’d be like those antibacterial hand-wash-lotion things, only for your mouth.) Instead, he made a videogame.
I know around '07 there was a pretty large modding community making some real nice mods. I'm pretty sure it must be around still.
Also, Pixel (the creator of Cave Story) even made this program that lets you compose songs. It's a kind of tracker, but it's real good for some types of video game music, it's called PxTone.
For the first section or so, I didn't think it was all that fun, but after you get into it a bit, it gets pretty good.
On this site we love (ohmygoddowloveit), AB Testing, metrics tracking and all that goes along with it.
"Games getting more addictive" is very similar to "We used Abingo and this is what got the most responses."
I'm not saying this is bad so much as it doesn't represent everything and that there is a point between pandering to people and providing a service.
A/B testing is best used as sandpaper, to round off sharp corners, if you just let evolution guide your product with a free hand you are just as likely to end up with a giraffe as with a black mamba.
Giraffes vs Mambas
Good insight. People cry foul when they perceive a service to have gone too far in the direction of pandering. And I feel like products that tend toward that end up seeming empty and derivative. There's a certain level of non-imagination that things that were extensively focus group tested seems to elicit. You can almost perceive how safe they are trying to be.
And the terrible thing is that they succeed at it.
It's not a popular opinion, but I'd be more interested in seeing products that were not as reliant on A/B testing. I'd prefer to see more iterative approaches taken. Users are saddled with a certain mental model about how things work, and may not be able to think clearly enough about the problem to realize there's a better way to do things...if we forget about all of we think we should know.
But I actually think many game genres are getting less addictive. It used to be that distribution of games was so expensive that there was little money to be made without catering to the hardcore gamers (I use that loaded term to mean someone who is willing to spend huge amounts of time on a game)--so games often took forever to complete and were designed to be most fun if played in 5-hour chunks.
Now, with internet distribution and marketing, some indie game designer can design smaller games and sell them for $10. So there's a place in the market for smart games designed to be played in less time.
And, unlike the pusher-addict economics of social games, the low cost of distribution is win-win and not going away. Indeed, as it becomes easier and easier for a small team or single developer to make good games, this trend should only accelerate.
TF2 and Heroes of Newerth both became free in order to sell more premium "can't wait" for it goods.
Valve even has job listings for economists and psychologists now.
*Many games that have gone F2P (in a generally benign way) report increasing revenues, e.g., Lord of the Rings Online, D&D Online, etc.
Since they made it free and added a thousand new items, there are vastly more new (less skilled) players, many games are spammed in both text and voice chat with offers to trade, and every game is a circus act of ridiculous hats.
With the exception of private clan servers, there's really no way to make sure you're joining a game with focused and skillful players.
* The hats break the usability of the game: characters used to have very easily distinguished silhouettes. Now it is harder to tell what is going on in the game.
* The hats visually and thematically damage a game that once had very strong art-direction.
* The variations in weapons makes the game harder for them to balance and harder for the player to find an optimal strategy.
* Allowing players to individualize their avatar encourages people to devalue the team aspects of the game.
It's still fun, but I want to play in classic mode.
Other than the (rather common) offers of trade from people wanting my earbuds [1], I'm finding that I'm coming across players who are as skilled or more skilled than I am. I'm actually learning how to better play the game.
My enjoyment of the game has increased since TF2 went free to play.
[1] http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate/earbuds/ My response to offers of trade for my earbuds is to ask for $600 in return, which is about the cost of a new mac mini.
Valve is now a platform provider, more than an actual game company, so they need to understand these things.
"We need to hire an economist, because we keep bumping up into these issues. You're starting to look at weird issues like currency and inflation and productivity and asset values and liquidity of asset categories. We just wish we were smarter about this stuff. We're reading frantically. We're brushing up, and all we're doing is convincing ourselves that we're more stupid. Half the time people are saying, oh, well, illiquid assets inherently have a penalty, so this argues for trade-ability, that we're essentially becoming a Russian currency model in the 1970s. Everybody races off to try to read papers on the implications of that."
[1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-25-valves-gabe-new...
It is amazing to think of the thought & effort that goes into making a title as infuriatingly awful (yet unarguably profitable) as some of these ville/hotel/zoo grinding games.
I bet someone somewhere is laughing & twirling their moustache.
2 limitation that casinos have right now is that they are only allowed to lure in people over the age of 21, and that it takes time and work to travel to one.
These "games" are trying to put a real-life, genuine casino in the pocket of every man, woman and child and get them hooked. Slot machine and roulette tables are being replaced by imaginary farms and petting zoos.
Subscription brings you more maps.
Oh shall I mention, that Quake doesn't make enough money ?
I played Upgrade Complete until the abrupt ending. I found I felt annoyed that the game was over, and asked myself why. I realized all the playing of the game I had just done was pointless number-increasing – I think conveying that message is the point of Upgrade Complete. That inspired me avoid games with too much grinding and not enough more interesting parts like puzzles or story, and to use cheats whenever possible to skip the grinding.
The really amusing bit to me is that not only are they bald-facedly mocking this addiction-oriented gameplay, they are simultaneously self-referentially some of the most fun games in that genre.
WHY do people pay money for virtual goods? WHY do people assault friends with requests they know are annoying? WHY do people play games that aren't fun? The answer is status. From the outside looking in, we might think people spending real money within these games are crazy. But from the inside, there is a different game with different rules. And the players of theses game have accepted these rules. It may seem ridiculous to outsiders, but within the game there are sometimes millions of other players who create a culture of who and what is "good" or "bad". So just like in real life, "average" people are concerned with nothing more than accumulating crap and generating envy; being "good" at the game.
The model for any Facebook game is easy: Provide a platform where people are able to quantitatively measure their value versus other people. Provide a clear means to increase that value. Sell them the means, and do it for $1 at a time. For most people, that's easier than putting a new BMW in the driveway for your neighbors to oggle.
So how would one describe DF in this framework?
And yet: There is just so much depth in DF that if you can play it at all, there is always something interesting to do, build, explore... I've pulled all-nighters playing it, trying to build the next coolest thing. With each season the game throws new triumphs and failures at you. It's not a social game, but the dwarves are individualized to the point that you might start empathizing with them.
Disclaimer: I work for a social games company.
EDIT: This may have been what I was talking about (though it's not actually a statement by Tarn): http://www.industrygamers.com/news/braid-creator-finds-socia...
“Some kinds of games are very clearly made [to give something] – like Dwarf Fortress is definitely trying to give the players something and not exploit players. That’s very obvious to me in the way that it’s made. [Most of these social games are] the opposite of that,” explained Blow. “It’s trying to take the maximum amount while trying to give the minimum amount. So that’s an ethics of game design question. To me it doesn’t matter if people feel like they’re having fun or feel like they want to play the game, because the designers know what they’re doing.”
It reminds me of how I used to like movies and film, until I started noticing that money was changing hands to put product placements in them. Nothing ruins a move for me like the characters stating a brand advertising slogan or drinking from containers strategically positioned to display the label. It's more than just feeling cheated about having paid for the ticked and ending up watching advertising. It's the knowledge that the producer/director wasn't making the movie to be the best it could be.
The nuances of creating a social free to play game go far beyond this simplistic narrative. A compelling user experience that engages non-paying users and convinces some players to convert is WAY more challenging than most people understand. ESPECIALLY if you care about your community.
The tools you HAVE to use are based on metrics and data. But you don't sacrifice fun. In the end you are still selling fun. If it isn't fun, people won't PLAY it...
In the end though... it isn't art, it's all just entertainment.
In the end though... it isn't art, it's all
just entertainment.
The whole point of this article is that yes they do, and yes you can extract money from them anyway.
My biggest take-away from the article was that people who make traditional video games try to make more of the sort of games they themselves would like to play and people who make social games are trying to make money from a group of people they probably don't see themselves belonging in.
So how does Blizzard extract more money from you? They balance the game, update it frequently, and then don't charge you. And they hope your experience was so great that next time a Blizzard game is released you will know that it's a high quality game that will be supported for years.
No gimmicks, no shortcuts, just gameplay.
Because World of Warcraft.
I gave it an honest try, and it's certainly exciting, but once I found myself having made a huge stack of flash cards to study the relationships between unit types it started to feel a bit too much like work. Sort of the opposite of the "hook you slowly" dynamic.
Anyone else have this experience?
So how does Blizzard extract more money from you?
Expansion packs. Wings of Liberty is just the first campaign of Starcraft II.
Even if it is $180 or whatever, I think 60 hours of one of the best RTS campaigns ever, as well as the best multiplayer RTS (and even if you disagree with the quality of the game, the community still trounces any other ones) is well worth it.
I also think the game is worth the $120-$180, and I definitely plan on buying the remaining two pieces.
In fact, Starcraft 2 is considered a bit of a failure monetarily because most players do not pay monthly(not counting some markets like Russia).
Sure, there are two expansions incoming (which Activision will have to figure out a way to make multiplayer players to pay for).
So, while one can argue that at mid-level Blizzard is still the old commitment to quality gameplay, the high level management could care less about quality of the game.
Unfortunately, when the two clash, lower level has to make compromises to live with the demands of the higher-ups.
Also, it's quite easy to play video games and still have time to learn things and further your skills for your career. I'm a dad, a gamer, and a programmer, and I love it.
It puts them right back into a safe world where if the follow the rules they get rewarded.
At the same time I don't think there is a need to worry about the gaming industry being overtaken with that dirt - indie games have really been keeping my hope up with video games as a creative outlet. Lots of really wonderful stuff and wonderful people behind the works - here are some nice sites for finding such games.
Now I play 5 year old games with a GPU integrated into my CPU. And since I'm pretty casual as a gamer (a few times a month), I'm pretty content.
If it doesn't contribute to interpersonal, personal, or societial good, I don't want to play it. I've gotten my 'video game' fix by playing pen and paper RPGs and meeting new people.
These days, I read history books for my "long-term amusement" and wouldn't mind playing video games with long-distance family (they don't play though).
Remember Steve Yegge's talk this summer. Please, do something more uplifting than incrementing a digital counter.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110918144955.ht...
However, I do still find games on both my iPhone/iPad combo and on console. Humble Bundle's games are great too.
Just picked up a copy of Rage last night...good stuff. And though I find WoW slightly addicting, it's still a great one.
The gist being that games like Farmville are A/B tested to maximize addictiveness and profit, rather than maximizing fun.