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Comment by RetroTechie | Hacker News Reader

Like books, text-based games leave much to the player's imagination. There's no (or very limited) graphics, and the player's mind fills in the gaps.

Which stimulates player's creativity, and makes the game a unique experience to each player.

But there's a fine line between exploiting this successfully, and relying on it too much - at which point players get bored.

Modern games rely much less on this. At least not for how the environment looks. Instead machine works hard to present a semi-realistic environment. Enough to "suspend disbelief" anyway.

This lowers the bar for casual players to get into a game. But at the same time, makes for a (somewhat) more passive experience. You explore a pre-designed environment vs. create a good part of it yourself.

Exception might be 'builder' style games like survival games, some RTS / RPGs & of course Minecraft.

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> This lowers the bar for casual players to get into a game. But at the same time, makes for a (somewhat) more passive experience. You explore a pre-designed environment vs. create a good part of it yourself.

I think this is less about aesthetics and more about directed versus undirected gameplay. Mainstream/AAA modern games more or less tell you exactly what to do and exactly where to do it, which makes for a significantly more passive experience as you don't need to think at all to progress.

An example is if you played chess with an AI telling you what moves to make. The player playing without thinking is due to a lack of player agency, not the pretty graphics of chess.

> Mainstream/AAA modern games more or less tell you exactly what to do and exactly where to do it

Just to clarify, are you stating this as a truism that I may be oblivious to, or as in your own personal experience?

Otherwise, this is proof that two different people can have such vastly different experiences. I find modern AAA games to be rich of actions and choices. There are more "open world" games now than ever. And while your statement is true of the main storyline, I think there's so much diversity in games now that the main story line is often just a "thing you get around to" after you get bored of whatever side quests or exploration you are performing.

Current Tomb Raider just requiere you to press E and most actions are quick time events. Compared to Tomb Raider 1-5, and even Anniversary/Legend, the current AAA games are very bad.

This is like complaining that tennis doesn't give you any points for engaging your opponent in dialogue or bludgeoning them with the racket.

Some games are about thoughtful planning. Some are about motor skills. This has always been true, and neither one is bad.

Minecraft took me back to when I played MUSH games. You are presented with a world to inhabit, and there were no rails. You got out what you put into them game, so if you contribute little to the experience, it felt dull and lifeless. This turned lots of folks I know off from them game, where I was enamored by the possibiities, seemingly only limited by my own imagination. MUSHs were a lot like that, where MUDs were a bit more linear.

I wondervat the idea that these types of games engage a different part of the brain, similar to how some productivity coaches might suggest that writing ones goals, as opposed to talking about them, helps your brain process them in s more robust way. Citations probably needed on that, I'm no psychologist, but as someone who grew up in the MU* community and still adores text-based games to this day, I find I have stronger memories tied to those games than I do with the graphical games I've played.

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