3 ms·

Couple of nit-pics: > you come across a small, glowing light — something that’ll entice any gamer in search of loot That small glowing light is not a UI eleme

by feral 10y ago

Couple of nit-pics: > you come across a small, glowing light — something that’ll entice any gamer in search of loot That small glowing light is not a UI element to highlight the tutorial – instead, it's what a 'save point' always looks like in that game. It just so happens that the first time you interact with a save point, you get a tutorial (the same as the first time you interact with several other game mechanics, which don't look like glowing lights.) So that goes against the author's thesis a little bit - arguably they are misinterpreting the SNES UI in the context of their modern experience. >Chrono Trigger is one of the few SNES RPGs I’ve played where poking around mundane rooms pays off. Poking around mundane rooms in order to get rewards is almost a trope in SNES RPGs - Final Fantasy in particular was full of "secrets" you could find. In fact, this reminds me of a criticism of game UI (Ernest Adams, maybe?) which is that its not obvious that you have to shoot crates in order to get health, or try to interact with not obviously interactive elements of the game world for hidden rewards. Experienced players quickly find these things by shooting everything and trying to interact with everything, because they are familiar with the trope from other games, but it makes the game less accessible to newcomers - arguably bad UX.

golergka 10y ago
In a game, finding out how mechanics work and what you can do is exploration. Figuring out that you can combine a certain action with a certain object to get a new result is exciting and interesting. When you got the whole game figured out, know how everything works and what to expect — isn't that the point where you abandon it?
- clevernickname 10y ago
  That's half, the other is execution. Even if you know all of the tricks to a competitive game, you can always improve, just like with a sport. Different strokes. Some people just can't handle action games and get very frustrated at them, and prefer genres with no action at all that they can handle at their own pace. Others have to have their hand constantly held and can't be expected to figure anything out for themselves, but they're willing to dump hundreds or thousands of hours into multiplayer.
- feral 10y ago
  I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Consider the game of 'Go' - there's a very small amount of rules, and once you know those, you know all the rules, but there is still a lot of higher-level strategy to learn. It seems bad to not know all the rules, but good to have more strategy to discover... It would obviously be disappointing to then be playing an opponent, and discover they are about to beat you with a rule that's new to you; or to have played the game for a long time and then realise there was a move you never knew you could make. Watch someone learn about capturing en passant in chess for the first time from their opponent, during a game they are invested in... At the same time, learning a new 'strategy' is quite enjoyable and delightful - maybe even if you learn it as an opponent beats you with it – as long as it is something you could have reasonably discovered yourself, even if you didn't. (?) A disappointed sensation like "oh, I never knew you could do that" is bad; but "oh wow, I never realised you could do that" is good. What's the difference between these 'rules' you should know, and 'strategies' to discover? Is there a real difference? You are ultimately just choosing an action from a constrained set of candidate actions in both cases; in one case not knowing the full action set is bad, and another it's good. Clearly, you can think of a game at multiple different valid levels of abstraction - 'you can push these controller buttons'; 'you can move up, down, left or right'; 'you can sneak up behind the enemy'; 'stealth is the best strategy' etc. Clearly, at some levels, not knowing all the actions is frustrating; whereas at other levels, discovering new higher-level actions is delightful. So, which is shooting the crate to find a medkit? It's not completely clear, but I can see how people would think it is a hidden rule, something they could not have been expected to realise themselves, but which was obvious to players of other games - a missing word, rather than a delightful high-level behaviour that falls out of the interaction language the game has taught them.
  - eru 10y ago
    I think there's a difference between single player games, and competitive multiplayer here. (Even further: in single player games, people often even intentionally handicap themselves. Either directly for the challenge, or because they are role-playing.)
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "In a game, finding out how mechanics work and what you can do is exploration. Figuring out that you can combine a certain action with a certain object to get a new result is exciting and interesting." Absolutely. I'd say Miyamoto was a master of this, rewarding players for playful exploration. One example of this is in Super Mario Bros, where you can break through to the top of the screen to where the score is. Not only did Miyamoto give the player the option to do so, as the player runs along at the top of the screen they may wonder how they're going to get down, but instead of punishing the earlier creativity you get rewarded again with warp pipes.

by feral 10y ago

golergka 10y ago

In a game, finding out how mechanics work and what you can do is exploration. Figuring out that you can combine a certain action with a certain object to get a new result is exciting and interesting. When you got the whole game figured out, know how everything works and what to expect — isn't that the point where you abandon it?

clevernickname 10y ago
That's half, the other is execution. Even if you know all of the tricks to a competitive game, you can always improve, just like with a sport. Different strokes. Some people just can't handle action games and get very frustrated at them, and prefer genres with no action at all that they can handle at their own pace. Others have to have their hand constantly held and can't be expected to figure anything out for themselves, but they're willing to dump hundreds or thousands of hours into multiplayer.
feral 10y ago
I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Consider the game of 'Go' - there's a very small amount of rules, and once you know those, you know all the rules, but there is still a lot of higher-level strategy to learn. It seems bad to not know all the rules, but good to have more strategy to discover... It would obviously be disappointing to then be playing an opponent, and discover they are about to beat you with a rule that's new to you; or to have played the game for a long time and then realise there was a move you never knew you could make. Watch someone learn about capturing en passant in chess for the first time from their opponent, during a game they are invested in... At the same time, learning a new 'strategy' is quite enjoyable and delightful - maybe even if you learn it as an opponent beats you with it – as long as it is something you could have reasonably discovered yourself, even if you didn't. (?) A disappointed sensation like "oh, I never knew you could do that" is bad; but "oh wow, I never realised you could do that" is good. What's the difference between these 'rules' you should know, and 'strategies' to discover? Is there a real difference? You are ultimately just choosing an action from a constrained set of candidate actions in both cases; in one case not knowing the full action set is bad, and another it's good. Clearly, you can think of a game at multiple different valid levels of abstraction - 'you can push these controller buttons'; 'you can move up, down, left or right'; 'you can sneak up behind the enemy'; 'stealth is the best strategy' etc. Clearly, at some levels, not knowing all the actions is frustrating; whereas at other levels, discovering new higher-level actions is delightful. So, which is shooting the crate to find a medkit? It's not completely clear, but I can see how people would think it is a hidden rule, something they could not have been expected to realise themselves, but which was obvious to players of other games - a missing word, rather than a delightful high-level behaviour that falls out of the interaction language the game has taught them.
- eru 10y ago
  I think there's a difference between single player games, and competitive multiplayer here. (Even further: in single player games, people often even intentionally handicap themselves. Either directly for the challenge, or because they are role-playing.)
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "In a game, finding out how mechanics work and what you can do is exploration. Figuring out that you can combine a certain action with a certain object to get a new result is exciting and interesting." Absolutely. I'd say Miyamoto was a master of this, rewarding players for playful exploration. One example of this is in Super Mario Bros, where you can break through to the top of the screen to where the score is. Not only did Miyamoto give the player the option to do so, as the player runs along at the top of the screen they may wonder how they're going to get down, but instead of punishing the earlier creativity you get rewarded again with warp pipes.