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Well, part of the appeal for Tom is that you can just blunder your way through the campaign: "And that’s reason 6: you don’t have to optimise. If I had to do th

Well, part of the appeal for Tom is that you can just blunder your way through the campaign: "And that’s reason 6: you don’t have to optimise. If I had to do this to progress, I probably would have quit in frustration." I'm reminded here of Wario Land on the Gameboy: you could finish the game by speeding through levels, but the time you spent collecting treasure directly influenced the prize you got at the end. Maybe that would be a good compromise for gamers driven by external milestones rather than personal ones.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
> "I probably would have quit in frustration." In actuality, I actually quit in frustration about 3/4ths through the game because I realized I could just blunder my way through the rest of the game. Eventually I got tired of the game after I stopped caring about optimizing, and then wondered why I should bother completing the game other than for the sake of completing it. Yes there was a storyline to the game which should be completed, but the storyline was disconnected from the essense of the game (which to me was optimization). I would have felt more purpose in finishing the game if the optimization mattered somehow, like for instance if it affected the storyline or progress of your character somehow. I don't think it is a matter to me of "external milestones" vs "personal milestones", but more about engagement and immersion in the story and world of the game, which I suppose is something I am after in addition to simple mental exercise. For comparison, another Zachtronics game "SpaceChem" does a great job in linking the optimization into the game and storyline though the following simple mechanism: in order to defeat bosses, your factory had to meet certain timing requirements. To me, that requirement made all the difference in terms of immersion.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  One of the problems with rewarding optimization is that at the time of game design, the designers don't know how well the problems can be solved. They'd have difficulty balancing it, and there would end up being arbitrary cutoffs for "optimized enough."
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    Interesting that you brought this up...shenzhen I/O actually had to release some updates after they found some puzzles were too difficult to complete, not even optimized! I suppose one of the downsides of modern day indie game-dev is not having playtesters. But surely with early access these difficulties could be figured out. Still I'm not necessarily suggesting that failure to optimize should block the player's progress. Rather that the optimization affects the game somehow.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  I had the opposite experience: Infinifactory was great because even my kludgiest creations got to the point of giving a warm fuzzy "I made dis!" emotional payout... which is what drove my interest in optimizing against friends. In contrast, some of the less-friendly (and less-intuitive) limits in the "boss battles" of SpaceChem simply turned into big painful dead-ends, leading to me abandoning the game on the final level. (And swearing I'd get back to it... someday.) I think the distinction speaks a little bit to the spectrum between "problem solving" and "puzzle solving". Both games are solidly in the former camp, but Infinifactory feels far more like a creative unique exercise. Plus, I kind of need more of the life-lesson: Getting something "ugly" that works and then iterating is better than holding yourself to an emotionally-safe but difficult standard that keeps you from getting work done :P
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    Great points. I do admit I did feel a great sense of satisfaction from many of the "ugly" designs that merely worked, and there is good in that, as I'm sure many tools we rely on fall into that category!
  - jcl 9y ago
    Fun fact revealed in a GDC talk: Even Zach Barth himself did not feel motivated to complete the final SpaceChem level. He just designed it to the point where it "looked solvable" and then turned his playtesters loose on it. ( https://archive.org/details/GDC2013Barth https://archive.org/details/GDC2013Barth at 19:20)

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

> "I probably would have quit in frustration." In actuality, I actually quit in frustration about 3/4ths through the game because I realized I could just blunder my way through the rest of the game. Eventually I got tired of the game after I stopped caring about optimizing, and then wondered why I should bother completing the game other than for the sake of completing it. Yes there was a storyline to the game which should be completed, but the storyline was disconnected from the essense of the game (which to me was optimization). I would have felt more purpose in finishing the game if the optimization mattered somehow, like for instance if it affected the storyline or progress of your character somehow. I don't think it is a matter to me of "external milestones" vs "personal milestones", but more about engagement and immersion in the story and world of the game, which I suppose is something I am after in addition to simple mental exercise. For comparison, another Zachtronics game "SpaceChem" does a great job in linking the optimization into the game and storyline though the following simple mechanism: in order to defeat bosses, your factory had to meet certain timing requirements. To me, that requirement made all the difference in terms of immersion.

whatshisface 9y ago
One of the problems with rewarding optimization is that at the time of game design, the designers don't know how well the problems can be solved. They'd have difficulty balancing it, and there would end up being arbitrary cutoffs for "optimized enough."
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Interesting that you brought this up...shenzhen I/O actually had to release some updates after they found some puzzles were too difficult to complete, not even optimized! I suppose one of the downsides of modern day indie game-dev is not having playtesters. But surely with early access these difficulties could be figured out. Still I'm not necessarily suggesting that failure to optimize should block the player's progress. Rather that the optimization affects the game somehow.
Terr_ 9y ago
I had the opposite experience: Infinifactory was great because even my kludgiest creations got to the point of giving a warm fuzzy "I made dis!" emotional payout... which is what drove my interest in optimizing against friends. In contrast, some of the less-friendly (and less-intuitive) limits in the "boss battles" of SpaceChem simply turned into big painful dead-ends, leading to me abandoning the game on the final level. (And swearing I'd get back to it... someday.) I think the distinction speaks a little bit to the spectrum between "problem solving" and "puzzle solving". Both games are solidly in the former camp, but Infinifactory feels far more like a creative unique exercise. Plus, I kind of need more of the life-lesson: Getting something "ugly" that works and then iterating is better than holding yourself to an emotionally-safe but difficult standard that keeps you from getting work done :P
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Great points. I do admit I did feel a great sense of satisfaction from many of the "ugly" designs that merely worked, and there is good in that, as I'm sure many tools we rely on fall into that category!
- jcl 9y ago
  Fun fact revealed in a GDC talk: Even Zach Barth himself did not feel motivated to complete the final SpaceChem level. He just designed it to the point where it "looked solvable" and then turned his playtesters loose on it. ( https://archive.org/details/GDC2013Barth https://archive.org/details/GDC2013Barth at 19:20)