4 ms·
I know it is all a matter of opinion, but as someone who dabbles in game development (I am an admin of the Dark Mists MUD, after all), here is my perspective:
by Xurinos 16y ago
I know it is all a matter of opinion, but as someone who dabbles in game development (I am an admin of the Dark Mists MUD, after all), here is my perspective:
If you look across the spectrum of oldstyle games, there are a few aspects off the top of my head that were responsible for our fun: challenge by control limits, challenge by time limits, and challenge by perfection (restarts, saves, etc).
Joust is a perfect example of challenge by control limits. You may accelerate left and right, you can bounce left and right, you can flap your wings to ascend or not flap to descend. This game is still fun for me because I understand and accept those limitations; they are almost the whole point of Joust. In many ways, Joust AI is predictable, so it is essential that you master the control. In other words, Joust is a game of skill!
The challenge of time limits is pretty obvious: You have X seconds to complete the level. In Joust, you have X seconds before eggs turn to soldiers or before the pterodactyl comes out (and he is killable if you have the skill). Time limits create stress; you want to beat the time limits. Some people rise to the challenge of completing things in the shortest time. Often, it is skill that allows you to surmount the challenge of time.
The challenge of perfection is provided by limiting restarts and save points. Some oldstyle games had plenty of restarts and saves, but they kept internal counters of your retries. They would reward you with certain kinds of endings, based on your retries. In Joust, you have X number of lives before you are forced to start all the way over from level 1.
Tetris is another great example of an oldstyle game that incorporates all three of these challenges.
One thing the game industry realized was that they could sell games to more people if the games required less skill, less challenge. Most games now practically walk you through them. What you do for fun is different now. Maybe you play to be an interactive (but aided) participant in a storyline. Maybe you play to be the first to finish the same progression everyone else can finish (WoW). Maybe you play because you want to see the latest pretty lights (aka advances in graphics) or have the stronger system, both of which are less about gaming and more about presentation.
Is it really that classic games are terrible or less fun than today's games? or is it more that the kinds of fun you can have with them are different from the kinds of fun you can have with today's games? As an oldschool gamer myself, I can tell you that I have gotten bored with some of the past approaches, but that does not make them suck. It just means that what I want has changed.
- noahth 16y agomentioning WoW inevitably leads me to consider the social component. Especially once I reached the endgame, one of the main sources of enjoyment in WoW was my interaction with other players. Sure, there were social aspects to arcade classics (leaderboard w/ initials) and I'm sure those aspects were crucial to some players' enjoyment. But now that I've played MMOs, Facebook games, predominantly multiplayer FPS's (Unreal Tournament, Halo, etc), it's difficult to play an old-school RPG for very long because it almost feels like playing WoW on a server where you're the only account. Too static, too lonely. I've never played any game in the Ultima series (a sad omission in my experience, I'm sure), but I have a feeling that many gamers of my age and (especially) younger perceive a similar hole in a lot of old single-player games.
- Xurinos 16y agoWhat about two-player Duck Hunt or Mario? Excite Bike? Bubble Bobble? These and many other games allowed people in the same room to play with and compete against each other. I remember hours of fun doing that with my parents and friends. When it came to RPGs, we would take turns progressing in the same RPG; one of us might grind the levels up while the other slept. Tabletop games had this same feel. And on many levels -- just my opinion -- it is more fun to play with people I know than to play with a bunch of strangers, especially groups of people selfishly interested primarily in their own advancement in the game. This is one reason WoW bores me. The social arenas in online gaming are usually annoying, something to tolerate rather than enjoy.
- ajuc 16y agoGood observation about different challenges. Different people like different things. I like games that allows mastery of complex control scheme, and exercises reflex. It's great feeling, when you have complete control. Some games are based on logical thinking, story, strategy, etc - in these games difficult controls is just distraction, and it makes experience worse. Control schemes evolved, so older games had worse than new games (also computers evolved, now it's easier to do good ui than 10 years ago). For me one of the best games was "Icy Tower" - very simple concept, simple graphic, no story to speak of. It aged very well. Doom - the same - the feeling of nicely timed double shotgun shot is very rewarding, it doesn't matter you are shooting to rectangles. I've seen in some game design book the distinction between a game and a toy. Toy is when you are given some cool object to manipulate, and some constraints, and that's it. Game has rules and objectives, you must solve some problem. You can make a game without a toy - when there is no pleasure apart from solving problems. You can also make a toy without making a game - it will be boring after a while, because there will be no objective, no problems to solve. But great game is when you have cool toy and interesting problem to solve with it - these games plays great even after years.