11 ms·

I really don't see the connection you're trying to make. There are huge swaths of the gaming industry which are based entirely on repetitive and boring tasks, i

by bryans 5y ago

I really don't see the connection you're trying to make. There are huge swaths of the gaming industry which are based entirely on repetitive and boring tasks, including some of the most popular games in history, such as Bejeweled and all of its Candy Crush offspring. Or idle, incremental and clicker games. Or slot machines, for that matter. All of those gamers are perfectly happy to spend money on boring repetition -- sometimes for years on end.

pjc50 5y ago
Those make it clear what the game is upfront. The upset happens when you believe a game is one thing and it turns into a grind for incidental reasons.
- bryans 5y ago
  I really wish y'all would stop with the absolutes and sweeping generalizations. It's truly exhausting. None of the games or categories I listed are any more clear or deceptive about their mechanisms than any other game. I listed incrementals, but those often don't turn out the way you expect, because most of the mechanisms are hidden until you unlock them, so no, they are not "clear" about what they are upfront. I did not list FPSs, which definitely come with a mechanics expectation, and yet there are a mountain of different FPS mechanisms across many game styles. If you make an assumption about a game, and that assumption turns out to be false -- or you just plain didn't enjoy the game -- it's a hell of a leap to automatically assume that the developer intentionally deceived you with malicious intent. Sometimes you just don't like a game, and that's okay.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    You wrote > There are huge swaths of the gaming industry which are based ENTIRELY on repetitive and boring tasks, including some of the most popular games in history, such as Bejeweled and all of its Candy Crush offspring. Or idle, incremental and clicker games. Or slot machines, for that matter. ALL of those gamers are perfectly happy to spend money on boring repetition -- sometimes for years on end. I have highlighted the absolutes and sweeping generalizations for clarification, since you seem to be having a go at people for doing this. It is quite hard to not write in generalisations, because otherwise you have to caveat EVERYTHING. I also did not write anything about intent, I said that the upset was finding a game becoming, for whatever reason, not what you thought it was or previously enjoyed. > I listed incrementals, but those often don't turn out the way you expect, because most of the mechanisms are hidden until you unlock them It is usually clear that a game is an incremental. I would be rather surprised if a new version of DOOM was released as a $60 boxed game that turned out to be an incremental. (To a great extent genre is just this, the categorising of things by similar elements in the hope that people who like one will like another)
    - bryans 5y ago
      A sweeping generalization can't be made with one word -- there has to be some context which applies that generalization to the totality of the overall subject. Unfortunately, neither of the words you capitalized are absolutes or sweeping generalizations, they're individual words within long sentences representing a totality of a targeted subset. There ARE MANY categories of games where the mechanics are PURELY REPETITIVE TASKS, such as Bejeweled. So when I say there are "huge swaths of the gaming industry which are based ENTIRELY on repetitive tasks," I'm not making a generalization, I'm talking about a specific subset of the gaming industry which is literally defined by repetitive tasks. And when I say "all of those gamers" are happy playing games they enjoy, it's because they're literally enjoying the games, otherwise they wouldn't be playing them. That's not an "absolute" being applied to the entire population, it's a comment on how people like things that they like and will spend money on those things, as evidenced by the billions of dollars spent on those particular game categories. Neither of my original comments were difficult to comprehend, and your trolling is unwelcome.
      - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
        > And when I say "all of those gamers" are happy playing games they enjoy, it's because they're literally enjoying the games, otherwise they wouldn't be playing them. Once again, your statement is false and easily provable by simple thought exercise. Imagine I am threatening you at gunpoint to play my game. There, you are now playing it for some other reason than because you're literally enjoying it.
roenxi 5y ago
Yes, but that is how the game is designed to be played. The point is if there is a most effective path that is different from the most fun path then the game designer has got room to improve.
- bryans 5y ago
  Again, I feel like you're stretching to make an analogy that doesn't actually reflect reality. You can't admit that people enjoy boring effectiveness as the premise of half the worlds' games, while also insisting that it's mutually exclusive to having fun in the other half. I'll give you an example. Inarguably one of the most successful games of all time, World of Warcraft has multiple different paths and styles of leveling, gold farming, and most other tasks. The least effective paths are absolutely the most boring and involve hundreds of hours of grinding for very little gain, and yet, that's the consciously chosen path for a majority of players. Not because they can't figure out more proficient methods, but because they enjoy the grind (for any numbers of reasons). The lesson learned from game designs like WoW, is that the implemented paths shouldn't be either-or propositions, because singular or linear paths alienate far more gamers than optional paths. Whereas what you're insisting, is that that the developer has done something "wrong" simply by presenting multiple paths, and they need to "improve" upon it by removing the ones which don't produce some arbitrary amount of dopamine and adrenaline per button press.
  - foerbert 5y ago
    I don't think the argument here was to provide a single path with maximal dopamine-per-action. The original statement was to make sure repetitive and boring paths weren't highly effective. Your own characterization of grinding in WoW fits that description. It may be repetitive and boring, but it's not highly rewarding so those who engage with it do so because they are enjoying it for it's own sake. This is fine, the players can do it if they enjoy it and won't make themselves suffer through it if they don't. (My own experience with WoW and the term 'grinding' in general does not make me inclined to use it as an example of an unrewarding activity that players don't force themselves to engage in entirely for the sake of the in-game results, but maybe things have changed... it has been awhile.)
yccs27 5y ago
I guess it depends on the definition of "boring". The games you mention cater to different audiences than strategy games, and they make the repetitition a core part of their experience. Special thought went into making their loops feel engaging and rewarding. So I guess the lesson is more like: Game designers need to remove all effective strategies which short-circuit the core gameplay that your audience expects.
- bryans 5y ago
  Except there is a huge market of strategy gamers who buy them strictly for the single player campaigns, and many enjoy the slow and boring aspects of maximizing output before decimating a particular level. So, there's no actual differentiator in your example. Much like the parent commenter, you appear to be insisting that there can only be one type of gamer per game type, and that a developer is making a "mistake" of some kind by allowing people to play the game in their preferred manor. But outside of FPSs, that just isn't the case.
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    Bejeweled and Candy Crush are not good games, and we click through the repetitive parts in games to get to the point. The point is very rarely repetition itself, and even when it is, it's not actually performing the task but rather figuring out how to automate it. Nobody enjoys clicking on a unit then clicking on where we want it to go. Our brains reward us for successfully moving units to where they need to be, whatever the action necessary to get there. The same reason family abuse is so effective - your infantile survival depends on your parents. If your parents are abusing you, you develop a liking for it, because your survival odds improve by doing so (abusive parent is better than no parent at all). You seek partners to repeat that behavior even if it makes you miserable, because brain chemistry. A good game is one where such mechanisms aren't exploited for profit.
    - bryans 5y ago
      Again, you're asserting your personal preferences as universal fact and using absolutes to describe human behavior, which makes this less of a conversation and more of a series of opportunities for you to repeat the same claims. You don't get to make the decision that Bejeweled and Candy Crush are bad games on humanity's behalf. You also don't get to decide which game mechanisms aren't enjoyable, especially when a billion other people enjoy them. You're effectively saying that a baseball player can't enjoy the act of swinging their bat or throwing the ball, just because it's not the end goal. This is obviously untrue for so many reasons, and I'm struggling to understand why you're so caught up on there only being one way to enjoy something -- and that way has to be your way. > The same reason family abuse is so effective - your infantile survival depends on your parents. If your parents are abusing you, you develop a liking for it, because your survival odds improve by doing so (abusive parent is better than no parent at all). You seek partners to repeat that behavior even if it makes you miserable, because brain chemistry. This is both disturbing and another attempt at using absolutes to compress the behavioral spectrum into a singular idea, and unsurprisingly, that idea matches your own personal views. Unfortunately, none of what you said in that paragraph is representative of any psychology book I've ever read, or of my own experiences, or of the experiences of anyone I know. So, if you'd like to link to some research backing up your claim, I'd love to read it. Otherwise, please avoid making outlandish assertions such as "if your parents abuse you, you will like it, and you will like it forever, and seek it out, and there is no other possible avenue for you." That's a movie you saw one time, not real life.
lifeformed 5y ago
And therefore some would say that those games are deficient in something important. Of course they're "successful", but usually through exploitative and disrespectful designs.
- bryans 5y ago
  How can it be exploitative and disrespectful if the person is enjoying it? You're projecting your own preferences on others, and insisting that anyone who doesn't fall into that arbitrary category is either "wrong" or being manipulated into enjoying something.
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    That's what they do though. They hold meetings to develop the most elaborate systems they can get away with to manipulate you into giving them as much money as possible.
    - bryans 5y ago
      Every single business in every single industry is based around developing products that make as much money as possible. They even have meetings about it.
      - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
        This statement is false. There provably exist businesses that develop products based on criteria other than making as much money as possible. Do you really need me to do that research for you as well? You seem to think that capitalism has reached some kind of total control over humans, and that every single human running a business on this Earth is obsessed with making money. Do you also know a lot of businesspeople, all of whom think money is the end goal of all ventures?
  - lifeformed 5y ago
    I'm not judging those who play it, but those who create those systems recklessly. The same way I don't judge a drug user per se, but I judge those who exploit drug addictions for their own gain.
WJW 5y ago
All these games are singleplayer games. In multiplayer games the point of the GP post is much more pronounced. If a single strategy beats all others, approximately nobody will play the other strategies and a significant part of your game content may as well not have been written. You need multiple viable strategies (preferably in some sort of rock/paper/scissors loop) to keep the game interesting.
- bryans 5y ago
  Yours is the only reply that didn't use absolutes to describe human behavior, and I genuinely appreciate that. I agree that there are situations where a similarly-structured playing field becomes important to the main function of the game, but the OP made sweeping generalizations about every game type needing to be developed in a hyper-specific way (his way), otherwise the game is automagically bad -- and I hope we can both agree that's pretty silly.

by bryans 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago

Those make it clear what the game is upfront. The upset happens when you believe a game is one thing and it turns into a grind for incidental reasons.

bryans 5y ago
I really wish y'all would stop with the absolutes and sweeping generalizations. It's truly exhausting. None of the games or categories I listed are any more clear or deceptive about their mechanisms than any other game. I listed incrementals, but those often don't turn out the way you expect, because most of the mechanisms are hidden until you unlock them, so no, they are not "clear" about what they are upfront. I did not list FPSs, which definitely come with a mechanics expectation, and yet there are a mountain of different FPS mechanisms across many game styles. If you make an assumption about a game, and that assumption turns out to be false -- or you just plain didn't enjoy the game -- it's a hell of a leap to automatically assume that the developer intentionally deceived you with malicious intent. Sometimes you just don't like a game, and that's okay.
- pjc50 5y ago
  You wrote > There are huge swaths of the gaming industry which are based ENTIRELY on repetitive and boring tasks, including some of the most popular games in history, such as Bejeweled and all of its Candy Crush offspring. Or idle, incremental and clicker games. Or slot machines, for that matter. ALL of those gamers are perfectly happy to spend money on boring repetition -- sometimes for years on end. I have highlighted the absolutes and sweeping generalizations for clarification, since you seem to be having a go at people for doing this. It is quite hard to not write in generalisations, because otherwise you have to caveat EVERYTHING. I also did not write anything about intent, I said that the upset was finding a game becoming, for whatever reason, not what you thought it was or previously enjoyed. > I listed incrementals, but those often don't turn out the way you expect, because most of the mechanisms are hidden until you unlock them It is usually clear that a game is an incremental. I would be rather surprised if a new version of DOOM was released as a $60 boxed game that turned out to be an incremental. (To a great extent genre is just this, the categorising of things by similar elements in the hope that people who like one will like another)
  - bryans 5y ago
    A sweeping generalization can't be made with one word -- there has to be some context which applies that generalization to the totality of the overall subject. Unfortunately, neither of the words you capitalized are absolutes or sweeping generalizations, they're individual words within long sentences representing a totality of a targeted subset. There ARE MANY categories of games where the mechanics are PURELY REPETITIVE TASKS, such as Bejeweled. So when I say there are "huge swaths of the gaming industry which are based ENTIRELY on repetitive tasks," I'm not making a generalization, I'm talking about a specific subset of the gaming industry which is literally defined by repetitive tasks. And when I say "all of those gamers" are happy playing games they enjoy, it's because they're literally enjoying the games, otherwise they wouldn't be playing them. That's not an "absolute" being applied to the entire population, it's a comment on how people like things that they like and will spend money on those things, as evidenced by the billions of dollars spent on those particular game categories. Neither of my original comments were difficult to comprehend, and your trolling is unwelcome.
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      > And when I say "all of those gamers" are happy playing games they enjoy, it's because they're literally enjoying the games, otherwise they wouldn't be playing them. Once again, your statement is false and easily provable by simple thought exercise. Imagine I am threatening you at gunpoint to play my game. There, you are now playing it for some other reason than because you're literally enjoying it.

roenxi 5y ago

Yes, but that is how the game is designed to be played. The point is if there is a most effective path that is different from the most fun path then the game designer has got room to improve.

bryans 5y ago
Again, I feel like you're stretching to make an analogy that doesn't actually reflect reality. You can't admit that people enjoy boring effectiveness as the premise of half the worlds' games, while also insisting that it's mutually exclusive to having fun in the other half. I'll give you an example. Inarguably one of the most successful games of all time, World of Warcraft has multiple different paths and styles of leveling, gold farming, and most other tasks. The least effective paths are absolutely the most boring and involve hundreds of hours of grinding for very little gain, and yet, that's the consciously chosen path for a majority of players. Not because they can't figure out more proficient methods, but because they enjoy the grind (for any numbers of reasons). The lesson learned from game designs like WoW, is that the implemented paths shouldn't be either-or propositions, because singular or linear paths alienate far more gamers than optional paths. Whereas what you're insisting, is that that the developer has done something "wrong" simply by presenting multiple paths, and they need to "improve" upon it by removing the ones which don't produce some arbitrary amount of dopamine and adrenaline per button press.
- foerbert 5y ago
  I don't think the argument here was to provide a single path with maximal dopamine-per-action. The original statement was to make sure repetitive and boring paths weren't highly effective. Your own characterization of grinding in WoW fits that description. It may be repetitive and boring, but it's not highly rewarding so those who engage with it do so because they are enjoying it for it's own sake. This is fine, the players can do it if they enjoy it and won't make themselves suffer through it if they don't. (My own experience with WoW and the term 'grinding' in general does not make me inclined to use it as an example of an unrewarding activity that players don't force themselves to engage in entirely for the sake of the in-game results, but maybe things have changed... it has been awhile.)

yccs27 5y ago

I guess it depends on the definition of "boring". The games you mention cater to different audiences than strategy games, and they make the repetitition a core part of their experience. Special thought went into making their loops feel engaging and rewarding. So I guess the lesson is more like: Game designers need to remove all effective strategies which short-circuit the core gameplay that your audience expects.

bryans 5y ago
Except there is a huge market of strategy gamers who buy them strictly for the single player campaigns, and many enjoy the slow and boring aspects of maximizing output before decimating a particular level. So, there's no actual differentiator in your example. Much like the parent commenter, you appear to be insisting that there can only be one type of gamer per game type, and that a developer is making a "mistake" of some kind by allowing people to play the game in their preferred manor. But outside of FPSs, that just isn't the case.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Bejeweled and Candy Crush are not good games, and we click through the repetitive parts in games to get to the point. The point is very rarely repetition itself, and even when it is, it's not actually performing the task but rather figuring out how to automate it. Nobody enjoys clicking on a unit then clicking on where we want it to go. Our brains reward us for successfully moving units to where they need to be, whatever the action necessary to get there. The same reason family abuse is so effective - your infantile survival depends on your parents. If your parents are abusing you, you develop a liking for it, because your survival odds improve by doing so (abusive parent is better than no parent at all). You seek partners to repeat that behavior even if it makes you miserable, because brain chemistry. A good game is one where such mechanisms aren't exploited for profit.
  - bryans 5y ago
    Again, you're asserting your personal preferences as universal fact and using absolutes to describe human behavior, which makes this less of a conversation and more of a series of opportunities for you to repeat the same claims. You don't get to make the decision that Bejeweled and Candy Crush are bad games on humanity's behalf. You also don't get to decide which game mechanisms aren't enjoyable, especially when a billion other people enjoy them. You're effectively saying that a baseball player can't enjoy the act of swinging their bat or throwing the ball, just because it's not the end goal. This is obviously untrue for so many reasons, and I'm struggling to understand why you're so caught up on there only being one way to enjoy something -- and that way has to be your way. > The same reason family abuse is so effective - your infantile survival depends on your parents. If your parents are abusing you, you develop a liking for it, because your survival odds improve by doing so (abusive parent is better than no parent at all). You seek partners to repeat that behavior even if it makes you miserable, because brain chemistry. This is both disturbing and another attempt at using absolutes to compress the behavioral spectrum into a singular idea, and unsurprisingly, that idea matches your own personal views. Unfortunately, none of what you said in that paragraph is representative of any psychology book I've ever read, or of my own experiences, or of the experiences of anyone I know. So, if you'd like to link to some research backing up your claim, I'd love to read it. Otherwise, please avoid making outlandish assertions such as "if your parents abuse you, you will like it, and you will like it forever, and seek it out, and there is no other possible avenue for you." That's a movie you saw one time, not real life.

lifeformed 5y ago

And therefore some would say that those games are deficient in something important. Of course they're "successful", but usually through exploitative and disrespectful designs.

bryans 5y ago
How can it be exploitative and disrespectful if the person is enjoying it? You're projecting your own preferences on others, and insisting that anyone who doesn't fall into that arbitrary category is either "wrong" or being manipulated into enjoying something.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  That's what they do though. They hold meetings to develop the most elaborate systems they can get away with to manipulate you into giving them as much money as possible.
  - bryans 5y ago
    Every single business in every single industry is based around developing products that make as much money as possible. They even have meetings about it.
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      This statement is false. There provably exist businesses that develop products based on criteria other than making as much money as possible. Do you really need me to do that research for you as well? You seem to think that capitalism has reached some kind of total control over humans, and that every single human running a business on this Earth is obsessed with making money. Do you also know a lot of businesspeople, all of whom think money is the end goal of all ventures?
- lifeformed 5y ago
  I'm not judging those who play it, but those who create those systems recklessly. The same way I don't judge a drug user per se, but I judge those who exploit drug addictions for their own gain.

WJW 5y ago

All these games are singleplayer games. In multiplayer games the point of the GP post is much more pronounced. If a single strategy beats all others, approximately nobody will play the other strategies and a significant part of your game content may as well not have been written. You need multiple viable strategies (preferably in some sort of rock/paper/scissors loop) to keep the game interesting.

bryans 5y ago
Yours is the only reply that didn't use absolutes to describe human behavior, and I genuinely appreciate that. I agree that there are situations where a similarly-structured playing field becomes important to the main function of the game, but the OP made sweeping generalizations about every game type needing to be developed in a hyper-specific way (his way), otherwise the game is automagically bad -- and I hope we can both agree that's pretty silly.