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Sid Meier himself warned about the difficulty of trying to design games tat are multiple games at once, as basically everything in the list other than Lemmings
by hibikir 1mo ago
Sid Meier himself warned about the difficulty of trying to design games tat are multiple games at once, as basically everything in the list other than Lemmings is). His whole "one good game is better than two great ones" argument, as it's difficult to get a good balance of fun for any given player. If someone likes, say, the strategy elements of North & South, but not the battles, or they feel like they want more of one game but they have to do the other, there's some tension there. So you have to make the games be just fun enough, and change just often enough. A really hard problem.
And this is why it's relatively unlikely to find worthy successors: Making the whole be as good as the sum of its parts is hard enough. Getting to be as good as Pirates, or the best Cinemaware games, where the whole was significantly better than all of the games in isolation, is aiming foolishly high. Which is why, say, the xcom remakes are such a wonder, because they manage to both change the original two minigames underneath, improving them substantially, all while still being balanced.
- pkilgore 1mo agoThanks for that Sid Meier quote: I think this is a really good explanation of why I bounce of Anno games hard and love other similar, more pure, sims!
- krzyk 1mo agoWhat kind of pure sims you have in mind? I'm also looking for some games in that category.
- partomniscient 1mo agoNot Sid Meier, but another great quote was Will Wright (Sim City), when building a helicopter game 'Attack on Bungling Bay' had more fun making the map parts join together and roads line up - it changed his experience such that his next game was Sim City. "Building is more fun than breaking" - (may be paraphrased).
- bluefirebrand 1mo ago> Sid Meier himself warned about the difficulty of trying to design games tat are multiple games at once Sure, but that's extremely common these days! Genre blending is all over the place. Tons of action games have base building mechanics, for example. Or management sim things. Everything has RPG mechanics these days. I dunno. Obviously this increases complexity a lot but things have changed significantly in the game industry since Sid Meier said that
- ethbr1 1mo agoAs someone who lived through the wild early 90s of computer gaming too... yes and no. There's a simplification of multi-genre-ism these days that didn't exist then, mostly because nobody knew what the rules for a good ____ game even were. Now, it's like getting a "Greatest Hits of {Genre}" mini game embedded in the main game. Sure they're tasty, but not as weirdly interesting.
- bluefirebrand 1mo agoI wonder how much of it is also just this notion that they need to constrain the game mechanics to not confuse or overwhelm players? Especially as games get more generally complicated, it seems like designers try to place firm guardrails. Kind of like "we accept this level of complexity but not one bit more" Look at the Elder Scrolls. Skyrim is a lot more complex than Morrowind in a lot of ways, but Morrowind gives the player more actual freedom with the spell creating and such. "Weirdly interesting" describes Morrowind to a T
- ethbr1 1mo ago100% agree there's been a tendency to increasingly standardize mechanics. Likely driven by increasing AAA-class game development budgets + the consolidation of publisher-developer first party studios. Both of which create organizational inertia to hedge risk. It felt like the 00s and 10s were marked by 'everything you expect, with one magical new feature.' E.g. Halo (infinite downtime-recharging shields), Gears (tight cover mechanics) From what I've read, Morrowind avoided this by a distinct lack of adults in the room (in the sense of boring, risk-hedgers) for much of its pre-development and a decent chunk of its main development cycle. Also, the creative team on it being incredibly hard-working and inspired.