So What You Really Want to Do....!

OR: 25 Years Experience in Gaming Teaches You a Few Things

Published on August 12, 2004 By CrispE In PC Gaming

Several years ago there was an article by Jeff Green in Computer Gaming World where he opined that PC gaming was not dead or dying but rather going through a tranisition. This seemed to me much like the wall street analyst who warns you to sell a stock when it's already down 20%. Since I have been PC gaming for the past 25 years (bought my first Apple II in 1979) it seemed a noble gesture for me to let game makers know what I think of the product and how it might be made better.

(Boring history: I play mostly strategy and role-playing games but wander into other areas occassionally. I currently am playing Warlords Battlecry III and Galactic Civilizations. Every now and then I will play Alien Blast. I have finished the Disciples and Kohan series and cut my "I" teeth on Wizardy and Ultima. I played Everquest for a few years but find on-line MMORG a bit boring.)

So, here goes...

First off, the best games are ones that challenge the gamer to think, not look at pretty graphics. Gamers want to be challenge and be challenged by a variety of possibilities. When the game presents one long sequence of a single approach (do A, do B, do C, win, repeat) it makes the game boring quickly. Since most games lead to sequels (which is not bad) if you do that to the gamer, we turn off (see Heroes of Might and Magic IV).

Second, if you make the game too easy we turn off, so put some time and effort into complicated and challenging AI's. Kudos to Galactic Civilizations and Warlords Battlecry III for doing this right. But there are too few of these efforts on the market. The AI should also be customizable. Don't get me wrong, it isn't for me specifically, but when you are trying to get a kid interested, they need to be nursed a little which means if the scenarios are too difficult they quit. Me, I like the insane scenario.

Third, be original. There's never been a good stock market simulation, why? We can raise PC children (The Sims) but we can't simulate the most important economic piece of the American (and world) puzzle?

Fourth, remember the game is, well, a game. This may be just my own pet peeve but I think that most games allow you to SAVE way too often. 20 years ago Wizardry I allowed you to save only when you weren't in the dungeon. A risk was a risk (hey, that would be a good name for a game, hehehe). How about a "save cycle" for a game (Saves every 10 minutes on "easy" setting, 20 minutes on "hard" so that the gamer had to play the game, not find a procedure for winning based on Save 47.

PC games are costly to develop. We all know that. There is no guarantee it will sell. Welcome to the Free Enterprise Capitalist system. But if you got the b***s to try and I sure hope you do, that is what gamers are looking for. Willing to spend $50 to get it, I hope this helps.

Comments

citahellion

on Aug 12, 2004

most games allow you to SAVE way too often

I understand where you're coming from to a certain extent; beating a game should be an accomplishment. However, the object of the game is to have fun. If you have to wade through the same 20 minutes of stuff 20 times over before you finally kill the bad guy, I'm pretty sure that by the 6th try I would have decided that I hate the save-game limitation and that the game is crap. We're talking 380 minutes of wasted effort, of which probably at least 300 was not enjoyable.
If the game is good, then you can replay it from the start and find yourself in a situation that requires a different strategy in order to win. That's a lot more interesting than a game that makes you do everything exactly right for 20 solid minutes in order to go on.

CrispE

on Aug 12, 2004

citahellion:
Well, as I said it's always been a pet peeve. Here's the thing. 20 minutes of gaming in an RPG or strategy game isn't that long and it's not like the "grand foozle" as Scorpia used to call it (the big monster at the end) is the end of civilization as we know it. A friend and I were playing Wizardry once and played 2 hours (down on level 9, woohoo!) and had to get upstairs to the castle to save. We trudged through the hallways (my friend mapped everything!!) and got to level 3 when we got hit by a real hot bunch of baddies. We barely survived using my last spells and got to level 1. When we came out of the stairs to go to the castle we had 3 corridors to go down and he said turn left (when he should have said right) and we got killed by this dumb group of monsters who could only hit my characters for 1 hit point, which was exactly the number I had left. 1/93!

We still talk about it.....

I know another guy who likes to show me how he wins like I'm his Etherlords student. But it's all procedure and planning. BORING! But he saves after every battle, never loses time.....

delaron

on Aug 13, 2004

I think that there are room for both (or many types) of games. There are the intelligent games, there are the games that dont allow you to save, there are the games that do it all. After a while, any game type that someone likes is going to get boring, or old, or whatever you call it. When you are first starting out in the world of computer gaming, or gaming in general, everything is new, so whatever it has, is fine with you. I think this is kinda like the modern day horror/thriller. People are no longer freaked out by simple slaughter, blood and guts. People now want the intelligent horror/thriller. One that has little or no blood, but scares the heck out of you. Same type of analogy really. But ultimately, there is room for both types. Granted, one may get more of an audiance than the other at any given time.

My personal opinion on the save game? Some games are designed so that you HAVE to have a save game, otherwise, you would not play it after a few frustrating turns. Some games are designed so that a save game would be nice, but is not neccessary. example: RTS, save games are a rediculous thought, because they are generally infinitely replayable, and people learn from mistakes more than they do from winning. The RPG like forgotten realms, could be nice to have save game, but I think you could do without, and have limited save game features at certain points only. A game like GalCiv, definitely needs a save game feature whenever you want to do it, its such a longggggggggg game if you get into it, that to lose all that time, is definitely a bummer.

Gideon MacLeish

on Aug 13, 2004

I like this post.

I largely gave up on computer games because of the fact that most games were either shoot em ups or you had to find out a bunch of stupid codes just to play. That's when I picked back up me old chess board, though, so it wasn't entirely bad.

CrispE

on Aug 13, 2004

Gideon:
Well, there are good games like chess out there. The thing is, unlike Chess (where a piece touched is a move made) computer games become more about process than thinking. I, myself like thinking. When I played chess it was the biggest kick to win when any mistake could be fatal.

CrispE

on Aug 13, 2004

delaron:
Even Galactic Civ has an autosave feature that can be set up at different intervals. The thing is, that game has more complications and AI going for it than most others put together. Now about the new holographic projections.....!

delaron

on Aug 14, 2004

crispe, I know. I said its one of the games that need save game features because of what type of game it is. versus another type of game that may not need it (both were examples really, not of absolutes, but of reasons why something would need the save game)

citahellion

on Aug 19, 2004

I'm going to just nitpick a couple of things...
It's "eye-teeth", which are more commonly referred to as canines.
And in chess, a piece touched is not a move made, it's merely a commitment that the piece touched is the one that will be moved (unless you say "j'adoube" to indicate that you're just straightening up the board). It's when you release the piece that the move is well and truly made.

Anyway, it also seems to me that providing a game that has "save whenever you want" allows people who want to save every turn to do that, while also allowing the people who think they should only save every half hour to do that too.

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