First here's a direct link to the actual poll So anyway, what options did YOU choose and why? Why do you think those parts are most important to a games success. I know that all of them have to be done right, but which three do you feel have to be paid the most attention to? | C++ Debug Kit :: GameDev Kit :: DirectX Tutorials :: 2D DX Engine | TripleBuffer Software |
| Plug-in Manager :: System Information Class :: D3D9 Hardware Enum | DevMaster :: FlipCode | [edited by - ifoobar on February 3, 2004 2:14:03 PM]

I''m a big fan of replayability, especially given the cost of purchasing games these days. If I''m going to plonk down $50 to $70 on a game, I damn well better be able to play it for more than the 8,12 or whatever hours of gameplay is required to complete it. I want to be able to come back and play it over, and see new things, explore new interesting places that I missed the first time through.

That''s why I like randomly generated maps/dungeons so much, and make the effort to include them in all of my games. Each time through is always a different experience, with new and unforeseen challenges. I would rather have story and plot sacrificed to make way for replayability, as long as the game can hold itself up in the absence of a detailed plot. Story is good to an extent, but if it forces the game too much into a linear progression, then I can get the same sort of thing for less money by buying a novel.

Graphical effects are not as important for me (for instance, some of my favorite games as listed in my sig are rogue-likes which use ASCII symbols to draw the display). I don''t like having to continuously shell out hundreds of dollars to get the latest graphics card just to play a new game. I don''t mind paying to get the median card, but more and more games are coming out with the hard-core gamer in mind, rather than the median, so my hardware always comes up lacking. Most often, all that expensive graphical flair and flash contributes nothing to the game, beyond the initial "wow" phase, and could be sacrificed in favor of other things that add more to the game.

Attention to detail sort of lumps in with my views on replayability. If a game has a lot of detail, it contributes to replayability. There are always new tricks, new techniques, new items or areas. There are fun little actions that can be performed. The world is rich and entertaining, even the second or third time around.

Character development goes well with story; if you have to sacrifice here to enhance replayability, so be it. Again, if I want a linear story (and character development often advances story, or vice versa) then I can buy a book.

Ease of play is important to me, but not at the cost of detail or replayability. A game like Tetris is easy to play, but for me holds no replay value. I have absolutely no desire to ever play that game again. I like exactly enough ease of play to get quickly into the game without having to page through 800 pages of instruction manual to figure out the basic commands. You figure out exactly how much ease of use that is.

I''ll take my $0.02 now, please.

Golem

Blender--The Gimp--Python--Lua--SDL
Nethack--Crawl--ADOM--Angband--Dungeondweller

I choose replayability. I'd never buy games like max payne 2 that have supposedly have excellent gameplay and story etc but only last a few hours. If I'm going to pay $50+ for a game, I want to be able to play the game for at least a month, and since I can't stand replaying the same story over and over, replayability basically means multiplayer. Play length is related to this very much. If a game is long enough and is fun, then replayability isn't as important, but when there is ridiculous play lengths like there are in some games today, replayability is the only substitution (and I like multiplayer better anyways, even when it isn't competitive).

Ease of play is also important, but I don't mind spending a while to figure out a game. I can't stand it when games have fixed key<->action mappings without also an out-of-game diagram or somesuch telling you what it is, but it is acceptable as long as using the keys is optional and doing it a different way (mouse and gui for ex) isn't too slow.

Graphics can be pretty low-tech as long as they aren't bad. You can have bad graphics of any technical level, so a game doesn't have to be 3D but if its 2D I at least want sprites that are recognizable as what they represent(or be distringuishable if its just a puzzle game where the sprites don't represent plausible reality). Even some REALLY old games have good graphics (such as Joust), while some newer games have technically advanced but poor graphics (IMO Halo for PC would fit this category).

Character development and story only apply to a subset of games. You can have a great game without any in-game story or character development. Counter-strike was a great example - 'You are a terrorist or counter terrorist. Stop the other team.' The only kind of character development there is in the game is buying different weapons, and thats more an out-of-character action. Any story that developes is just a tale of who did what to achieve victory for their side and is not told by the game itself.

Attention to detail can DEFINITELY add to a game, and no attention to detail will make it much worse, but I don't think a whole lot of it is required to make a good game.

[edited by - extrarius on February 3, 2004 2:32:15 PM]

Replayability, Attention to Detail, and Play Length.

Replayability - The longer I play the game, the cheaper each hour''s worth of entertainment becomes (assuming I am indeed being entertained). I''m cheap. I like other things to be cheap as well. And as VertexNormal said, randomly generated whatevers are great . I remember a long time back playing Warlords II. In fact, I still go back to that game every once in a while, because those random maps make the "story" of the game different every time. A new chokepoint. A new critical river. Etc.

Attention to Detail - But I don''t like them to be cheap in regards to quality. While attention to detail and quality are not identical, usually, if the former exists in a game, so does the latter. Actually, one of the most important details that I miss has to do with the interface. I don''t know how many poor interfaces I''ve used, or how many times I''ve noticed specific improvements that could have made an adequate interface great.

Play Length - Like replayability, I like to get many hours of entertainment out of my $40. And in general, I like longer games anyway. (Aas long as they don''t get boring and repetetive. But that category (gameplay) was purposefully not in the poll.) I''m not entirely sure why I like longer games, but I do. Maybe they''re usually "deeper" in some way or another, whereas they dynamic natures of shorter games can only go so far before everything is reset to it''s initial state.

As for the others...

Ease of Play - I''m willing to put forth some effort and time to learn a game, if I''m hopeful that it will last me quite a while afterwards. Besides, the more complicated games usually are the ones that have more depth and do last longer.

Graphical Effects - Making good graphics in a game certainly makes programmers and artists proud, but from a gamer''s perspective, I just can''t see how it could take priority over many other things. Unless the quality of the game is highly dependent on being able to clearly see what''s going on. (Ex: Up until recently, I haven''t bothered much with racing games, because I could barely see anything at a distance, due to aliasing and LOD and such. And it''s still not great, just better.) Other than games like that, though, it shouldn''t matter much. (It probably doesn''t help that I''m more into strategy and RPG over FPS, racing, and related genres.)

Character Development/Story - These, I think, are heavily dependent on each other, at least usually. And since replayability is my chief concern, and stories usually limit replayability, I''m usually not overly focused on them. If they''re bad, oh well. Heck, even if they''re good, oh well. I''m playing through Homeworld right now, and I''m basically ignoring plot. I''ve heard some about it from friends anyway, and they say it''s a great story. But in the end, it doesn''t really affect my opinion of how fun the game is. Same with Diablo II. The story was pretty cool. But the fun was in hacking, slashing, leveling, and finding cool junk. Same with all sorts of games.

And if other people are getting $0.02, I want some too. Checks are acceptable. (I''d love to see the look on the bank-teller''s face when depositing a check like that. )

#1 aspect of every game should be design, by design i mean the overal game itself... I''ve seen so many "games" hit the store shelfs then I buy one and I end up very disapointed the game ends up being able to be played sure, however you will notice how games copy eachother constantly remaking the same exact thing as some other game... I belive the game should have a GOOD story, that should be very high on the to-do list.. Graphics personally are not what I would qualify as the core of a game... Most of the games ive seen now of days spend way to much time on the graphics and the game it self sucks, no one really cares if somthing is reflecting off the ground or somthing.. if the game makes no sense if you get my point the idea is to setup a good design of the overall atmosphere and storyline of the game and ideally its very important for the game to have multiplayer because once you beat the single player.. it just sucks after that. so yea..

That it be entertaining. The problem is that this is a fairly subjective criteria. The only thing that helps here is a focus on game play.

Replay can be important but it''s not a critical item for me. I take the movie economics approach to game value. I go to the movies and spend 8 bucks or more. ( I know it varies from place to place. ) It''s about 1.5 hours of entertainment so my dollars per entertainment hour is about 5.3. So if I buy $50 game and it gives me 10 hours of play I''m ok with it. Max Payne probably gave me close the this much play time so I was happy. From this perspective Unreal Tournament and Civilization have been especially good entertainment values.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

That it be entertaining. The problem is that this is a fairly subjective criteria. The only thing that helps here is a focus on game play.

Replay can be important but it''s not a critical item for me. I take the movie economics approach to game value. I go to the movies and spend 8 bucks or more. ( I know it varies from place to place. ) It''s about 1.5 hours of entertainment so my dollars per entertainment hour is about 5.3. So if I buy $50 game and it gives me 10 hours of play I''m ok with it. Max Payne probably gave me close the this much play time so I was happy. From this perspective Unreal Tournament and Civilization have been especially good entertainment values.

I also tend to look at the value of a game sometimes by how many hours it gives. But only if it was a good game in the first place. Like you said, the only thing that really helps is focus on gameplay. But gameplay is I think too broad a criteria. How would you define gameplay exactly? Is it how the game feels (ie smoothness of cotrols). How the game interacts with you (ie the environments). How the game captures you (ie the intriguing stories and characters). How *much* entertainment you get out of it (ie the lastability). How much satisfaction it gives (this is also quite broad I think, cause satisfaction comes from a number of different criteria and is different for a number of different people). Or is gameplay all of the above mentioned. Or is it some of the above mentioned? Or is it more then that...

Actually, is there any good definition for gameplay? on gdnet in the dictionary section, gameplay is defined as "meanigful interactions" but interactions have a lot of criteria, and then *meaningful* interactions have even more criteria to fulfill before the interaction can become meanigful.

Dictionary.com dosnt even have a definition for gameplay...

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IFooBar,
That''s a pretty insightful line of questioning about gameplay, and something I think gets lost in the shuffle sometimes when people talk about/review games. I would say that Gameplay is like the language that you use to communicate with the game, the buttons are like the vocabulary you can use to construct sentences of actions. Like, you can generate a command like "Get out of the car, crouch down, switch to your shotgun, and blast the guy on your left."

Poor gameplay means that the language is imprecise, or difficult to learn, or inconsistent or incomplete, or too simple or complex. I don''t think how long the game lasts is an element of gameplay, except in the sense that as you progress, you add to your vocabulary through new moves or abilities, learn to communicate more precisely, and learn to use better strategies through your available vocab.

Satisfaction isn''t exactly a property of Gameplay either. I think poor gameplay can cause dissatisfaction through frustration, but there are a lot of things that can ruin a game that has good gameplay. I also think that a game can (rarely) be great even though gameplay is poor. Take the "on-foot" mode in GTA -- the player rotates way too fast, the camera control is disasterous, the player doesn''t even fire his gun everytime you press the button, he''ll randomly decide not to get in a car when you want him to, he can''t jump forward from a stand-still... but still, it''s insanely fun!

my 2 cents.

Gameplay and value for money of course.
Even cutting edge graphics cannot save a dud game.

fidelio66:

That''s kinda already a given. People always say "The gameplay makes or breaks the game" The thing is that "gameplay" is too broad a term to be used so loosly like that. There has to be certain criteria, criteria that is definable, that if met can result in a decent game. This criteria is what makes the whole that is known as "gameplay"

And a game cannot only suck because of graphics. Maybe it was too tough to learn, had a million and one possible commands causig players to get lost. The story could have been dead boring, and there are many more reasons.

Which brings me to another question. Do good graphics add to gameplay?


ajas95:

Thats a very intresting description. It''s actually the best description of gameplay Ive ever heard BUT, it still falls short. Gameplay is not only how you communicate with your game, but also how the game communicates with you. You forgot the other half of the interaction. The otehr half of the interactions is where most of the fun is. eg: Shoot a box (using the language) and the box shatters into a million pieces and teh pieces bounce of everywhere, and there is some really sweet looking particle effects because there was a gastric object in the box and it made a mini explosion. See the other half is what takes up the most time, the otehr hald is *always* on the run, but the user interactions happen once every few milliseconds, sometimes much longer too.

A good story will also add to gameplay, but does not add to the "language" concept that you described, its not actually the "playing" bit of the game, but it adds to the following playing bits because you get a reason for doing something, other then the obvious reason of having fun. Attention to detail will also deinetly add to the gameplay, becuase it make the world more believable, and more complete. The player can interact better with his environments, see more detail, be more "in" the game (you know what I mean?).

quote: Satisfaction isn''t exactly a property of Gameplay either.

I dont really think that''s entirely true, unless I didnt get you. If you are unsatisfied with the game, it means that you did not like the game for whatever reasons. What were the reasons then? They were most likely related to gameplay. Maybe the controls were gittery, maybe the story sucked, maybe the world was too ... flat.

I dunno.

quote: the player rotates way too fast, the camera control is disasterous, the player doesn''t even fire his gun everytime you press the button, he''ll randomly decide not to get in a car when you want him to, he can''t jump forward from a stand-still... but still, it''s insanely fun!

Just of out of curiosity. Why do you think that it is still fun? what makes it fun?


(you know maybe this thread was better suited for the game design forum, cause it definetly seems to be going that route.)

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