Games from the old Atari days and even some NES games concentrated more on score than how far one advanced in a game. Today the goal is not score but just finishing the game. Some Atari games were endless, the difficulty just kept increasing as you progressed in the game until it overwhelmed you. I haven''t seen a game of that style for years. Do you think this is evolution or degeneration of games? Today the purpose of most(if not all) games is to finish. After finishing the game there is nothing more you can do by replaying to really gauge improvement. In the never ending games where the high score was the goal you could replay it countless times and actually see if you were doing better or worse. Is it better to have a game that gives the player finality by ending or better to have a game where you can constantly attempt to acheive more? Now I realize that this doesn''t apply to some genres. RPGs require closure. I don''t see how the could be left open ended and have a decent storyline. But many action games don''t even bother with giving score now. I was just wondering what your thoughts on this were.

There was a thread here sometime ago that questioned the role on non-linear plots in games and how this would affect the replayability of games. It very much tried to pin point what you are saying here.

Adventure games could be more replayable than a Deathmatch game if enough work was put into the dynamics of the storyline system - non linear. Then there''s the other issue of using randomness to increase replayability like what diablo did with their levels.

I don''t think replayability has been lost, in fact i think it''s progressed. It all depends on the games you play these days. Then we''ve also got fighting and sport games which have designs incorporated into them to make them replayable. And we haven''t even scratched upon in-built map editors yet. So i think a lot goes for the replayability of games these days. There''s plently of ways to do it, you''ve just got to find the elements in the game you''re making that don''t rub against the fun of the game (after repeative use) to find the parts that are replayable.

One more time for the dumbies
ar+gu+ment n. A discussion in which reasons are put forward in support of and against a proposition, proposal, or case; debate.

How about Tetris? Doesn''t it progress to the point where you can''t keep up?

I think the main difference is reflex vs. thinking. Arcade games, with rare exception, were about how quickly you use various controls and mash different buttons. The complexity level was low because the action was high. Most of the action played out on one screen (for many games). Now that games have become more complex, we''re able to offer deeper games, and the one level speed up mechanic doesn''t work. There are more things to do, and speeding up proves to be pretty one dimensional and repetitive.

There are many games I see where you can alter the difficulty level. I''d actually like __THIS__ to be open ended, but baring that an "Insane" or "Nightmare" mode is good enough.

I don''t see this as evolution or no, I just see it as different tastes.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

I agree that games without this open-ended playability aren''t better or worse, just different, but there are less of them around today. The point was made that now that we can do more with games, we don''t have to rely on score or speed for replayability, but I see no reason why there couldn''t still be games like this.


There is something compelling and competative about games that let you hunt for a high score. I''d like to see more games like this.


On another note, I think we can learn things from some other games that try to incorporate playing for score and playing to finish. A game that comes to mind is Yoshi''s Adventures for the SNES. If you don''t remember this game, you could go through beating the levels until you won or you could try to collect every red coin, star, and flower. The game kept track of how much you got, like the Doom %kills, %secrets.


Flexibility like in Yoshi''s Adventures is great because it allows commonplace gamers to go through beating the levels and hard-core gamers to go through getting all of the stuff.


-Jason

I just got Ultima Online, but it seems like that game wouldn''t really have an ending to it... so maybe there are RPGs that can have endings to them.. they just need the human factor.

Unless we all go DBZ style and have no limit to the amount of power we could get!!! But in a game like that, I would have to pity the newbies.

Newbie001: Cool, lets see, how do I punch?

Vegeta2351: Final Flash!

*Newbie001 is blasted into nothingness*

-Blackstream

Will you, won''t you, will you, won''t you, won''t you take my virus?

-The Mad Hacker

If you have a very open-ended story-based game, to have it also end something a wise AP once said could certainly work. You just have some sort of goal not based upon the story.

i.e. collect a certain number of items...

well, I can''t think of any really good ones, but you get the idea...


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people still play for points, they just call them frags or levels.