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Original post by Anonymous Poster As long as the gameplay centers around competition/combat, the player will always want to win. [...] But ultimately the player needs to win the game.

All generalizations (including the one I'm stating right now) are false. I hate winning just as much as I hate losing. Note that that doesn't necessarily mean that I hate losing per se. However, winning and losing both imply that the game has come to its end. In that sense, winning is equivalent to losing. And usually I don't care about the actual differences between the two. If the game ends, I seize to have fun. The thrill of winning is rather short-lived.

I'd almost say that I like losing much more than winning. At least you don't get the overly cliché "you are the redeemer of the people and everybody is so happy that you had to use a slegde hammer to get the smiles off their faces" ending. In fact, if you're going to emphasize winning (ie. showing a plethora of cinematic sequences, putting the player's name into the hall of fame etc.), you should do so for losing as well (the hall of fame is not necessarily appropriate here, but how about a hall of shame? [grin]). I know it's usually much more difficult to determine how and why the player lost (in an in-game sense) rather than won (as usually winning is equivalent of "doing what the designer had in mind", which is annoying to begin with in any "realistic" game) and thus play the appropriate cinematics, but if I get such "rewards" for losing the game, I'll have more reasons to experiment in the game and not worrying about the munchkiny minimaxing all the time.

But still, ending the game is something I usually consider simply annoying. I don't care if I am the ultimate redeemer and bringer of peace, I want to keep playing. In fact, I see the whole concept of having winning the whole purpose of the game like having dying as the purpose of life (with some sort of arbitrary restriction, like dying after curing a real life plague or killing a real life very bad dude [grin]).

Now, I know there are games which still allow you to play after "winning" (e.g. Fallout 2, Morrowind), but this thread seems to be about winning and losing as final states of the game, and even in the aforementioned games, the fact that you have won has little effect on the game world (I spent all those hours to actually do what the designer wanted me to and all I got was this stupid cinematic sequence). Basically the game just lets you tie up loose ends.

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If you want to have a game that doesn't center so uch on winning or losing, then creating something where the players can create their own content or do more non-combat or non-competitive activities is a good idea.

...for instance, make the world stochastic (note the deliberate avoidance of the word random, which apparently has some very perilous connotations [rolleyes]) and emphasize issues such as exploration. Or simply forget about winning and losing and focus on good gameplay. Let the player set his own challenges.

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If the fights were as challenging but you could recover without too much problem or time waste from a death , I would have fun that much more enjoyable to play.

What youre sugesting would make the player dont care about dying in the 1st place. Diablo 2 is already too forgiving about dying (unless you play hardcore mode :P). You just lose the money and the itens you wear. You could even get them back from the corpse, and have extra powerful itens in the stash, so you could use it to retrieve your main itens.

Remember: YOU DIED! It should have a meaning...

The problem in Diablo 2 is the unbalance. Its understandable because Diablo's maps and creatures were random. For example, suppose you were a mage type (sorcerer, necromancer, etc). So you depend of mana. Then you get a horde of creatures with long ranged beams that burn your mana. Youre dead. Same happens with melee warriors vs ranged magic creatures. Or a cold sorcerer against cold resistant horde of monsters. It is very easy to happen because each map had a horde of only 3 or 4 diferent types of monsters. The game should see the player status and balance, or try to aways vary more the monsters powers in the same map.

On the other hand Diablo could get extremelly easy, like a necromancer x skeletons, or area-damage specialized sorcerers (fireball?) x melee creatures.

I think a better way is make harder to kill you in a game. For example, In a MMORPG combat, Dont matter how much damage attack the enemy have, You should receive a maximum damage/time based on your HP (like 5% HP at each second) and ignore the rest of the damage. This way the player wouldnt be killed instantly, and could predict more how much time hes able to stand, and could decide better when to run. Even if you die, it give you much more sense of acomplishment than dying instantly. Civilization is a great example because you couldnt pulverize instantly the enemy even using atomic bombs. The same applied to you. You could be weaker, but you wouldnt get instantly killed. It'd give you time for a futile retreat or resistance :P.

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If you want to have a game that doesn't center so uch on winning or losing, then creating something where the players can create their own content or do more non-combat or non-competitive activities is a good idea.

Youre describing a sandbox game.

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All generalizations (including the one I'm stating right now) are false.

You said a paradox here :P if your false, all generalizations are true. If all generalizations are true, yours is either true.

I think you fail at confusing generalization with totality. Generalizations refer to most of the cases, not all of it.

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I hate winning just as much as I hate losing.

You hate too much. Then the game ends, yould should thank god (or the developer) for having such a good game. Not hate it. :P

But in a way I agree with you. I love open-ended games much more than one with end.

Even in civilization (where you can continue playing after win), the WIN message aways wasted my game. I even tried to continue playing, but the fact that the WIN had apeared already, and the fact that there wasnt any more tecnologies to research, made me feel empty inside (as i didnt acomplished anything real playing the damn game). In civ, starting the game or dying fighting is infinitelly more fun than win it.

That make me quote another user :P :

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but in civ 3 there are some funny taunts / statistics and a 'movie' in the end which are like a history of that one world you created by playing. That makes up for some of the loss, as then it's more of a role you have played. And in role-playing, such as acting for some theatrical play, I do like playing the role of a loser.

I know what you mean. The map animation in civ 1 & 3 was very fun, As you actually see all you have acomplished in that world. (Even if it was a foolish defeat)

About open-ended games, the best I have in mind (as examples) are:
- Elite
- Wing Commander Privateer
- Diablo
- Sandbox games (Sims, Sim City, Rollercoaster, Theme Hospital, etc...)

About games where die is (can be) fun:
- Multiplayer (not MMORPG) games, where you can kill and die without remorse. (Counter Strike, Quake, etc...)
- Multiplayer games where you start the same as the other player, and have the same chances of winning. (Worms, RTS games, board games, etc...)
- Games where losing dont end the game, but you must compensate the defeat (X Com, Soul Reaver)
- Epic strategy games where you make history (Master of Orion, Civilization)

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Original post by John Kowawsky Quote: All generalizations (including the one I'm stating right now) are false. You said a paradox here :P if your false, all generalizations are true. If all generalizations are true, yours is either true. I think you fail at confusing generalization with totality. Generalizations refer to most of the cases, not all of it.

It's not really a paradox. The statement is simply false. The logical negation of the sentence "all generalizations are false" is "there is at least one generalization which is not false", which does not mean that the generalization in question itself specifically was true. It could be any other.

And in colloquial language people usually call sentences of the form "all X have property Y" generalizations. If I wanted to be more accurate, I would've said along the lines "all universally quantified statements are false". In fact, I would have preferred it that way, and only barely resisted using it, but I wanted to keep it closer to the original. And sorry for my somewhat off-topic ramble (but on the other hand it's on-topic, because the topic is "You bunch of LOSERS!" and this kind of off-topic rambling make me look like a real loser, aye?).

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On the other hand Diablo could get extremelly easy, like a necromancer x skeletons, or area-damage specialized sorcerers (fireball?) x melee creatures.

Well I am talking about hell mode, you could have a fire specialized sorceress but that won't matter if the monsters are immune to fire in fact that would just screw you.

I wouldn't really care about losing in diablo if you could actually recover from a death obviously not easily but with required skill but real skill, in hell mode with a sorceress that only had 2 elements it was more of a waste of time and really boring to recover of a death and you were unlucky enough to do not have gold and your dead body is just trapped between the monsters. The only way to recover was to go to a much previous episode were monsters are so week and it got really boring.

A good lost example were sim city in my opinion a disaster could happen and you ended rebuilding your city, the game got more difficult and challenging instead of getting boring

Act Raiser (the first one) definitely had this sort of gameplay. First you defeated a major monster to "open" a specific area, then you would battle monsters in the region to clear out the land, build up civilized townships so the peasants would shut-down the monster headquarters, and then finally defeat some major evil which controlled it all.

Great game, you should check it out.

A couple of thoughts:

1)I play a lot of Pro Evolution Soccer on the PS2. When you play in league mode, individual losses of a game are part of the game - it can be annoying but you can't expect to win every game normally. And 'winning' is actually pretty hard because you have to beat many other teams over a lot of matches.

2)In my RTS I totally plan to have missions you CANNOT win. Failing moves the story, but it won't tell you it's impossible - you'll just find the game continues. In a territory-based game (like Dune2) this could be a general situation - as long as you have a territory left then losing just alters the course of the game.