Progress in a fighting game is perfecting technique, studying animations so you know where openings are, and practicing combos. Beating schmoes in the story mode with the AI set to '1' isn't progress in my mind.
Progress in a fighting game is perfecting technique, studying animations so you know where openings are, and practicing combos. Beating schmoes in the story mode with the AI set to '1' isn't progress in my mind.
So is this thread really just you telling us what "true" progress in any endeavor is allowed to be?
Setting arbitrary but manageable goals and then seeing if you can meet those goals is fun. Is this a news flash to anybody? This is why people play football. This is why people climb mountains. This is why old men play chess and old ladies play solitaire. This is why Lance Armstrong rode in the Tour De France instead of on a stationary exercycle.
Seriously, Bernard Suits even defined playing a game as "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles".
Who is this Bernard Suits and where can I subscribe to his newsletter?
Some professor. Apparently his book The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia was pretty influential to game theory.
Progress in a fighting game is perfecting technique, studying animations so you know where openings are, and practicing combos. Beating schmoes in the story mode with the AI set to '1' isn't progress in my mind.
So is this thread really just you telling us what "true" progress in any endeavor is allowed to be?
Hunh.
It confuses me that you assume AI set to "1"?
I mean, seriously, usually the problem is the last dude is too hard.
And aside from that, Story gives me a scaffolding around the learning. It's kinda boring to just look at a movelist.
Progress in a fighting game is perfecting technique, studying animations so you know where openings are, and practicing combos. Beating schmoes in the story mode with the AI set to '1' isn't progress in my mind.
So is this thread really just you telling us what "true" progress in any endeavor is allowed to be?
Quit being ridiculous. I'm trying to figure out what makes games fun and I'm pretty sure it's not exclusively 'gameplay' and 'strategy' and 'depth' all the other things hardcore gamers claim while beating their chests. It's a mix of things that has somehow attracted 8 million people to WoW to grind for gear.
Here's an IGN review. http://pc.ign.com/articles/837/837848p1.html
The tagline is 'Can story win out over gameplay?' and the decent score they gave to the game makes the answer obvious.
People enjoy different things, which are in some activities but not others. A vast, vast majority of people enjoy the completion of goals. I too really don't see the purpose of this thread.
Then how about starting a thread that says, "Hey, guys, what do you think makes games fun? Here's what I think makes games fun! Let's all put on our monocles and have an intellectual discussion about what makes games fun!" instead of saying, "You guys are just playing games for gold stars and belly rubs" which makes it sound like you're looking for a reason to piss all over a hobby that you know people here enjoy.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Progress in a fighting game is perfecting technique, studying animations so you know where openings are, and practicing combos. Beating schmoes in the story mode with the AI set to '1' isn't progress in my mind.
So is this thread really just you telling us what "true" progress in any endeavor is allowed to be?
Quit being ridiculous. I'm trying to figure out what makes games fun and I'm pretty sure it's not exclusively 'gameplay' and 'strategy' and 'depth' all the other things hardcore gamers claim while beating their chests. It's a mix of things that has somehow attracted 8 million people to WoW to grind for gear.
Here's an IGN review. http://pc.ign.com/articles/837/837848p1.html
The tagline is 'Can story win out over gameplay?' and the decent score they gave to the game makes the answer obvious.
So... your alternate hypothesis is "it's all gold stars"?
Instead of like... "there are a variety of reasons people play games"?
Because I think you could probably have thought of that and then not even had to make a thread.
I mean... I mean... no, no it isn't just "those things the dang hardcores beat their chests about". I know grinding and seeing numbers go up was what got me into FFXII, but gameplay is why I've been playing Company of Heroes, and a combination of both makes me love Call of Duty 4.
"Nuanced view more accurate than simplified explanation" STOP PRESSES.
I feel that, as a budding designer and long-time student of the industry, I can shed some light on the subject for you emn.
Essentially, yes, all games boil down to the classic carrot/stick dynamic. Players play the game to accomplish a goal. Now, I use the word game very selectively there, as it seems this is where your disconnect is coming into play.
People do not, on average, expect to learn a meaningful skill or gain meaningful information from a game, that is something defined as an entertainment activity with no worthwhile goal. While yes, sometimes games can be educational (Scrabble) by and large game are not educational because, for the majority of the audience, having to learn history to complete an objective is not fun. Also, you bring up Tetris and Geometry Wars as games that offer no reward for playing. This is to utterly ignore the temptation of the high score. While yes, a game like Tetris is technically unbeatable as the game will eventually surpass the gamers' flow state and become too challenging, the reward is self-improvement reflected in the score mechanic. This archaic mechanic, still in use in quite a few games, exists to give a player a tangible reward and a reason to keep playing. I don't know how much experience you've had with arcades, but the oppurtunity to put your initials on a machine as an indirect challenge to all other gamers is very, very much a reward.
Even the Tycoon games and The Sims/SimCity offer carrots. What do you think the money/economy mechanics are? Sure you can cheat for umpteen million dollars, but this does not reflect player skill. Many players of, say, Rollercoaster Tycoon seek to build a profitable amusement park and surpassing that challenge is what makes the game.
I believe your largest issue is defining fun. Now, I'm no Warren Spector or Sid Meier, I can't offer a definition of fun because fun is totally dependent on the person. Take for example, fighting games. Me, I hate extremes, that is, I hate easy victories and hopeless defeats. I derive much more entertainment, fun if you will, from close matches that go to the wire. Recently, I've taken up a habit of talking to Virtua Fighter 5 players whom I beat soundly and offer them advice and tell them where they were leaving themselves open to attack, leading to them becoming better players and thusly more of a challenge for myself. But, as stated before, this is one narrowly defined element of fun. My mom sits and plays Literarti on Yahoo Games just about every day and she's fascinated with word games. She enjoys that competitive element of putting not reflexes and speed to the test but vocabulary and mental acumen. That is her fun. I could go on and on with examples, but I'm sure you're getting the point.
To bring it all back, while the carrot/gold star/pat on the back offer one form of enticement that is not the sole form of why we play. Many play as a form of escapism as romping around Azeroth is a far more enjoyable experience than, say, sitting at a small cubicle all day. Many look for challenge, some way to judge themselves against other people and prove themselves superior. So, in some regard, you are correct in that all videogames really offer are rewards. However, given the nature of life, attainable goals that can be clearly accomplished have always been something desirable and such a thought process strikes at the heart not only of videogames, but of gaming itself.
TL;DR: There are different types of fun and classifying fun solely as rewards does an injustice to the term.
Your argument is that games wouldn't be fun without some kind of goal-based positive reinforcement. This is true, but what you're failing to understand is that all games, by their very design, have goal-based positive reinforcement. If they didn't, they wouldn't be games. All games have goals (otherwise they're just unstructured play, and not really games (like Second Life)), and when people complete goals, they feel good. This is basic psychology.
The reason that games are fun is more complex than just "positive reinforcement", although nobody is arguing that that's not a part of it.
Yes, but rebuilding a car is hard work - games are designed to be relatively easy challenges where you can't fail.
no they aren't you bloody cretin will you stop fucking saying that omigod
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
My father's hobby is fixing up old, classic cars. I'm failing to see how spending months making an old Volkswagen Beetle or MGA or Porsche 914 run like new is any less "carrot-and-stick".
Whatever gives you enjoyment out of life, man.
Well, then you have a sweet classic car.
But honestly, I came to terms with this stuff a long-ass time ago. I play to have fun, not for results.
Do you? Do you really play for fun? I have no idea what games you play but unless you're addicted to Sim City and Bejeweled, I think you're playing for belly rubs and gold stars.
Delayed, but I meant REAL results. Like, if you fix up old cars for a hobby, you have wicked sweet oldschool cars. If you garden, you have fruits/veggies/flowers/trees/rocks, assuming you're any good. If you build wooden thingamajiggies, you have...Wooden thingamajiggies. If you game, you have some easily-replicated data files squirreled away on flash memory. I came to terms with that before puberty hit.
I like games wherein the process itself is fun, not the little rewards and shit
Ninja Gaiden is fun because fighting a challenging group of other ninjas while flipping around and decapitating bitches and making use of reflexes, quick thinking, and some tactical thought is fun. Similarly, a game like Company of Heroes is a lot of fun because it engages your mind and makes you think in a pleasurable fashion. I have way, way more fun with a very close game of COH - or any competitive game with any depth - than I do when I win a game by stomping my opponent. Playing Street Fighter against noobs isn't any fun; playing it against players who are better than you, even if you lose every time, is awesome. The reward or goal of victory isn't as important as the process itself.
Personally I think that wholly goal-oriented games that have little or no enjoyable elements in the process of reaching the goal are just really shitty games - or to be less acerbic, they are games for people who do not play games very much, for people who just want to burn some time, as horrible as that thought is.
the one game that I'd refute you with would be Ninja Gaiden. Sure, it does give you over the top prerendered cutscenes for beating a level, but then what game doesn't? The reason I like Ninja Gaiden is because more than any other game, it instills a sense of mastery into the player. The game is rewarding just for learnin how to beat it. Not many other games force players to analyze and adapt their own style- and I'm not even particularly good at the game. I'd say I barely scratched the surface of that with Ninja Gaiden, but that was enough for me.
I'm feeling pretty fucking insulted here because I'm not very good at many games and I've given up on many a game after 20, 30 or 40 tries at a level and getting absolutely nowhere. Apparently that just makes me a sad loser who can't appreciate the gameplay and just wants an easy reward in emnmnme's eyes :P
Setting arbitrary but manageable goals and then seeing if you can meet those goals is fun. Is this a news flash to anybody? This is why people play football. This is why people climb mountains. This is why old men play chess and old ladies play solitaire. This is why Lance Armstrong rode in the Tour De France instead of on a stationary exercycle.
Ta da. Let's not kid ourselves - the fun is in the reward, not the doing.
Can't it be both? Look at Risk, Chess or Settlers. They aren't just fun at the end.
I strongly agree with this. There are many games where it can be really sad to come to the end. Where you don't want it to end; you just want to keep playing! But deep down you know that if there wasn't an end you'd be even more disappointed, because at some point it would just become boring and because no game developer could come up with a never ending game that wasn't insanely repetitive.
I like playing games with stories. Lots of RPGs and adventure games. They contain lots of mini-goals and they're not necessarily designed to be very difficult. They're interactive stories with revelations interspersed by some puzzles or combat. Yes, you desperately want to get onto the next segment of story, but you can also have fun with the puzzles and combat along the way.
Yes, but rebuilding a car is hard work - games are designed to be relatively easy challenges where you can't fail. I'm wondering if that's why games can be addicting - all the little hurdles provide just enough satisfaction so you don't have to worry about real failure in real life.
If you can't figure out why your rebuilt car won't start, you'll spend hours reading up on what the problem could be. If you can't figure out a boss' weakness in five minutes or less, the boss is poorly designed. See a difference?
I can't understand why you're complaining that games are sometimes easy. Is there something wrong with games being escapism for real life? We pay for games, we don't have to play them, it's not a job and I think it's good that they reflect that. Why should we struggle at games?
Also, for me, it's not a matter of playing for five minutes - I've spend literal hours on a certain level or boss before and it's frustrating. I want to get onto the next big bit of the game, yes. What's the point in too much struggle?
I'm no fan of hack'n'slash and I can't bear games where I have to grind.
But, I still aim for a goal, only instead of a better sword my games usually give me an advancement in story.
You can call almost anything a 'goal'. I really enjoy the Sims 2. I've spent hours not really doing anything except just watching my Sims and setting up scenarios in order to see the cute little animations because they make me feel happy. But I still played the game in order to watch those animations so by emnmnme's reasoning I'm just as bad of a person as the gamer who plays Diablo.
Yes, the experience is also amazing but emnmnme did point out that a game that only provided you the experience without a goal (a never ending circular level of Splinter Cell) would not sell. For me it's the whole package: Experience and a goal.
The reward can be the doing. If the goal in a game is to get to a kidnapped woman by blasting through hundreds of enemies with a shotgun, I don't really give a shit about the goal. I care about blasting through hundreds of enemies with an awesome shotgun.
OK, but take fighting games. This might be a bad example since fighting games are more enjoyable but why is there always a single player story included? Why not just have a practice mode where you fight an opponent with infinite life and that's all? I say players need the illusion of progression even though all stories in fighting games are cheesy as hell.
Wait...what? You just forgot the "I think" in there, right? Right?
In any case consider this example- I played EQ for a little over two years and I'll readily admit that I had goals but the reason I reached them had nothing to do with a desire to reach them. I reached them because I loved chatting and playing with the people I spent hours killing poorly animated and textured polygons with. As a result of that reaching them was inevitable.
Or this example- Puzzle Quest. It's essentially glorified bejeweled. Yes you get experience points and levels and abilities but at the end of the day? All those let you do is play bejeweled over and over in slightly different ways.
Or this example- I play Guitar Hero on a pretty regular basis in co-op with friends. We pay no attention to high scores and the only thing we have everything unlocked for is the bass guitars and that's just due to playing. There really is no goal for us, we simply enjoy playing co-op. Now you could shrug that off as just co-op/socialization much. The thing is I do the same thing solo and the only time I even notice high score is the odd time I happen to beat one and have to click one more time before I can get back to playing.
Now all those examples are pretty specific genres but you can't pose that all games are only fun because of arbitrary goals and then dismiss them out of hand. And yes there are people who practice and struggle to 100% every song in Guitar Hero. There are probably some people who strive to beat their high scores even after getting 100% on every song. There are people who played EQ to be the first to take down raid mobs or to get the new shineys out of the latest expansion and there are people who do that today with WoW. Hell, there are probably even people who play Puzzle Quest just to try to beat their longest chain. However they strike me more as the people who spend hours studying fighting games to get just a little farther in survival mode or that spent hundreds in the arcade mastering DDR or who do speed runs of games that take hours to beat and then do it again to try to beat their last time. That is to say people who are highly skilled, highly motivated and not the norm. There are people who play to accomplish arbitrary goals they set themselves but to imply that everyone does that is kind of ridiculous.
Correct me if I'm wrong, the issue you seem to have is that setting story aside the majority of games consist mostly of readily achievable goals. My question to you is, assuming that people find that enjoyable why is that something worth taking issue with?
I'm not sure I would've enjoyed the first Sims game half as much. I like the Sims 2 partly for its genetic component - your Sims' children grow up, marry, have their own children and it's fun to see what genes get passed along. The domestic grind is less of an issue once you have the game down pat - and often I hire a maid/gardener so my Sims can concentrate on social engagements.
Man I should stop doing things in life just because of some fake 'objective' too. I mean I'm only doing it to get to the next story reveal anyway, so fuck that!
I'm grinding my way through work right now waiting for the end-goal of getting home.
Yeah, but if you didn't have to work, if you had infinite moneys, would you still go?
I used the example of FF7 in the original post. I have the PC version and there's a fan made tool that lets you be lvl 99 and have Knights of the Round the second Cloud Strife jumps off the train. Why does it make the game less fun if you take away everything you would otherwise work for? The gameplay is the same. All the enemies are lvl 99, too, so the challenge is still there. You wouldn't bother with an instance in WoW if there weren't any gear in there for you. You wouldn't play an RTS if you had the best units available at the beginning of the level. You wouldn't go to work for no pay. If the fun were in the doing, these things wouldn't be true. That's not to say there's satisfaction in pushing a 'WIN' button. But the carrot and stick trick is so vital to gaming, any piece of entertainment software would be ruined without it. That includes Serious Sam, Tetris, and Supreme Commander.
I'll also add some games give you too many goals and confound the player. Psychonauts and Donkey Kong 64 had doodads to collect to a fault. Morrowind had a crippling number of sidequests thrown your way in the first few hours. The warm fuzzy feeling is diminished by a bajilllion if you complete a goal but have fifty other goals to complete, too. 'I collected all the bananas for this level ... now I have to do it again for Diddy Kong and I have to take pictures of the banana fairies and the Jinjos need to be rounded up and ugh.
Yes, but rebuilding a car is hard work - games are designed to be relatively easy challenges where you can't fail.
no they aren't you bloody cretin will you stop fucking saying that omigod
Dumbdumb, if you lost all your mans in a videogame, you get a Game Over screen and then you go back to a checkpoint. Oh! The inconvenience! If you were to really fail at a game, you would lose all your mans and then the console would erase all your saved data and then destroy the disc in the tray.
I'm grinding my way through work right now waiting for the end-goal of getting home.
Yeah, but if you didn't have to work, if you had infinite moneys, would you still go?
Actually, yes, I would. Work provides social interaction, it keeps your mind active, and I'd certainly keep at some form of work if I had infinite money - although it is true that I might be tempted to switch from this job to, say, do a further degree instead.
Also, I have replayed games that allow you to start with the super-powerful character you already completed the game once, because I don't like finding things, I like playing for the story. The first time through it may have added to the challenge, but I usually have just as much fun going through it again. Same with adventure games; I know now the solution to all the puzzles, and I also know the ending, but I still replay them.
Are you even arguing that there's no point to gaming anymore?
:x
I'm arguing that a big chunk of gaming is positive reinforcement. Bigger than we gamers would like to admit.
If I said something nutty like, "People read comic books to see busty women in skin tight costumes" or "People watch movies to get their adrenaline pumping" then I'd be way off. Those are minor, tiny fractions of reasons those hobbies are popular.
But getting gold stars is a huge reason of why games are popular. "You kick ass, Hero of Time. You saved the world!!!" Nobody admits to being vain (even though everyone is a little bit) and then there's other kinds of gold stars mentioned earlier. Rare items, successful takedowns, succeeding in a virtual world, etc.
No, there's no way we play games for the reasons we say we do.
You did something you liked! Congrats! Jesus there is no point to this.
The reason someone plays a game is to enjoy it. That's the basic level. The motivation behind that enjoyment can span a vast range, from "yay gold star hurr" to "man, that really challenged me to think critically".
Applying any one term to "gamers" is disingenuous to some set of individuals.
No, that ending sucked and was poorly thought out in Republic Commando. However, you did get to be big cheese of some teammates that called you "Sir." And you felt warm and gooey when you killed a bunch of baddies and freed the wookies.
If you slightly modified the game so that you were a grunt and the CO kept calling you 'a miserable puke,' and the wookies peed on you instead of thanking you when you saved them from their cages, you wouldn't have it. The game would cease to be fun.
What other reasons? Stress relief, enjoyment, escapism? Because those are all valid reasons which can be part of why we play games as well as getting 'rewards'. Or that getting the rewards helps to facilitate the other feelings. How can you not accept that?
People don't JUST read comic books to see busty women. Of course not. There's porn if that's all you want. But I'm sure there are many readers who do like their favourite comic heroines to be busty. I'd want to be busty if I was a comic heroine, too. But yes, it'd be insulting to say 'oh ho ho! That's why you read comics' because it wouldn't be true. Why people like something is far, far more complex.
Yes, but rebuilding a car is hard work - games are designed to be relatively easy challenges where you can't fail.
no they aren't you bloody cretin will you stop fucking saying that omigod
Dumbdumb, if you lost all your mans in a videogame, you get a Game Over screen and then you go back to a checkpoint. Oh! The inconvenience! If you were to really fail at a game, you would lose all your mans and then the console would erase all your saved data and then destroy the disc in the tray.
You can't fail at videogames.
You have failed to understand failure.
Failure doesn't just mean you can never try it again ever and you only get one shot. If you reach a challenge in the game that is too difficult for you, and you die over and over, and you just can't beat it - you've failed. There are many games that provide such challenges. Thousands, probably millions, of people have played games where they get to something they just can't beat and then never progressed further. More to the point, if you reach a challenge, and you do not complete it, you have failed to complete it. You can try again, but that doesn't mean you didn't fail. Turning failure into some absolute one-shot attempt is a silly sophistry.
Regardless, even more importantly, you have failed to understand games.
You play a game where you get one shot and that's it, and you "fail" by your definition and you can never try it again. Is that really fun? Would you spend 60 dollars on that game? Of course not. You want a game where you can try to play again and increase your own ability and adapt to it. That doesn't mean it's not challenging, or that it's easy.
Game design rides a fine line where you have to challenge the player enough that they will feel challenged, so their heart will get pumping and they'll be at 5 health with no items and almost out of ammo by the end of the level, but at the same time you aren't making it so hard that they will give up or stop playing. For most games, the ideal zone is where the player will never fail but will come really close to it, and if they screw up they will fail. For other games, though, failure to defeat an obstacle is important; the player is in fact not expected to be able to defeat most challenges on their first try. Players whose skill level is far below that of the target demographic for the game will probably never beat it.
My cousin, who has trouble with Zelda, will never beat Ninja Gaiden. I, however, am going to beat Ninja Gaiden within the next couple weeks. Does that make the game easy? Hell no. There is a wide gap between "possible" and "easy." All games should fall within this gap, depending on who they're targeting. Zelda's leaning against the E in "easy," for example.
You did something you liked! Congrats! Jesus there is no point to this.
The reason someone plays a game is to enjoy it. That's the basic level. The motivation behind that enjoyment can span a vast range, from "yay gold star hurr" to "man, that really challenged me to think critically".
Applying any one term to "gamers" is disingenuous to some set of individuals.
BY god, you've missed my point by a mile. Hardcore gamers say they play games for lots of reasons - they play for the challenge, they play for the smooth gameplay, they play to admire the art. They rarely say they play a game to feel good about themselves. Thinking critically is not the what's on everyone's minds. If you had a puzzle that never ended so matter how much of it you solved, you had damn well put a hi-score on that sucker or else the game is a flop. People expect to solve a puzzle and get a reward. If they don't get a reward or a congratulations, they're pissed. Why is that?
What other reasons? Stress relief, enjoyment, escapism? Because those are all valid reasons which can be part of why we play games as well as getting 'rewards'. Or that getting the rewards helps to facilitate the other feelings. How can you not accept that?
People don't JUST read comic books to see busty women. Of course not. There's porn if that's all you want. But I'm sure there are many readers who do like their favourite comic heroines to be busty. I'd want to be busty if I was a comic heroine, too. But yes, it'd be insulting to say 'oh ho ho! That's why you read comics' because it wouldn't be true. Why people like something is far, far more complex.
You take the busty women out of the comic book and you can still have a comic book. You take the rewards out of a Zelda game (Tingle steals them and runs away before you can get them) and people are pissed. The game is ruined or broken. That's how I'm looking at this.
I agree with you, Evil Multifarious, though I remind you game and level designers spend a lot of time balancing things out so the player is rarely in those situations where they have 5 health and no ammo. If you encounter three monsters, they will put a health pack in the room just before those three monsters. If you see a lot of ammo and health lying around, you can guess there will be a tough fight ahead. It's hand holding and I'm not saying that's a bad thing - I'm worried about the tummy rubs and gold stars that follow.
Posts
Some professor. Apparently his book The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia was pretty influential to game theory.
Hunh.
It confuses me that you assume AI set to "1"?
I mean, seriously, usually the problem is the last dude is too hard.
And aside from that, Story gives me a scaffolding around the learning. It's kinda boring to just look at a movelist.
With reading, what really do you come away with? It's the same things you can come away with from having a hobby of gaming.
Quit being ridiculous. I'm trying to figure out what makes games fun and I'm pretty sure it's not exclusively 'gameplay' and 'strategy' and 'depth' all the other things hardcore gamers claim while beating their chests. It's a mix of things that has somehow attracted 8 million people to WoW to grind for gear.
Here's an IGN review.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/837/837848p1.html
The tagline is 'Can story win out over gameplay?' and the decent score they gave to the game makes the answer obvious.
Then how about starting a thread that says, "Hey, guys, what do you think makes games fun? Here's what I think makes games fun! Let's all put on our monocles and have an intellectual discussion about what makes games fun!" instead of saying, "You guys are just playing games for gold stars and belly rubs" which makes it sound like you're looking for a reason to piss all over a hobby that you know people here enjoy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
So... your alternate hypothesis is "it's all gold stars"?
Instead of like... "there are a variety of reasons people play games"?
Because I think you could probably have thought of that and then not even had to make a thread.
I mean... I mean... no, no it isn't just "those things the dang hardcores beat their chests about". I know grinding and seeing numbers go up was what got me into FFXII, but gameplay is why I've been playing Company of Heroes, and a combination of both makes me love Call of Duty 4.
"Nuanced view more accurate than simplified explanation" STOP PRESSES.
Essentially, yes, all games boil down to the classic carrot/stick dynamic. Players play the game to accomplish a goal. Now, I use the word game very selectively there, as it seems this is where your disconnect is coming into play.
People do not, on average, expect to learn a meaningful skill or gain meaningful information from a game, that is something defined as an entertainment activity with no worthwhile goal. While yes, sometimes games can be educational (Scrabble) by and large game are not educational because, for the majority of the audience, having to learn history to complete an objective is not fun. Also, you bring up Tetris and Geometry Wars as games that offer no reward for playing. This is to utterly ignore the temptation of the high score. While yes, a game like Tetris is technically unbeatable as the game will eventually surpass the gamers' flow state and become too challenging, the reward is self-improvement reflected in the score mechanic. This archaic mechanic, still in use in quite a few games, exists to give a player a tangible reward and a reason to keep playing. I don't know how much experience you've had with arcades, but the oppurtunity to put your initials on a machine as an indirect challenge to all other gamers is very, very much a reward.
Even the Tycoon games and The Sims/SimCity offer carrots. What do you think the money/economy mechanics are? Sure you can cheat for umpteen million dollars, but this does not reflect player skill. Many players of, say, Rollercoaster Tycoon seek to build a profitable amusement park and surpassing that challenge is what makes the game.
I believe your largest issue is defining fun. Now, I'm no Warren Spector or Sid Meier, I can't offer a definition of fun because fun is totally dependent on the person. Take for example, fighting games. Me, I hate extremes, that is, I hate easy victories and hopeless defeats. I derive much more entertainment, fun if you will, from close matches that go to the wire. Recently, I've taken up a habit of talking to Virtua Fighter 5 players whom I beat soundly and offer them advice and tell them where they were leaving themselves open to attack, leading to them becoming better players and thusly more of a challenge for myself. But, as stated before, this is one narrowly defined element of fun. My mom sits and plays Literarti on Yahoo Games just about every day and she's fascinated with word games. She enjoys that competitive element of putting not reflexes and speed to the test but vocabulary and mental acumen. That is her fun. I could go on and on with examples, but I'm sure you're getting the point.
To bring it all back, while the carrot/gold star/pat on the back offer one form of enticement that is not the sole form of why we play. Many play as a form of escapism as romping around Azeroth is a far more enjoyable experience than, say, sitting at a small cubicle all day. Many look for challenge, some way to judge themselves against other people and prove themselves superior. So, in some regard, you are correct in that all videogames really offer are rewards. However, given the nature of life, attainable goals that can be clearly accomplished have always been something desirable and such a thought process strikes at the heart not only of videogames, but of gaming itself.
TL;DR: There are different types of fun and classifying fun solely as rewards does an injustice to the term.
The reason that games are fun is more complex than just "positive reinforcement", although nobody is arguing that that's not a part of it.
no they aren't you bloody cretin will you stop fucking saying that omigod
Delayed, but I meant REAL results. Like, if you fix up old cars for a hobby, you have wicked sweet oldschool cars. If you garden, you have fruits/veggies/flowers/trees/rocks, assuming you're any good. If you build wooden thingamajiggies, you have...Wooden thingamajiggies. If you game, you have some easily-replicated data files squirreled away on flash memory. I came to terms with that before puberty hit.
I like games wherein the process itself is fun, not the little rewards and shit
Ninja Gaiden is fun because fighting a challenging group of other ninjas while flipping around and decapitating bitches and making use of reflexes, quick thinking, and some tactical thought is fun. Similarly, a game like Company of Heroes is a lot of fun because it engages your mind and makes you think in a pleasurable fashion. I have way, way more fun with a very close game of COH - or any competitive game with any depth - than I do when I win a game by stomping my opponent. Playing Street Fighter against noobs isn't any fun; playing it against players who are better than you, even if you lose every time, is awesome. The reward or goal of victory isn't as important as the process itself.
Personally I think that wholly goal-oriented games that have little or no enjoyable elements in the process of reaching the goal are just really shitty games - or to be less acerbic, they are games for people who do not play games very much, for people who just want to burn some time, as horrible as that thought is.
I agree with this.
I strongly agree with this. There are many games where it can be really sad to come to the end. Where you don't want it to end; you just want to keep playing! But deep down you know that if there wasn't an end you'd be even more disappointed, because at some point it would just become boring and because no game developer could come up with a never ending game that wasn't insanely repetitive.
I like playing games with stories. Lots of RPGs and adventure games. They contain lots of mini-goals and they're not necessarily designed to be very difficult. They're interactive stories with revelations interspersed by some puzzles or combat. Yes, you desperately want to get onto the next segment of story, but you can also have fun with the puzzles and combat along the way.
I can't understand why you're complaining that games are sometimes easy. Is there something wrong with games being escapism for real life? We pay for games, we don't have to play them, it's not a job and I think it's good that they reflect that. Why should we struggle at games?
Also, for me, it's not a matter of playing for five minutes - I've spend literal hours on a certain level or boss before and it's frustrating. I want to get onto the next big bit of the game, yes. What's the point in too much struggle?
1. Games you play because the experience is fun, scary, enjoyable, challenging, thrilling, engaging, whatever.
2. Games you play because they will give you a better sword if you get 17 plainstrider hooves.
If you like the second type you are a bad person and should feel bad.
https://medium.com/@alascii
But, I still aim for a goal, only instead of a better sword my games usually give me an advancement in story.
You can call almost anything a 'goal'. I really enjoy the Sims 2. I've spent hours not really doing anything except just watching my Sims and setting up scenarios in order to see the cute little animations because they make me feel happy. But I still played the game in order to watch those animations so by emnmnme's reasoning I'm just as bad of a person as the gamer who plays Diablo.
Yes, the experience is also amazing but emnmnme did point out that a game that only provided you the experience without a goal (a never ending circular level of Splinter Cell) would not sell. For me it's the whole package: Experience and a goal.
Wait...what? You just forgot the "I think" in there, right? Right?
In any case consider this example- I played EQ for a little over two years and I'll readily admit that I had goals but the reason I reached them had nothing to do with a desire to reach them. I reached them because I loved chatting and playing with the people I spent hours killing poorly animated and textured polygons with. As a result of that reaching them was inevitable.
Or this example- Puzzle Quest. It's essentially glorified bejeweled. Yes you get experience points and levels and abilities but at the end of the day? All those let you do is play bejeweled over and over in slightly different ways.
Or this example- I play Guitar Hero on a pretty regular basis in co-op with friends. We pay no attention to high scores and the only thing we have everything unlocked for is the bass guitars and that's just due to playing. There really is no goal for us, we simply enjoy playing co-op. Now you could shrug that off as just co-op/socialization much. The thing is I do the same thing solo and the only time I even notice high score is the odd time I happen to beat one and have to click one more time before I can get back to playing.
Now all those examples are pretty specific genres but you can't pose that all games are only fun because of arbitrary goals and then dismiss them out of hand. And yes there are people who practice and struggle to 100% every song in Guitar Hero. There are probably some people who strive to beat their high scores even after getting 100% on every song. There are people who played EQ to be the first to take down raid mobs or to get the new shineys out of the latest expansion and there are people who do that today with WoW. Hell, there are probably even people who play Puzzle Quest just to try to beat their longest chain. However they strike me more as the people who spend hours studying fighting games to get just a little farther in survival mode or that spent hundreds in the arcade mastering DDR or who do speed runs of games that take hours to beat and then do it again to try to beat their last time. That is to say people who are highly skilled, highly motivated and not the norm. There are people who play to accomplish arbitrary goals they set themselves but to imply that everyone does that is kind of ridiculous.
Correct me if I'm wrong, the issue you seem to have is that setting story aside the majority of games consist mostly of readily achievable goals. My question to you is, assuming that people find that enjoyable why is that something worth taking issue with?
https://medium.com/@alascii
https://medium.com/@alascii
Yeah, but if you didn't have to work, if you had infinite moneys, would you still go?
I used the example of FF7 in the original post. I have the PC version and there's a fan made tool that lets you be lvl 99 and have Knights of the Round the second Cloud Strife jumps off the train. Why does it make the game less fun if you take away everything you would otherwise work for? The gameplay is the same. All the enemies are lvl 99, too, so the challenge is still there. You wouldn't bother with an instance in WoW if there weren't any gear in there for you. You wouldn't play an RTS if you had the best units available at the beginning of the level. You wouldn't go to work for no pay. If the fun were in the doing, these things wouldn't be true. That's not to say there's satisfaction in pushing a 'WIN' button. But the carrot and stick trick is so vital to gaming, any piece of entertainment software would be ruined without it. That includes Serious Sam, Tetris, and Supreme Commander.
I'll also add some games give you too many goals and confound the player. Psychonauts and Donkey Kong 64 had doodads to collect to a fault. Morrowind had a crippling number of sidequests thrown your way in the first few hours. The warm fuzzy feeling is diminished by a bajilllion if you complete a goal but have fifty other goals to complete, too. 'I collected all the bananas for this level ... now I have to do it again for Diddy Kong and I have to take pictures of the banana fairies and the Jinjos need to be rounded up and ugh.
Dumbdumb, if you lost all your mans in a videogame, you get a Game Over screen and then you go back to a checkpoint. Oh! The inconvenience! If you were to really fail at a game, you would lose all your mans and then the console would erase all your saved data and then destroy the disc in the tray.
You can't fail at videogames.
Actually, yes, I would. Work provides social interaction, it keeps your mind active, and I'd certainly keep at some form of work if I had infinite money - although it is true that I might be tempted to switch from this job to, say, do a further degree instead.
Also, I have replayed games that allow you to start with the super-powerful character you already completed the game once, because I don't like finding things, I like playing for the story. The first time through it may have added to the challenge, but I usually have just as much fun going through it again. Same with adventure games; I know now the solution to all the puzzles, and I also know the ending, but I still replay them.
:x
I'm arguing that a big chunk of gaming is positive reinforcement. Bigger than we gamers would like to admit.
If I said something nutty like, "People read comic books to see busty women in skin tight costumes" or "People watch movies to get their adrenaline pumping" then I'd be way off. Those are minor, tiny fractions of reasons those hobbies are popular.
But getting gold stars is a huge reason of why games are popular. "You kick ass, Hero of Time. You saved the world!!!" Nobody admits to being vain (even though everyone is a little bit) and then there's other kinds of gold stars mentioned earlier. Rare items, successful takedowns, succeeding in a virtual world, etc.
No, there's no way we play games for the reasons we say we do.
I think you're reading a little too much into the ending of some games.
I got no shower of stars in Republic Commando.
The reason someone plays a game is to enjoy it. That's the basic level. The motivation behind that enjoyment can span a vast range, from "yay gold star hurr" to "man, that really challenged me to think critically".
Applying any one term to "gamers" is disingenuous to some set of individuals.
If you slightly modified the game so that you were a grunt and the CO kept calling you 'a miserable puke,' and the wookies peed on you instead of thanking you when you saved them from their cages, you wouldn't have it. The game would cease to be fun.
People don't JUST read comic books to see busty women. Of course not. There's porn if that's all you want. But I'm sure there are many readers who do like their favourite comic heroines to be busty. I'd want to be busty if I was a comic heroine, too. But yes, it'd be insulting to say 'oh ho ho! That's why you read comics' because it wouldn't be true. Why people like something is far, far more complex.
You have failed to understand failure.
Failure doesn't just mean you can never try it again ever and you only get one shot. If you reach a challenge in the game that is too difficult for you, and you die over and over, and you just can't beat it - you've failed. There are many games that provide such challenges. Thousands, probably millions, of people have played games where they get to something they just can't beat and then never progressed further. More to the point, if you reach a challenge, and you do not complete it, you have failed to complete it. You can try again, but that doesn't mean you didn't fail. Turning failure into some absolute one-shot attempt is a silly sophistry.
Regardless, even more importantly, you have failed to understand games.
You play a game where you get one shot and that's it, and you "fail" by your definition and you can never try it again. Is that really fun? Would you spend 60 dollars on that game? Of course not. You want a game where you can try to play again and increase your own ability and adapt to it. That doesn't mean it's not challenging, or that it's easy.
Game design rides a fine line where you have to challenge the player enough that they will feel challenged, so their heart will get pumping and they'll be at 5 health with no items and almost out of ammo by the end of the level, but at the same time you aren't making it so hard that they will give up or stop playing. For most games, the ideal zone is where the player will never fail but will come really close to it, and if they screw up they will fail. For other games, though, failure to defeat an obstacle is important; the player is in fact not expected to be able to defeat most challenges on their first try. Players whose skill level is far below that of the target demographic for the game will probably never beat it.
My cousin, who has trouble with Zelda, will never beat Ninja Gaiden. I, however, am going to beat Ninja Gaiden within the next couple weeks. Does that make the game easy? Hell no. There is a wide gap between "possible" and "easy." All games should fall within this gap, depending on who they're targeting. Zelda's leaning against the E in "easy," for example.
Maybe someone should make a game that somehow balances challange and reward. That'd be a pretty cool game. Yeah.
BY god, you've missed my point by a mile. Hardcore gamers say they play games for lots of reasons - they play for the challenge, they play for the smooth gameplay, they play to admire the art. They rarely say they play a game to feel good about themselves. Thinking critically is not the what's on everyone's minds. If you had a puzzle that never ended so matter how much of it you solved, you had damn well put a hi-score on that sucker or else the game is a flop. People expect to solve a puzzle and get a reward. If they don't get a reward or a congratulations, they're pissed. Why is that?
You take the busty women out of the comic book and you can still have a comic book. You take the rewards out of a Zelda game (Tingle steals them and runs away before you can get them) and people are pissed. The game is ruined or broken. That's how I'm looking at this.
I agree with you, Evil Multifarious, though I remind you game and level designers spend a lot of time balancing things out so the player is rarely in those situations where they have 5 health and no ammo. If you encounter three monsters, they will put a health pack in the room just before those three monsters. If you see a lot of ammo and health lying around, you can guess there will be a tough fight ahead. It's hand holding and I'm not saying that's a bad thing - I'm worried about the tummy rubs and gold stars that follow.