Context, Challenge and Gratification
Yahtzee breaks down the three essential qualities of every game.
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Yahtzee breaks down the three essential qualities of every game.
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Context, Challenge and Gratification
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Agreed completely on where Saints Row 2 and Saints Row The Third would lie on this triangle graph. Saints Row 2 was the perfect balance of everything. Then Saints Row The Third comes along, and they focused on just one of the things people liked about the game (wacky crazy fun) and just pumped that up while sacrificing other things. I missed the kind of character interaction and development Saints Row 2 had. I felt SRTT was really disappointing in that department.
So yeah. SR3 is really fun when it comes to "holy shit look at Professor Genki" or just running around the street beating people with a giant floppy dildo, but it sadly lacks in other areas where SR2 had previously shined.
I also agree on everything at the end about the review scores. Review scores are generally nonsensical garbage.
Here's hoping Randall (xkcd author) sees this article and makes that triangle chart thing for us.
One confrontation with Phillipe, and then you kill him pretty early on without any further face-to-face confrontation with him despite the fact that this fucker killed Johnny Gat, the best character in the franchise. You drop a giant decoration on him, which is pretty awesome in the "wacky crazy" department, but compared to the stuff that happens in SR2, it just seems to come up short.
And then what happens after that? The Saints recruit a bunch of new people into their gang, and then between the four (later on, five) new members and the two you brought along from Stilwater (Pierce and Shaundi), none of them really get any kind of meaningful screen time or development. No memorable scenes. I think there was that time Kinzie was hiding under a booth in a diner, oh and Oleg and Pierce sure played a lot of chess. That Angel guy and his mask or something? That's about it I guess.
And for the other gang, WTF. Killbane kills one of the twins for you, and the other one defects so you don't get to kill her either despite both of them also playing a part in the previously mentioned killing of the best character in the franchise. You let Matt Miller fucking live because he offers you a few discounts at some shops. WTF is that?! At least you get some good confrontations with Killbane, but of course you have to let Shaundi get blown up to finish him off.
Also doesn't really help that I already did the same thing to Queen Myrrah, so when SRTT did it, I'd seen it already. Granted, Marcus Fenix didn't ride the giant decoration back down to the ground floor, but still.
And then what happens after that? The Saints recruit a bunch of new people into their gang, and then between the four (later on, five) new members and the two you brought along from Stilwater (Pierce and Shaundi), none of them really get any kind of meaningful screen time or development. No memorable scenes. I think there was that time Kinzie was hiding under a booth in a diner, oh and Oleg and Pierce sure played a lot of chess. That Angel guy and his mask or something? That's about it I guess.
And for the other gang, WTF. Killbane kills one of the twins for you, and the other one defects so you don't get to kill her either despite both of them also playing a part in the previously mentioned killing of the best character in the franchise. You let Matt Miller fucking live because he offers you a few discounts at some shops. WTF is that?! At least you get some good confrontations with Killbane, but of course you have to let Shaundi get blown up to finish him off.
So yeah. SR3 is really fun when it comes to "holy shit look at Professor Genki" or just running around the street beating people with a giant floppy dildo, but it sadly lacks in other areas where SR2 had previously shined.
I also agree on everything at the end about the review scores. Review scores are generally nonsensical garbage.
Here's hoping Randall (xkcd author) sees this article and makes that triangle chart thing for us.
Hmm, this actually sounds like it would be an interesting experiment. So how about you really DO IT in your next review, and see how people react? You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk?
No, but seriously, this is a cool idea, so try it.
No, but seriously, this is a cool idea, so try it.
How funny. I was just coming up with my own reviewing system that also includes three separate marks out of ten that can't be combined together. They're different than Yahtzee's, but I'm happy with them for my own purposes.
For the record, mine are Technical (mostly objective and concerning things like bugginess, smoothness of controls, clarity of GUI, etc.), Artistic (a combination of objective and subjective and concerning things like the pacing and the consistency/appropriateness of the aesthetic), and Personal (entirely subjective and concerning how much the reviewer personally enjoyed it). A game could get 9/10 in one category and 5/10 in the other two and still be an extremely good game that's well worth playing.
For the record, mine are Technical (mostly objective and concerning things like bugginess, smoothness of controls, clarity of GUI, etc.), Artistic (a combination of objective and subjective and concerning things like the pacing and the consistency/appropriateness of the aesthetic), and Personal (entirely subjective and concerning how much the reviewer personally enjoyed it). A game could get 9/10 in one category and 5/10 in the other two and still be an extremely good game that's well worth playing.
Fair enough idea.
Here's another one though - the ideal is wherever you, as a specific kind of player, decide it is.
If you like more context, then you're going to love games that provide more of it at the cost of challenge and gratification. If you like more challenge, then you'll be more than happy to work your arse off at such a game, that does it at the expense of the other two. And if you're all about the gratification, well...you're probably the majority of gamers, but more power to you too I suppose.
I'm pretty sure that on the theoretical level, the ideal is right in the middle. But when it comes down to practical application - people are different. Gamers are different. And because of that, there never was or will be a 'perfect' game for all. Only games that are moreso perfect for certain types of gamers, depending on which part of the triangle they happen to edge moreso towards or, in your case, on how centered they are between all three.
That said, I'd certainly prefer a diagram like that to metacritic's horribly uninformative and bland scores, if they really must find some way to 'measure' a game. No argument there.
Here's another one though - the ideal is wherever you, as a specific kind of player, decide it is.
If you like more context, then you're going to love games that provide more of it at the cost of challenge and gratification. If you like more challenge, then you'll be more than happy to work your arse off at such a game, that does it at the expense of the other two. And if you're all about the gratification, well...you're probably the majority of gamers, but more power to you too I suppose.
I'm pretty sure that on the theoretical level, the ideal is right in the middle. But when it comes down to practical application - people are different. Gamers are different. And because of that, there never was or will be a 'perfect' game for all. Only games that are moreso perfect for certain types of gamers, depending on which part of the triangle they happen to edge moreso towards or, in your case, on how centered they are between all three.
That said, I'd certainly prefer a diagram like that to metacritic's horribly uninformative and bland scores, if they really must find some way to 'measure' a game. No argument there.
Saint's Row 3 seems to have the exact same problem as Champions and Star Wars:Galaxies after NGE.
You start off awesome. More awesome than you can ever imagine being, and then some.
And then the game starts for real, and you're awesome in a sea of mediocre.
And you get BORED pretty quickly by being awesome. Until something equally awesome comes down and starts pounding you with QTEs.
And then you get bored with that. And another thing comes along and says "DO AWESOME THINGS FOR CASH", and you wave your little finger and it screams "THAT'SNUMBERWANGAWESOME" and gives you some cash.
And you look at your little avatar and tap the button once lightly. He runs off, kicks a granny through a door and jumps in a jet fighter.
Then you move it to the left slightly, and your avatar solves world peace.
And then you leave the avatar to it, and play Saint's Row 2 where you have to shoot your friend in the head as a mercy killing. And it hurts.
And that's the one you keep playing.
You start off awesome. More awesome than you can ever imagine being, and then some.
And then the game starts for real, and you're awesome in a sea of mediocre.
And you get BORED pretty quickly by being awesome. Until something equally awesome comes down and starts pounding you with QTEs.
And then you get bored with that. And another thing comes along and says "DO AWESOME THINGS FOR CASH", and you wave your little finger and it screams "THAT'S
And you look at your little avatar and tap the button once lightly. He runs off, kicks a granny through a door and jumps in a jet fighter.
Then you move it to the left slightly, and your avatar solves world peace.
And then you leave the avatar to it, and play Saint's Row 2 where you have to shoot your friend in the head as a mercy killing. And it hurts.
And that's the one you keep playing.
In terms of "what things make a game good", I'm going to have to agree more with PC Gamer's Tom Francis:
http://www.pentadact.com/2011-05-27-what-makes-games-good/
This reminded me of it; it's an interesting read.
http://www.pentadact.com/2011-05-27-what-makes-games-good/
This reminded me of it; it's an interesting read.
Except he never said that. He gave Halo: Reach as an example of a game that balances all of them, and he wasn't a particularly big fan of that game.Lordofthesuplex said:
At the very end of the article, he said that the scores a game receives on those three things should not be averaged together because that's not the goal.
Here's another from the handful of stars that are Yatzee's favorite games as a well-balanced "great game": Psychonauts (which I beat yesterday in between studying for my last final exam this semester).
Psychonauts has you, as Raz, exploring the CONTEXT of several different people's psyches and (sometimes literally) wrestling with their inner troubles. As for CHALLENGE, the riddles of the puzzle items in the second half of the game and the insane "acrobatics" of the last world pushed my limits. And finally, GRATIFICATION is from stunning and burning the big enemies and, of course, becoming a true Psychonaut.
Saints Row the Third, on the other hand, has little context and loses most of its challenge as soon as (and assuming that) you max out your anti-damage attributes. Some missions are always fairly challenging, though, since the "homies" can die easily. The sandbox can easily become pure GRATIFICATION with a grenade-launcher assault rifle and burning bullets.
Psychonauts has you, as Raz, exploring the CONTEXT of several different people's psyches and (sometimes literally) wrestling with their inner troubles. As for CHALLENGE, the riddles of the puzzle items in the second half of the game and the insane "acrobatics" of the last world pushed my limits. And finally, GRATIFICATION is from stunning and burning the big enemies and, of course, becoming a true Psychonaut.
Saints Row the Third, on the other hand, has little context and loses most of its challenge as soon as (and assuming that) you max out your anti-damage attributes. Some missions are always fairly challenging, though, since the "homies" can die easily. The sandbox can easily become pure GRATIFICATION with a grenade-launcher assault rifle and burning bullets.
I just wanted to call this out as something I think was brilliant and something that should be in more, better games because...mjc0961 said:
Having to pick between killing Killbane or saving Shaundi somehow became a real choice in the game. It felt like it had consequence and made me think. Compare that to Mass Effect 2, where the choice is either play more game and spend some more money on upgrades or have a character die. Is there really a decision there? To me it seems obvious that you pick more game. Or look at your choices at the end of Deus Ex: HR. You push a button and get a narration. There's no weight there, no sense of loss, and no real reward.
But the end of Saint's Row the Third made me stop and go "I hate this guy, but I like Shaundi. Shit." Maybe I'm just a sucker and other people didn't care at all. But I wish more games gave you actual choices like this. Or the choice of who to save in the original Mass Effect. Actual dilemmas that have consequence, both in the game and the metagame. You aren't being asked to pick between more game or quick ending, you're being asked to pick between game style A or style B in a plot decision, not a leveling up one.
But the end of Saint's Row the Third made me stop and go "I hate this guy, but I like Shaundi. Shit." Maybe I'm just a sucker and other people didn't care at all. But I wish more games gave you actual choices like this. Or the choice of who to save in the original Mass Effect. Actual dilemmas that have consequence, both in the game and the metagame. You aren't being asked to pick between more game or quick ending, you're being asked to pick between game style A or style B in a plot decision, not a leveling up one.
Edit: Fixed spoiler tags
Board games often have numbers on their boxes that are supposed to point out how much they rely on various skills or mechanisms (a basic complexity score, often a value for randomness, one for strategy, one for dexterity if it's one of those games, potentially one for negotiating with other players, etc). Not many videogames do that but I have seen some, primarily for kids. Now we just need the Yahtzee Advisory Board giving mandatory category scores to games.
I thought SR2 did context better than SR3 by having three campaigns, one per gang. Each gang was a defined entity with its own goals, personalities and issues. The syndicate in SR3 isn't nearly as interesting and of course every hero (or villain) is defined by his opponents. STAG also is fairly flat character-wise, the Ultor corp was a much more mixed enemy with an agenda that's not just "kill anything that moves".
Also I'm not sure on the challenge balance, I like the more varied enemy types that are the result of not caring for realism anymore (I don't think SR2 had any supernatural stuff beyond that one fight with the right hand man of the Sons of Samedi though it did have some ridiculously overbeefed regular guys like the boss fight against Veteran Child) but the slow health regeneration could lead to a ton of frustration, especially with no way to grab "health packs" and those heli-snipers are purely annoying.
Really, the best path for SR4 would be to take the best bits of SR2 and 3, they both have their strengths and weaknesses (e.g. running a long time to find a car to steal in SR2, the bo-duke-n made that WAAAAAAY smoother).
I thought SR2 did context better than SR3 by having three campaigns, one per gang. Each gang was a defined entity with its own goals, personalities and issues. The syndicate in SR3 isn't nearly as interesting and of course every hero (or villain) is defined by his opponents. STAG also is fairly flat character-wise, the Ultor corp was a much more mixed enemy with an agenda that's not just "kill anything that moves".
Also I'm not sure on the challenge balance, I like the more varied enemy types that are the result of not caring for realism anymore (I don't think SR2 had any supernatural stuff beyond that one fight with the right hand man of the Sons of Samedi though it did have some ridiculously overbeefed regular guys like the boss fight against Veteran Child) but the slow health regeneration could lead to a ton of frustration, especially with no way to grab "health packs" and those heli-snipers are purely annoying.
Really, the best path for SR4 would be to take the best bits of SR2 and 3, they both have their strengths and weaknesses (e.g. running a long time to find a car to steal in SR2, the bo-duke-n made that WAAAAAAY smoother).
This perfectly describes why I was so disappointed in GTA4. They laid on heavy with the context, and the challenge was decent, but you couldn't have the same gratification you got out of GTA3 without damaging the context severely. The only way I can see fit to rampage down the streets in an out of control ambulance, squishing more lives than I'm saving, is if I totally ignore anything I know about the character, and at that point I'm playing a different game.
Though I MIGHT be willing to accept the character change if I could kill children while nude buxom starlets applaud my efforts. Get on that mod, fellows!
Though I MIGHT be willing to accept the character change if I could kill children while nude buxom starlets applaud my efforts. Get on that mod, fellows!
You could average them out another way: Make an actual triangle chart. Perhaps three axes leading from a center point, each with a 1-10 numeric value represented by a dot on the line (the further away from the center, the better), and the dots would be connected into a triangle. The game's overall score would be expressed not as a numeric value, but in the size and shape of the triangle.Yahtzee Croshaw said:
I'd be up for seeing these categories used in future Zero Punctuations. Anything which might spur a new style of video game reviewing away from the 1-10 faux objectivity model used now.
Opinions will always be subjective no matter what kind of numbers you put with them!
Opinions will always be subjective no matter what kind of numbers you put with them!
This is an interesting idea- its quite similar to the petrochemographic diagrams we've been looking at in Metamorphic petrology. Problem is, if a game with the perfect blend of context, gameplay and gratification sits in the centre of the chart, how do you differentiate between a game that is scores a fantastic level in all three areas, or a terrible one? For example, Saints Row 2 sits in the middle, but where do you put a game like the Transformers official movie game? That one was equally execrable in every possible area? You can't give it three seperate points, and you can't give it, lets say, a position near the context because it sucked a bit less in that area than it did in the others, and have it sitting somewhere near Mass Effect or a similarly story-based game.
Hit the nail on the head.Random berk said:
This Yahtzee game theory is cute, but not very useful.
Balance doesn't have to be a good balance and little context, doesn't make retro games, bad games.
At best, the triangle can be used to tell what kind of audience a game is for, but there's better alternatives for that already: genre, parts and difficulty.