This was an enjoyable read, and really spoke to me since I'm such a damn perfectionist with these things.
Playing It Properly
- Thread starter thatsthespirit
- Start date
Wait, you're saying she was impressed by Heavy Rain's writing?
Anyway, reminds me of when I was little and I used to watch my Dad play stuff. I used to blast through and he used to agonisingly inspect everything.
Thief used to do it right though, since getting the loot fed so directly back into the game itself.
Oh, and I must ask: was this...
Anyway, reminds me of when I was little and I used to watch my Dad play stuff. I used to blast through and he used to agonisingly inspect everything.
I got the feathers. And that was the last time I bothered collecting anything.Irridium said:
Thief used to do it right though, since getting the loot fed so directly back into the game itself.
Oh, and I must ask: was this...
... meant to be ironic? I mean, that's certainly an interesting conclusion to come to when you're talking about games.
Oh but there IS a correct way to play a game. Some games are just more brutal in the consequences of failure.
If you don't press the right buttons at the right time in RE4 QTEs, you die. If you don't use certain items to unlock things like doors, you don't progress. If you aren't headed in the right direction, you won't reach the next area.
High scores and good endings is one thing, but if you simply cannot progress beyond a certain point, then you probably don't know what to do and are doing the wrong thing, hence the clear lack of progress.
Games still require us to jump through hoops to attain certain goals.
Giving the player too much freedom means risking that they'll use it in fruitless ways in the context of the game. You CAN play GTA IV like it's a huge sandbox with lots of NPCs for you to kill and loot, or a glorified driving simulator. If, hypothetically, that would be the only way you'd play it...then the story (missions) is wasted on you. And, truly, that is where the game shines. It is its core.
Dicking around can be fun for a while, but progress and achievement is what drives gamers to finish a game.
If you don't press the right buttons at the right time in RE4 QTEs, you die. If you don't use certain items to unlock things like doors, you don't progress. If you aren't headed in the right direction, you won't reach the next area.
High scores and good endings is one thing, but if you simply cannot progress beyond a certain point, then you probably don't know what to do and are doing the wrong thing, hence the clear lack of progress.
Games still require us to jump through hoops to attain certain goals.
Giving the player too much freedom means risking that they'll use it in fruitless ways in the context of the game. You CAN play GTA IV like it's a huge sandbox with lots of NPCs for you to kill and loot, or a glorified driving simulator. If, hypothetically, that would be the only way you'd play it...then the story (missions) is wasted on you. And, truly, that is where the game shines. It is its core.
Dicking around can be fun for a while, but progress and achievement is what drives gamers to finish a game.
While I'm good at not giving shits about achievements and trophies, it's the scoring systems that kill me. Fucking LA Noire and their pointless score that makes obsessive gold medal-ers like myself screw up the game for themselves by constantly reloading the last save. I would have enjoyed that game so much more if that wasn't there.
Personally, I would find that more annoying than someone trying to take the controller off me (where I could at least tell them to kindly f**k off without seeming like I was overreacting).Lex Darko said:
My boyfriend is a real RPG fan, whereas I'm completely rubbish at them. But even when watching over my shoulder (which he doesn't do very often because he knows it annoys me), he has never tried to prod me in the "right direction". And while this has led to me having to restart Dragon Age: Origins from the beginning (having mucked up my first game after about six hours) I appreciate him leaving me to learn rather than trying to "coach".
After all, he learnt to play RPGs without someone telling him what to do.
I'm feeling exactly like this with Dishonored. All the warnings about rising chaos levels and dark endings has killed my ability to own my experience. I choose not to use my badass murder powers not for fun or out of empathy, but because of my slavish commitment to the "good" ending. If developers insist on informing our play styles like this, I wish they'd do so more surreptitiously.
I remember they said almost the exact same thing in an Extra Credits episode.Mr Companion said:
OT: I used to be like this when playing Tekken. When my brother and I played against each other, we agreed to never use throws on each other. Needless to say when we started playing in the arcade, we would call people who threw us "cheaters."
A few years and watching a few tournaments later, we've matured past this now.
But people are rather conditioning by movies, shows, books and also games on how things should end. 99% of the movies don't have a bad ending and when they do we feel aggravated because we spent all that effort and it didn't work out. Of course, that's part of life in a nutshell but we've grown to dislike that possibly because we already deal with that on a daily basis and we want to escape.Hevva said:
So I'm actually surprised the girlfriend or your brother didn't feel bad when they got bad endings or playthroughs since at some point they should feel "Oh this isn't going well for me" and either quit or try again to make it better.
That's what drives us more than the "high score" system and this article neglects to truly mention it when speaking of a right way to play: We genuinely prefer a good ending over a bad one to be the definitive one and we'll only see a bad one for completionism's sake, not because we think it's canon.