Anton P. Nym said:
There are people who buy games in order to play them, or even to play in them. Then there are players who buy games to beat them.
Players who play the games will enjoy the play mechanics, explore the levels, poke around, and generally view the games as toys or even media for their own expression; these are the map explorers, the physics abusers, the machinamists. Players who beat games will seek the most efficient way to progress through the game, seek to be challenged by obstacles preventing completion, and view the games as tests of their playing skill; these are the pro players, the trophy collectors, the competitive leading edge.
Players who play the games don't necessarily care if the game is "too easy", so long as the game gives them enough to do/explore/use within it. Players who beat games will care.
Know your market, and target your games appropriately.
-- Steve
There
are games for these people. I don't mean to polarize, but there are those "mindless shooters", like Painkiller and Serious Sam kinda "games" where there are you, a huge gun, and hordes upon hordes of enemies to slaughter in the cruelest way possible. And that's it. Nothing else. No story whatsoever, no immersion, no imagination, no "game world" to speak of, just a big arena and things to shoot at. These "game beaters" you speak of usually enjoy these games. A lot. And while they tend to play other games, they usually in it for the challenge, to actually beat the game in fastest, most efficient way possible. Speedplayers are like this.
But. This efficiency and being fast, this achievement driven gaming, when you beat a game only to have all the unlockables, Live achievements or rise to the top of the ranking list, to "finish the game already"... this defeats the purpose of many games, IMHO. It's same as life: It's not the destination that matters, but the journey. While it's only natural to want to know what's behind the next door, what's in the next chapter or on the next level, and yes, the ending is usually the best, but to play a game
just to beat it, to be able to tell "yea, I finished that game in a day, am I good or what?", it's not good. Progression, character development (even yours in front of the screen), the story, the little things. I personally can't imagine to play a game like Mass Effect, KotOR, Oblivion or other RPGs, without going through the game at lest twice to hear all the dialog options, to see the story from every imaginable perspective, to play the game to it's fullest.
When I was playing Morrowind back in the day, I stumbled upon a speedrun video, where they went from the intro to the outro in mere 17 minutes, there were comments for that video with people praising the guy doing the speedrun, people who managed to do in 16, and some tricks to hack the game to finish it faster. (I managed to finish that game in almost a month, and I was playing almost every day.) For me, that video was a bullet to the brain, and I had only one question... "why?". Speedrunning the (then) longest, most immerse, imaginative, most impressive and awesome RPG of all time seemed like an insult, a kick to the crotch. This is just one lame example, but I think it's almost the same to say Crayon Phisics is a "meh." if you just beat it, it's like speedrunning Morrowind. Sure it may be fun for some people to "beat" the game, but that's not what that game is about.
Just my $0.02
