Video Game Commandments

[Netrigan]

Supply a list of rules you'd like to see game developers adhere to.

Stealth Missions/Games

1) Thou shall make sneaking around fun -- see almost every stealth mission in a FPS for why this needs to be said.

2) Thou shall not require absolute stealth at all times. A player needs to be able to learn through trial and error without endless reloading.

3) Thou shall provide a logical reason why absolute stealth must be maintain on those mission that require it; and, no, because guards will be alerted is not a good reason when you've killed three thousand guards before breakfast.

4) Thou shall do all you can to minimize the Artificial Stupidity of the guards without making the game completely unfun to play... a hard task, but do your best.

Sandbox games

1) Thou shall allow the player to reject a mission [Side story, as I was heading out to accept a mission in GTA IV, I accidentally walked right into one of those side missions, where the woman is berating me because I don't want to go across town to do whatever trivial bullshit she wants me to do... eventually she wears my in-game character down and he agrees to go way the fuck out of his way to help this ungrateful ***** out... and I'm stuck in a mission I don't want to do for a NPC that I just want to kill, so I did the only reasonably thing, I killed her and continue on to my original mission choice.]

2) Thou shall allow the player to replay cut-scenes and missions.

3) Thou shall actually have a wide variety of side missions to justify making this is a sandbox game and not just a linear shooter... yes, I'm looking at you Mafia II.

4) Thou shall allow the player to finish side missions and achievements after they finish the main story... yes, I'm looking at you Fallout 3.

5) You shall not require the character to collect a bunch of bullshit items to progress on story missions... and I'd really like it if you didn't do it on side missions either.

6) Thou shall not slip a race in the middle of the story mode that requires a near-perfect run and lots of luck to win. Yes, I'm looking at you GTA: Vice City.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

You do realise this is how we ended up with all these 'clones' of other games right?

 

[Netrigan]

You do realise this is how we ended up with all these 'clones' of other games right?

I'm tried to avoid such things in my list. Most of these things are elements that often annoy me in games that could be easily be avoided. In sandbox games, there's often a bunch of missions open and it's pretty easy to find yourself in the spot where one starts by accident. Or there's been plenty of times where someone starts talking to me in the middle of a cutscene... and I can't replay it.

The closest I see to that is the Mafia II example in which I chide it for not really having anything to do except the main mission. But this is pretty much me complaining that the game cloned a game play style without actually understanding how it worked. Had it crafted something new and innovate that was similar but very different, then SCORE. The original Saints Row actually violates one of these rules, but warned you right before it did it, giving you one last chance to save your game before your progress was lost; and that worked.

How other people play it (if they choose to) is there business. If they want to say, "You Shall Make Every FPS Exactly Like Halo And Not Like Call Of Duty" (or vice versa), that's on them.

And the reason why we have so many clones is that creativity is hard, while copying a success if much, much easier. No one wants to be first, but they all want to be second.

 

[orangebandguy]

That race in Vice City was a *****.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

How about:

"Thou shalt not have thy cousin constantly calling to pester you."

 

[Netrigan]

How about:

"Thou shalt not have thy cousin constantly calling to pester you."

Or "Thou Shall Not Pester Me Endless To Watch Television". I lost count of the number of times the game reminded me that I could be watching television instead of actually playing their game. At one point, Roman called me up to explain to me that I could watch television, in case I missed the other 20 in-game messages informing me of this fact.

But, yeah, GTA IV really screwed the pooch in terms of dealing with all your friends. It's not a bad feature and I had fun with a couple of the side games, but having my in-game friends have a sulk because I didn't feel like playing a mind-numbingly boring game of pool with them was a bridge too far. And they really, really, really shouldn't have been calling so much. I think they only called once a day, but in game time, that was every hour or so.

 

[randomsix]

Thou shalt not ignore your own mechanics.

Thou shalt not neglect the campaign of a story based game.

Thou shalt make those actions which should be interruptable, interruptable.

Thou shalt reasonably portray close quarters combat.

Thou shalt recognize that just because a gun is not completely reloaded, it is not necessarily completely unloaded (get 99% through a reload animation, switch guns, switch back, and suddenly need to reload completely again).

 

[repeating integers]

I have one for all games:

Thou shalt not put more effort into multiplayer than into the singleplayer campaign; instead, thou shalt put equal effort into both.

 

[Souplex]

Multiplayer:
1. Thou shalt prioritize local play.
2. For online play, thou shalt give players the option to mute other players.
Cutscenes:
1. Thou shalt not use cutscenes as a substitute for gameplay. (I'm looking at you Kojima)
2. There is no excuse for QTEs in cutscenes. (I'm looking at you Heavy Rain)
3: Thou shalt not use stilted in game events as a substitute for cutscenes when a cutscene would better serve the purpose. (I'm looking at you Newell)

 

[WarCorrespondent]

Online Multiplayers

Thou shall provide incentive for teamwork

Thou shall provide a voice to communicate

Thou shalt make ammo camping a necessity

Thou shall provide votekicks at all times for loudmouths and afk's

Thou shall remind players about objectives, not frags

 

[Netrigan]

Though Shall Have A Logical Reason For A Timed Mission

This is one that I saw Assassin's Creed II violate a fair bit in the Assassination Contracts. Like one of them required me to defeat 10 Brutes in something like two minutes... and even though I was in active combat with the final Brute when the timer ran out, I failed the mission. It always seemed like it was a timed mission for the sake of being a timed mission.

This one is pretty game specific.

Thou shall not lose a race against other opponents just because the timer ran out... see Pod Race in the original release of Lego Star Wars. More than once I lost the race in the final moments while in first place because the timer ran out... what in the three nanoseconds left in the race he was going to surge past me?

 

[Netrigan]

Thou Shall Not Have Teammates Who Jump In Front Of You During Firefights... and they should especially not chastise you for shooting them.

NPC Teammates Shall Not Hog All The Best Bits Of Cover. This seems to happen in every damn Call Of Duty game I play. I've actually had them push me out of cover when I've gotten there first.

 

[Netrigan]

2. There is no excuse for QTEs in cutscenes. (I'm looking at you Heavy Rain)

If Heavy Rain didn't use QTEs in cuscenes, there would be no Heavy Rain

I'm waiting for HR to get really cheap, because it looks like an interesting experiment. The demo wasn't really fun, but I find myself fascinated by it.

But, yeah, I hate the Press X Not To Die scenarios. Assassin's Creed 2 had some QTEs in their cutscenes which changed the cutscene in slight ways and I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of that in the future.

 

[Something Amyss]

You do realise this is how we ended up with all these 'clones' of other games right?

Many of those are actually the exact reasons we have clones.

Five Commandments.

Single Player:
1. Thou Shall not have a story mode less than eight hours without an incredibly compelling story. XBLA/PSN and other cheapies excluded.

2. Thou Shall not create escort missions with suicidal AI characters.

3. Thou Shall not confuse "hard" with "good," but thou shall also not make games easy under the justification of "fun."

4. Thou Shall offer explanations. Thou must make sense. Plot holes are not "deep."

5. Thou Shall not include voiceovers if thy budget is less than 50 bucks. Good voice acting can make a game better. Bad voice acting might as well be replaced with text boxes. At least that way, if we want the dialogue to sound stupid, we can fill it in ourselves.

Multiplayer:

1. THOU SHALL NOT ADD MULTIPLAYER AS AN EXCUSE FOR LOUSY SINGLE PLAYER. Both elements must stand on their own.

2. Thou Shall not release broken multiplayer. The Network of Playstation and the Online Entity that is EcksBocks take forever to make a broken game playable.

3. Thou Shall not require grinding.

4. Thy game types must be plentiful and thy maps overflowing.

5. Thou Shall balance thy gameplay.

Sandbox:

1. Thou Shall make side missions fun.

2. Thou Shall make side missions optional.

3. Thou shall allow choices and customisation.

4. Thou shall not pigeonhole the main character(s).

5. Thou shall not lock off the world to players.

General:

1. Thou Shall Not limit colours to red and brown. Thou hast a rainbow. Use it.
2. Thy characters shall be distinguishable. No clones of Eastern Girlymen and Western hypermacho marines.
3. Thy characters must have character.
4. Thy cover must be plausible and thy enemies capable of using it.
5. Thou Shall make thy mechanics approriate for thy game.

 

[GonzoGamer]

...
Sandbox games

1) Thou shall allow the player to reject a mission [Side story, as I was heading out to accept a mission in GTA IV, I accidentally walked right into one of those side missions, where the woman is berating me because I don't want to go across town to do whatever trivial bullshit she wants me to do... eventually she wears my in-game character down and he agrees to go way the fuck out of his way to help this ungrateful ***** out... and I'm stuck in a mission I don't want to do for a NPC that I just want to kill, so I did the only reasonably thing, I killed her and continue on to my original mission choice.
...

3) Thou shall actually have a wide variety of side missions to justify making this is a sandbox game and not just a linear shooter... yes, I'm looking at you Mafia II.

4) Thou shall allow the player to finish side missions and achievements after they finish the main story... yes, I'm looking at you Fallout 3.

5) You shall not require the character to collect a bunch of bullshit items to progress on story missions... and I'd really like it if you didn't do it on side missions either.

6) Thou shall not slip a race in the middle of the story mode that requires a near-perfect run and lots of luck to win. Yes, I'm looking at you GTA: Vice City.

1 ? Sounds cool. That was actually one of the things I liked about gta4. They should give you the option to tell the bozo to get lost but it?s one of the few things they threw in there that made it seem like an organic world. They did the same thing in Fallout 3 and it worked better there. For good or bad the minor encounters were over quickly and they didn?t require immediate crossing of the entire map (usually ? I?m looking at you Cherry you ho).
3- you?re right. It?s just like being served a whole steak without sides. Sure it?s still delicious but I can?t enjoy as much of it as I could without the palate cleanser in between. GTA 4 choked in this dept. too.
4- Yes the one thing that annoyed me about F3; besides the vats freeze.
5- In missions, yes. Just random stuff is fine as long as they unlock stuff for you. Collecting hidden packages in last gen gtas was fun and rewarding. GTA4 on the other hand made you shoot 200 pigeons for the lamest attack chopper ever.
6- That was a really annoying race.

 

[Twad]

Thou shalt not ignore your own mechanics.

This. A million times this.


Thou shall make NPCs follow the same basic game/world/combat rules the Player do whenever it is coherent to do so. Wich should be as often as possible.
If an NPC can do something, The PC should be able to do it too.

THou shall not make Bosses arbitraritly hard to kill without a VERY good reason: too many bosses can take 10000000 bullets in the face when they are normal humans with no armor (like,just cause 2). THose are bosses that arent fun to fight AT ALL.

thou shall make all "player classes" (in rpgs) be asymetrically balanced so they are all fun and all fairly effective at the endgame, in each their own way. TES:Oblivion didnt do this (magic is broken).

THou shall make the world appear to be alive. (problem with rpgs in general). Make the world coherent,alive, the player is PART of it, not the center of it. Assume he (the PC) can start the game from any city in the world and go up from there. Make cities trade with eachother, people dont just stand around they DO something ect. An empty, lifeless, static world is a uninteresting one.

 

[pendragon177]

I though these were the commandments...

http://www.cad-comic.com/images/news/Commandments_Poster.jpg

Well, these apply for the players themselves.

 

[Netrigan]

Many of those are actually the exact reasons we have clones.

Can I ask you specifics on this? I ask because I always wonder if I poorly communicating an idea and I can learn from my mistake.

I did my best to make these very general and not terribly gameplay related items; like make sneaking fun... well, if it's not fun, then it's not a game. I don't care how you do it, but make sure it's fun, because most stealth missions in FPS are just crap because the mechanics simply aren't there.

Some are in response to very bad examples, such as Jedi Knight 2 deciding a mission was a stealth mission that required absolute stealth in a game where you killed thousands of Imperial troops. There's simply no logical reason why raising an alarm in this situation results in an instant fail. It's simply a frustrating and arbitrary decision.

The don't require absolute stealth at all times... I can see that complaint being leveled against it, but I do think the early part of the game should be fairly forgiving as the player learns the mechanics. A shooter doesn't require perfect aim and razor-sharp reactions in the first few levels and I don't think a stealth game should require absolute invisibility out of the gate. Do you allow a player to flee and hide like ACII? Do you allow them to continue on despite being pursued by guards until they succeed or fail the mission as Thief did? Lots of time, the fun is in screwing up and being put in a much more dangerous situation. And, logically, some missions require absolute stealth and I can see a game that is mostly built around this mechanic, but I think they player should be dropped into the shallow end of the pool at the start of the game and have this mechanic thrust upon them later in the game when they've mastered the various skills they need to know.

 

[Netrigan]

5- In missions, yes. Just random stuff is fine as long as they unlock stuff for you. Collecting hidden packages in last gen gtas was fun and rewarding. GTA4 on the other hand made you shoot 200 pigeons for the lamest attack chopper ever.

I have no problem against collections. If you really, really like a game, it's fun scouring the world looking for them. But I was a bit taken aback by the side-mission in Red Dead Redemption that required me to collect a bunch of beaver skins, beavers being one of the harder to find common animals in the game. But it was a side mission, I accept it because I don't *have* to collect them... but I would have been super-pissed if that had been a story mission.

 

[Netrigan]

Thou shall make NPCs follow the same basic game/world/combat rules the Player do whenever it is coherent to do so. Wich should be as often as possible.
If an NPC can do something, The PC should be able to do it too.

Assuming there isn't a player-class system, yes. If all the other space marines can scale a wall and I can't, then it makes me wonder why they let me play with them. I felt like I went to missions on the short-bus in F.E.A.R. 1 because I was the only one who hadn't mastered the ability to flip a table over.