Sulphur on 9/6/2010 at 09:25
and haters gonna hate
what can you do
c'est la, c'est la vie
Queue on 9/6/2010 at 14:26
I'd like some twat waffles, too.
mothra on 9/6/2010 at 14:54
I love good entertainment.
ZylonBane on 9/6/2010 at 15:48
Quote Posted by Poetic thief
Yay, I'm not as weird as I feared. well at least on ttlg...
The only person agreeing with you so far is one of our professional trolls.
Gryzemuis on 9/6/2010 at 16:23
I agree with Poetic Thief.
I was a teenager when Arcade Hall games appeared. I played a little Miss Pacman and some 1942. But I didn't spend too much time (or money) on them. When I was a student, PCs were just too expensive for most people to own. In fact, when I started stuyding CS, the IBM PC wasn't even available yet. I played a little text-based adventure. But I didn't play Rogue or Nethack. The games were too much games for me. I started working, and still didn't play much games. Computer Science was just interesting enough for me to occupy my time behind a screen.
That changed in Nov 1998. A colleague of mine told me about Half-Life. My boss had just given me a laptop to make powerpoint slides. So I bought H1. And that was the end of my professional carreer. :-) I've spent too much time on games. I guess it's the ultimate escapism.
I prefer games with a huge gameworld. Where I can wander around and explore. Of course I don't mind the occasional fighting. But I don't really appreciate a game like Doom 3, where gameplay mostly consisted of shooting NPCs. I prefer games like Morrowind, Oblivion, and now Fallout. HL1 was more fun than Quake1. Because there was less fighting. And more wandering around. And the world looked better.
I do think we are a minority. I think the majority likes "gamesy games".
I've played a lot of WoW over the last 5 years. When I started playing, I enjoyed the game because of specific elements. One of them was the huge world. Biggest game world ever. (Well, as far as I had seen). Some of the quests just involved traveling. Some quest involved talking. Yes, there is still a lot of fighting involved. But for some reason, I enjoyed that in WoW. I played a rogue mostly. And I think that was pure luck, as I enjoy the rogue combat mechanics (with energy, openers, combopoints and finishers) a lot more than the combat mechanics of most other classes. I enjoyed the traveling and exploring. I really enjoyed doing the "5-man dungeons". You go in with a group of 5 friends. And you spend 2-3 hours fighting your way into a dungeon. Places you could never get solo. Dangerous places. Dark and deep. It's almost an adventure.
Now we are 5 years ahead. Blizzard seems to have changed direction. The playerbase has changed. And Blizzard anticipated on that. They will not waste development resources on two different paths through content. Nope, they can't afford that. So they only try to develop content that is good for everybody. Which means that WoW now has turned into middle-of-the-road only. In fact, the content is made with the lowest-common-denominator. Content must be accessible for everybody. So it can't be too hard. But more important, it can't take too much time. Not spread out over weeks of play, but also not too much time in a single night.
So currently those adventures in dungeons have turned into zergfests. They last 15-25 minutes. There is no risk of dieing anymore, everybody can beat the content. What used to be the hardest raids can now be done and finished by pick-up-groups (pugs). Everybody gets free epic gear thrown at them for free. Which causes even the newest level-80 characters to totally outgear all content in the outside world within a day played. All the adventure and danger has been nullified. Just because players don't want to spend more time improving their characters.
Travel through the world has changed. There are teleports everywhere now. In fact, 6 months ago Blizzard implemented a feature where you can teleport to any dungeon in the world now. No need to travel anymore.There are flying mounts, with which you can avoid any danger in the world. All vendors and trainers are conveniently placed in one city.
Battlegrounds (player-verus-player) used to last hours and hours. (Alterac Valley in 2005). They are now also nerfed into pieces that take 20 minutes max.
So the result is this:
A huge world, where nobody every goes, and where all NPCs are pushovers.
Direct teleports to 20-minute dungeons that are like a chore. Not an adventure.
Direct teleports to 20-minute battlegrounds.
A city where everybody hangs out, like a huge chatbox.
New content basically means that Blizzard is giving out new gear with improved stats.
So the goal seems to be: separate minigames with persistant characters. The feel of adventure and exploration is gone. There are no inconsistencies. Nothing hard. Nothing surprising. It's a system of minigames.
WoW has changed from the ultimate non-gamesy-game to a true gamesy-game.
And it seems only the minority doesn't like it.
demagogue on 9/6/2010 at 17:25
I'd say I distinguish gamey games from immersive games. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I don't like playing gamey levels, I always liked things like Tomb Raider and all the classic platformers on emulators, but it's definitely a different experience. I like gamey games to chill after a long day and just get caught up in the flow.
But when I'm in the mood to get seriously into a game, I don't want it to be gamey, and (if I wanted to be technical about it) appreciate when it's experentially "neutral" in that its world isn't catering to me. It isn't *for* me; it's just there, I find myself in it, and that's the extent of it... Maybe some NPCs in the world care about me, but not the world itself and its objects. And that's a very good thing. (I have a lot of theories about it from my reading in phenomenology, actually, but I'll save that for another time. One punchline is that what defines a gamey element is a mechanic or ontology that "cares" about the player and isn't neutral in how it's used in the game. And it's a problem because it sucks away the player's feeling of autonomy and freedom in the world to that extent; e.g., being able to resist it or push back against what it "wants" for you, or taking ownership over your actions or of things in the world.) So I like games with sim elements ... DX, SS2, TDP, VTM:BL ... and sims for that matter (e.g., flight sims), and RPGs, though I don't like too much abstraction either. I like it staying concrete in the world (unless the abstractions themselves help you connect to the world better than trying to sim them would, which often happens, cf. inventory & health).
Where I might differ from the OP is that I'm not escapist per se (depending on how you define it). I do like being put into a world and feel immersed in it, but not really to "escape". I actually wish there were a lot more games set in real-life settings and situations and would prefer them (if done well). Or I guess I should wish that there were *any* games credibly set in real-life settings and situations. A fantasy world can only go so deep; and even then it's often the real-life-esque elements that can be the deepest (cf DX and VTM:BL). And I think gaming would be an awesome way to feel connected to real history and real world events ... if they were faithful representations and didn't water it down to cater to the player.
Edit: As for mixing immersive and gamey, it's okay if it's done thoughtfully; Anachronox and NOLF did it well. It's not as good if it's done just dogmatically like most traditional FPSs (Halo, et al). As for games being too simulationist, or "too faithful", I'm not sure. I haven't played ArmA2 yet, and that's apparently the leading litmus test. My intuition is that I'd like it; but it's still a sim and not an interactive narrative. I like both, but the advantage of a "neutral" world can really shine IMO when it comes with a (credible) narrative going on inside it.
Kuuso on 9/6/2010 at 18:02
Quote Posted by Koki
I can't get into games which are nothing but mechanics(like already mentioned Tetris and Pac Man). I get bored after ten minutes.
Of course I would never say I feel cold because that's super gay. It's because these games have no goal to motivate me(high score is a shitty goal, especially high score no one will ever see) and are altogether simplistic as fuck.
Koki being sensible and correct, whereas Dethtoll and Zylonbane are being twats. I love this thread.
I really enjoy Peggle, but immersive games (for example Thief) tend to be those "best games" I've played. Go figure
catbarf on 9/6/2010 at 20:11
Some people like the escapism games provide more than the act of pressing buttons to get a high score. Ordinarily I'd find it ridiculous that people would be too thick to get this concept, but fuck, it's TTLG.
ZylonBane on 9/6/2010 at 21:02
Quote Posted by catbarf
Some people like the escapism games provide more than the act of pressing buttons to get a high score. Ordinarily I'd find it ridiculous that people would be too thick to get this concept, but fuck, it's TTLG.
What a lovely strawman hat you're wearing. Of course most of us around here love a good escapist/simulationist game. Where the crazy sauce comes in is the apparent inablity to also enjoy just plain old
games. There's something broken there.
Phatose on 9/6/2010 at 21:06
The problem is that it's a continuum, not a black/white divide, and it's an extraordinarily subjective one at that. Where does Final Fantasy, for instance, actually fall on the list? Immersion would seem the obvious candidate, but there are people for who the attraction of the series is gaming the system - I know, way back when I was one of them.
Plus, there are reasons to like immersive games over more "classic game" games totally irrelevant to escapism, or indeed immersion. In order to achieve Immersion, developers often address a much broader path of possibilities - else you get the invisible wall effect, which trashes immersion. This means you typically tend to have more options in how you play the game, versus the classical design. So, you can end up favoring immersive games without giving a rats ass about the actual immersion, but merely the expectation of greater breadth.
