Chade on 10/3/2009 at 22:17
It is helpfull to look at the game and say "this is what they were trying to acheive, and this is how they did it".
You'd be much better of looking at this in a less black and white fashion. Sure, these categories aren't the be-all and end-all of game analysis ... but nobody ever said they were. They are certianly not "completely useless".
And while analysing a game by it's mechanics is important, it is not the "only way" we can compare games.
Even if game mechanics were the only thing we are interested in, the standard genre classification tells us very little about game mechanics in general. Other classification systems would be important.
As an example, contrast Diablo to Oblivion. Both games are RPGs. Is it really useless to say that Oblivion is focussed on putting the player in a world, whereas Diablo is ... well, certainly not about creating a world (an Experience game? The experience of powering up and progression?).
june gloom on 10/3/2009 at 22:28
Diablo's selling point has always been that it's the evolution of the roguelike. Whack-whack here's some gold, here have a randomly generated dungeon to explore, etc. What this leads to, however, is a fairly sparse environment due to the randomisation, and it stops being about the exploration (because exploring empty rooms and maybe killing 10 monters every time you open a door is only interesting for so long) and more about the statswhoring. Whereas the Elder Scrolls games are all about exploring.
Chade on 11/3/2009 at 00:09
No time for a full reply, but:
Quote:
Well, we can talk about any given game's atmosphere, certainly, and use words like "immersion" and such, but we can't make meaningful comparisons to other games without resorting back to mechanics (e.g. dethtoll's explanation of why Diablo's world is not as interesting to explore).
But
why does Diablo have these mechanics ... why does it have just one dungeon, which makes such heavy use of depth as a metaphor for progression? Why doesn't Diablo have mutiple dungeons spread out over a wide area?
Do you see that, in this case, understanding the mechanics isn't enough to understand the game?
For some games, sure ... you would probably stop there. Some games with particularly cool mechanics that were desirable just by themselves. But Diablo is not such a game. In Diablo, the choice of dungeon structure was made for the same reason as its aesthetics (why do you start in a church and end up in hell?). Because it is a game about powering up.
Yes, the differences between Diablo and Oblivion can be discussed in terms of their game mechanics. But that is not the most fundamental difference. The most fundamental difference is that the game mechanics in Oblivion were designed to transport the player into a world, whereas the game mechanics in Diablo were designed to promote the feeling of powering up and progression.
And yes, people enjoy the Diablo world. It's an incredibly well designed world ... I have nothing but respect for Blizzard. But it's
deliberately not designed to be interesting by itself. Everything about it works together to promote the feeling of the player progressing into hell. Take the monsters out of Diablo and you have a game about ... nothing. Take the monsters out of Oblivion and you still have a compelling world to explore.
-----------------------------
LATE EDIT:
I would think that really ... this classification system is about classifying the most fundamental goal that drives the game design. This is something that I would expect designers to talk about all the time. Surely their job is to take some goal and create a game that acheives that goal. Why shouldn't it be a usefull to talk about this? Why not try to classify this? It seems about as usefull as any classification system: a way of organising a subject matter, and a short-hand for talking about it.
As far as standard "genres" go ... they pretty much assume you are doing a copycat game, and mention a particular "template" that you are supposed to be first copying and subsequently innovating off. I am saying that this doesn't really help you analyse game mechanics, beyond saying "this game is like this template, and these are the specific areas where it has innovated" (although of course, this is great if you are doing a copycat game).
Consider how a platformer compares to both a shooter and an adventure game. The platformer will have something in common with each game. The standard genre classification doesn't tell you anything about this. But classifying games based on the timeframe in which the player must make decisions will capture the similarity between the platformer and the shooter. Classifying games based on how much the player must consider interactions between the objects in the world will capture some similarity between the platformer and the adventure game.
So I guess what I'm saying is that there are many potential classification systems, and most of them are usefull for something.
Matthew on 11/3/2009 at 16:07
I would submit that it is sometimes the mark of an excellent work that more can be read into it than the creator intended, at least consciously.
Phatose on 11/3/2009 at 17:13
I would submit that it is a sign of absolutely nothing, and any apparent correlation is simply an artifact of the fact that the people who decide what 'great literature' is are also the ones who do most of the meaning interpretation.
Matthew on 11/3/2009 at 17:30
And that opinion is probably just as valid!
Stitch on 11/3/2009 at 20:07
Not really. Somebody got burned on a middle school Lord of the Flies paper, apparently.
Chade on 11/3/2009 at 21:35
Quote Posted by Wormrat
I can't shake the feeling that's a bit like literary criticism in that people force an interpretation after projecting their own feelings onto a work.
Well, I don't think I'm at that stage yet! My arguments have been pretty firmly grounded in the experience of playing the game.
Once I start talking about Diablo as a metaphor for Women's emancipation, let me know ... :p
Tonamel on 11/3/2009 at 22:54
It's true what you're saying about over-analysis, Wormrat, but be careful of falling to the other extreme: Denying the existence of symbolism/metaphor/etc altogether, for fear of misinterpreting something.
It's pretty clear that Blizzard chose to use depth to represent progression in the game, because it perfectly ties in with their "it's fun to watch numbers go up" design philosophy.
Phatose on 12/3/2009 at 03:49
Or they simply stole it from rogue.
