What Makes A Good Game?

[Gandalf Parker]

Just one more turn does it for me. Little things that make me want to see the results of my actions (Im just going to peek to see if it worked) but then I end up deciding a next move based on that which ends up forcing me to go ahead and put all the decisions in. Oh well then I might as well hit process. Hmmm I think I will just take a peek to see if that worked. AARRGGHHH!

Also my favorite games are ones where I do NOT feel like the goal is to figure out what the programmer wanted you to do. I like games where the setup or the game options or the map are so involved that you feel as if you are actually coming up with your OWN methods and tactics. Ones which, possibly, the programmers didnt even consider. What I love about both SEIV and Dominions (over in the other forum)is that it supports so many different playing styles.

Gandalf Parker

[dogscoff]

What makes a good game?

Hmm. As far as I can tell it comes down to striking precisely the right balance between fast moving objects that explode at little or no provocation, really big guns, really big swords, really big swords-that-are-really-guns, zombies, ninjas, zombie ninjas, and hot kung-fu chiXXors with inadequate bust support.

You want complex? Try this: http://home.cwru.edu/~jnt5/Planarity/

Addictive. Gives me a strange urge to research stellar manip and remodel some warp-points.

Well, he can have cheese if he wants. I just thought a rabbit would like a carrot.

You're right, rabbits don't like to eat dairy products (unless you count chocolate). Mine doesn't anyway. However, he does like to eat :
- toast
- crisps (any flavour except cheese & onion)
- popcorn
- Banana peel (not too ripe)
- Extra hot bombay mix
- modem cables
- furniture
- Doorframes/ skirting boards
- bank statements/ cheques/ the gas bill
- grapes
- Rice cakes
- Ryvita
- Ankles

[Glyn]

I think since this is a SEIV form most people will agree that SEIV shares a lot of the set of attributes that we (the form members) believe make a game great. If this question was posted on another game form for say a First Person Shooter type, I would expect some different opinions of what makes a game great.

I think game design is more of an art than a science, with a big chunk of luck thrown in. When all the right factors align you get a great game. The mod ability give each user the chance to try their hand a aligning the right factors. SEIV is more than one game!

From the game sellers’ point of view, the perfect game is one that will get the most people excited enough to buy it, but then be board with it so they will be looking to buy the next game that hits the market, but still be happy. That way they can buy a really big house with all the money they make from selling the game of the month every month! (Note, This is an over simplification of the game sellers view, I’m sure things like customer satisfaction, repeat business, recommending games is also important.)

[Captain Kwok]

For me a game needs to be dynamic in terms of either gameplay or modding options, plus be in an area of interest to me such as space, city building, or hockey.

[NullAshton]

The luck factor is very important in a game. Games are dependent on luck, in order for people to be addicted to it. You do something lucky, like defeating a superior fleet, and you want to try to do it again, this time with skill.

[Kamog]

There are two types of games that are my favorite: RPG's and strategy. I prefer thinking-type games to other types that require fast reflexes or hand-eye-coordination. So I don't play much of those shooting games or ones that require you to jump around and land perfectly on little platforms or fall to your death. I'm not good at those; I get frustrated if I keep dying after many attempts and I don't feel like spending hours practising.

I like games in which you can improve yourself by your efforts within the game. So in an RPG you complete quests or defeat enemies to gain experience and improve your character's skills and strengths. In SEIV you make your empire stronger by researching technology, colonizing, capturing enemy ships and planets, successfully using diplomacy etc. I find that a game is less interesting if your character or whatever you're controlling stays the same while the challenges you face keep getting harder as the game progresses. I want my character or empire to get better though the things I do, so that I can prepare for more difficult challenges as the game progresses. There is great satisfaction in looking back to an earlier time in the game and noticing all the progress you have made, and how you overcame all the earlier challenges that were difficult at the time, but are now insignificant because you're so much stronger.

Also, it's nice to have flexibility in the game, in that there is more than one way to successfully solve a problem or deal with a particular challenge. So in an RPG, when faced with some sort of quest, it's nice to have different choices. For example, say there's a locked door and the guard won't let you in unless you go and kill a certain monster and bring back an item and give it to him. Can you do other things besides killing the monster? Can you steal the key to open the door? Can you pick the lock on the door? Can you use persuasion to get the guard to let you in without doing the quest? Can you get the item without killing the monster? Is there some alternate entrance besides that door? Can you decide not to do this at all and go do something else?

SEIV has a great deal of flexibility in that you have complete freedom in what to research, how you spend your resoures, how you design your ships, what to build on your planets, what worlds you colonize, etc. That is great. A game loses replayability when there's few choices or if there's only one or only a few ways to win.

Another thing is that in a great game, if you keep replaying it, every so often you think of new and better ways of doing things that you haven't thought of before. So for example, in SEIV you might suddenly come up with a new way to design ships that's better, and so your strategy completely changes from the last time you played. Or in an RPG you think of a new way to use a magic spell that you haven't thought of before that gives you an advantage.

If there is some sort of puzzle to solve in the game, I want it to be solvable by using reasoning or investigating, not by tedious effort. For example, in an RPG say there's a combination lock that you need to open. I want to be able to figure out the combination by searching for clues and thinking. It's not fun when there are no clues available (or the clues are incredibly obscure) and you just spend hours mindlessly trying every combination.

[Antonin]

For me, a game should be highly detailed and immersive. It should draw me in and make me care about what is happening in the game. If a game is immersive I think about it when I'm not playing. I plan strategy and worry about what the opponents are going to do next.

A perfect game, for me, should also be open-ended. If it's not a sandbox type of game, it should at most just give me a general goal or set of victory conditions. I don't like games with "missions" or a bunch of scripted or triggered events.

SE4 meets most of my criteria for an ideal game.

Other games I like include Patrician 2, Railroad Tycoon 2, Civ3, Tropico, Capitalism 2, Chariots of War, Pharoh/Cleopatra, Caesar 3 and Europa Universalis 2. I love managing resources, buying and selling, etc.

Another is Cutthroats, a game that puts you in the role of a pirate captain. You hire your crew and provision them and roam the Caribbean in search of ships to capture and loot.

I also like Alpha Centauri.

OOTP Baseball 5 and Title Bout Championship Boxing are more of my favorites. I love games that let me manage personnel.

I also play Steel Panthers World at War. It has lots of scenarios, but you can also just generate a battle and play it out. You can also rename your unit commanders, which is cool.

I really enjoyed SimCity 3000, but it crashed every few minutes on my machine so I deleted it.

It's not that I don't enjoy action games. I played Doom 2 for a long time, and I still play Quake. I also very much enjoy MechWarrior 3--in skirmish mode. But I'm just not interested in games that do the same thing as Quake or MW3 or the Command and Conquer games only with bigger explosions and more blood. So what? I have Grand Theft Auto 2--why do I need GT3 or 4 or 17? I like the top-down view much more than the 1st person view anyway.

I have a 6-year-old computer and have therefore been unable to enjoy any newer games. But from the reviews I read I don't think I'm missing much. These days the trend is toward more sophisticated graphics and prettier pictures. Bigger explosions, etc. That disappoints me because I buy and play games for the gameply. A game described in an article as the "best-looking game of the year" is of no interest to me. A review that takes up a lot of space talking about how great a game looks is a clue to me that it's probably short on the gameplay elements that I would find attractive.

I read a review of the relatively new city building game Children of the Nile that talked about how beautiful the game was to look at, but at the same time a step back in gameplay from Pharoh/Cleopatra. I just laughed. If the game looks better than Pharoh/Cleopatra but does not give me more options to manage my city and population, more resources to produce, more diplomatic options, etc, what's the point????

I'm 48 years old, and in the last 3-4 years I've begun to believe the computer game industry has passed me by. It's all flash and big booms, military shooters, sci-fi shooters, crash and burn racing games, etc etc etc. Games for people who rent "the hottest games" from a store and play them for a day or two, "beat" them and then hand them back in.

I've not bothered to replace my old computer partly for financial reasons, but also because there hasn't been any point. The sole online game I play, Asheron's Call, is getting a graphics update that will not allow me to continue playing. I wonder if I will ever bother to get a new computer, just to play one single online game filled with foul-mouthed d00d types half my age.

I've longed for a political type computer game, a kind of Sim Dictator where you can pick and fire your cabinet ministers, military officials, party officials etc etc etc, set your nation's policies and budget and struggle for power in a chaotic environment resembling that of the Soviet Union in the 1920s. "Enemy of the People" it would be called. Years ago I began developing a solitaire board game based on this idea.

But nobody will ever develop a computer game of this sort. The entire market appears to be oriented toward the young, short-attention-span crowd. Look at any gaming magazine.

Who's developing complex, satisfying computer games for grownups like me?

[El_Phil]

For quite some time I've been searching for two games. A space fighter shoot-em-up better than FreeSpace2 and a RTS to beat TA. For the FS2 beater I've all but given up, no-one is developing any similar sort of game, and Volition is too busy making FPSs based on the 'Red Faction' engine.

On the RTS front though I have found Dawn Of War, but a mere 9 months after it's release A handfull of new features and the resource model that 'Z' tried for but failed to implement. Plus good graphics, excellent gameplay and comedy voices. The only down sides: high(ish) minimum specs and the 1.5Gb install size (plus a minimum of 1Gb freespace to install the v1.2 patch. A patch for ****'* sake!)

Of course my replacement for the 4x type SEIV game is easy: SEV (hopefully )

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Try this: http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/index.htm

[Senator]

NullAshton said:
The luck factor is very important in a game. Games are dependent on luck, in order for people to be addicted to it. You do something lucky, like defeating a superior fleet, and you want to try to do it again, this time with skill.

Actually I think one should try to avoid dice rolls as much as possible in a game. As long as you get lucky it's allright of course, but eventually you'll have a streak of bad luck. That stuff can really ruin the fun in a game. I know it does for me, I hate it when I see my 3 dragoons lose to one soldier in colonization for example...