OOoooo...
Fun Factor = Interesting Decisions / Actual Time Played.
I want to see the other 4 as well.
(Thanks for sharing wakko)
[EDIT] It looks like Part two with the other 4 has already been posted.
I want to see the other 4 as well.
(Thanks for sharing wakko)
[EDIT] It looks like Part two with the other 4 has already been posted.
I actually completely disagree with this assessment. Some players like to play game mechanics and some like to play game spirits.
For example, if there were a baseball simulation where team that wore pink got a bonus... every player who knew this would have pink outfits. But if this were not "known"... and there was a story element about "the pink team", then someone might play the pink team even though they would get ragged on for doing it.
My point here is that knowing how the game works on the backend is perfect for some people and pure hatred for others. I don't like the idea that some geek spent 20 days with an excel spreadsheet figuring out the exact mix of pikemen, archers, and knights. I want to command my troops and give orders... I don't want to know attack values and defensive values. That takes away from the genre.
You think Sun Tzu knew the blood pressure of his troops?
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He says that there's two levels of information that players look for, and they're both important.
He hasn't said that one is better than another. He didn't say that one is more vital than another. He wasn't talking about replacing one with the other.
All he's pointing out is that *both* are important, and that there has been a trend to not provide both sets of information.
It's the Final Fantasy syndrome. Most recent Final Fantasy games (especially XI) go out of their way to give you zero information about the underlying mechanics. This is seriously flawed game design and creates games that can be more frustrating than fun.
I don't want to spend two hours empirically testing if weapon A does more damage than weapon B simply because the game doesn't tell me that weapon A does 5 points of damage and weapon B does 10 points of damage.
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All Soren was pointing out is that there has been a recent trend in video games to NOT serve both types of players. Serving as much of your customer base as possible is a vital part of any business. Video games are no different.
So, allowing players to choose the amount of mechanical information they want is a vital part of game design.
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Allowing players to have access to the information means all players will access the information even if they would have enjoyed the game more without the knowledge.
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My experience has been that each player chooses different things.
Some players are content with playing at a disadvantage in order to maintain their level of involvement. To some, that can still be fun.
Some players may prioritize competitiveness, and use all available information to gain a tactical advantage. To them, that's fun.
Some players don't like competition at all, and will stick to the single player campaigns, or bot-based multiplayer, where they have more control over the difficulty of the opponent. This is how they have fun.
Ultimately gameplay is about fun. Everyone makes an active choice to play the game the way that is most fun to them. To restrict a style of play, is to restrict the ability of somebody to enjoy the game.
Attempting to tightly control the play experience means drastically restricting your possible market of players. If nothing else, that simply is not a good business decision.
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The other side of this is information. Do you really need to know how many points of damage a sword does? Wouldn't it be enough to just know it was dangerous? I guess too many games are based on leveling... and that leads to needing better and better things. A first level sword wont do for a 10th level player.
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Unfortunately, you'll never find a video game that works like that. Computers are number crunching machines. They don't handle concepts like "dangerous" or "benign".
So, while we can hide or abstract away the numbers, they're still lurking inside the game, just below the surface.
There are plenty of games that don't require exposing the raw data to the user. However, it's almost impossible to find a non-abstract computerized strategy game that doesn't involve some sort of number crunching.
This is, perhaps, where there is the most trade-off and the most difficulty. This is also where Soren was focusing his argument.
A strategy game shouldn't be a black box.
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