While it's not quite comparable to your case, my younger brother once had plans that he would set aside a sum of money to travel across the US on his bike. He trained and planned, but in the end he made it across one state before he realized he just wasn't actually going to be able to pull through. I told him that he shouldn't focus on what he failed to do, but what he managed to accomplish. Crossing the state was quite an adventure in itself (Florida's a tall state), and he should be proud.

You too have managed to program, market, and sell a game. Even though it did not sell well enough to support you, that experience puts you head over heels above other game developer wanna-bes. You've been there and done it once. You need to be very proud of that, because that's an incredible accomplishment.

-SirNiko

While it's not about non-gamers, I make a hobby out of recommending games for people. I currently have one person to which I recommend a game a day (typically free games I find online, for now).

I'm sure I'll make a lot of redundant suggestions that already came up in this thread.

The first step is to get a feel for some genre the person likes. Do they like games with action? Do they like stories? Do they like puzzles? Do they like games that are open ended, or do they not mind railroaded plots?

Games to start with are games with simple controls, like anything from the NES era, or flash games that can be controlled with a mouse or keyboard. Another REALLY helpful thing is to find games with very little punishment for failure. Wario Land 2, for example, did not let you die. At the worst you get kicked back a room and start that stage over. That REALLY helps, because getting stuck because you can't beat a level is bad for an inexperienced player.

Once you get a feeling for a genre they like (and some ideas for genres they don't) you start picking games from within the genre. If they get into RPGs, suggest some different RPGs. If they like Shmups, give them a variety of Shmups. That's it. You've created a gamer.

Every genre has titles that cross genres, like action-RPGs or tactical RPGs, or Shmups with world maps or collectables. You can eventually help him branch out his interests by suggesting fringe games and seeing if he enjoys them.

-SirNiko

The other day, I had to entertain somebody else's 5 year old child for some period of time, and decided to show her some video games since she thought they looked cool. After going through some of the easier games (Sonic 2, Wii Sports, Katamari) she wanted to play Kingdom Hearts. It has Disney in it, so okay.

She was having a great time. She didn't care for fighting the heartless in the stained glass area, but the pictures of princesses kept her going (she wanted to know when she could meet the princesses). Then she got to the bit where the island is invaded by heartless, she screamed, and literally threw away the controller in fear.

"Just run from them, and you will be fine," I said. "If they beat you up, you can just try again."

"But I don't want to get hurt!" She cried.

Funny, she didn't seem to mind when she threw Tails into spikes, drowned him, and dropped him into one pit after another for the better part of 15 minutes.

I'm not sure what the point of that anecdote may be.

Tangentially, children seem to lack this notion that the worlds in a video game are not as dynamic as the real world. They go to a library in the game, and want to read the books. But of course, you can't read them, they're just background. She wants Mario to sleep in the bed. She wants to go to the queen and have the queen perform a trick for her. At what point does a child learn that games are limited in what they can do? How do you relay this fact to them without extinguishing their wonder and curiosity in a manner not unlike drowning a cat?

-SirNiko

I think I mentioned this in a thread somewhere in design ages ago, but why not flesh it out further here?

Sidescroller / Platformer. Premise is that the character is exploring a dungeon for treasure. Similar in concept to Kirby's Great Cave Offensive, but you can exit the cave at any time (there's no "end", you just return to the start when you're done).

The game begins with a single screen, and the player is at the entrance. There's a single treasure inside, you navigate a short maze to get the treasure. No big deal. Once you have the treasure, you return to the entrance to exit and the game scores you based on performance (treasure gets you points, multiplied by time taken and technique for killing foes).

However, that's not the only screen. A lucky player will discover a way to open an unmarked, unknown entryway to the next level. I'm talking near Tower of Druaga difficulty, like killing a foe in the right tile or walking to four unmarked corners of the screen in the right order. Doing so reveals a second screen with another treasure that can earn you even more points. There are actually dozens of these kinds of triggers, each unfolding into larger areas going deeper in the dungeon, revealing new treasures, foes, and scenery. The game never tells how close the player is to discovering everything until everything is discovered. Finding all the treasures will trigger a 100% complete screen to inform the player that everything is found.

Gameplay consists of four layers:

Initially, players play the one screen and try to speed run it. There's enough variety in the graphics and layout to make it seem like the one screen is all there is.

Second, players discover the second screen (completely by chance), and determine there may be more screens. Players rush to try everything, stumbling across new treasures and passages by trial and error and accident. There's a sense of wonder: how deep does it go? What will you find when you get there? Eventually, all secrets are discovered, but not the methods.

Third, players attempt to narrow down the triggers for each secret. Long series of actions eventually are pared down to the key triggers through rigorous testing and application of scientific method.

Fourth and finally, all the game's secrets are laid bare. All that's left is to take account of those secrets and formulate the optimal path to achieve the highest score.

Variety is important. Even if they do nothing (And I think that they should do nothing but grant points), the treasures should each have a unique name and appearance, so the discovery of each is exciting. Also, each screen should be quite different visually. Add details such as a sleeping dragon on one (even if you cannot interact with it) or a crumbling tower to climb in another. This just makes it even more exciting to discover a new screen.

I'm not sure how one would construct the game to prevent downloading and forcefully deconstructing it to find all the secrets, or to hide the file size (or loading) so players don't suspect the game is bigger than it should be, but if you could it would be impressive.

-SirNiko

prostitutes: the only things in gta other games does not feature (except zelda 2), despite being a minor addition (between many activities) gta is define to this single content.

Wait... Zelda 2 has prostitutes? I'm calling shenanigans on that one.

-SirNiko

...But would you really, really, want a pooping mechanic? 
It was annoying enough in the Digimon games!

you don't need a pooping mechanic (obviously i don't want one), but i'd like to see some bathrooms, even if they're not used during the course of the game, you know?

just another way to fill out the world, i guess.

Mother 3 featured a restroom dungeon as one floor of the final tower.

-SirNiko

64 Oozumou. Sumo Wrestling game for the N64, which is also part dating sim, and contains weird minigames
...
one where you're asleep and you roll out of your house and all around the place.

That could be totally be a game in and of itself.  Rolling a sumo wrestler through a level.

It was a level in We Love Katamari.

-SirNiko

Another method of breaking symmetry is to have randomized events that give players different opportunities or promote different strategies.

In Kirby Air Ride, players in one mode are challenged to prepare for an unknown event. Without knowing the nature of the event, you may opt to seek out a vehicle that represents your playstyle and upgrade it to cover potential threats (for example, seeking out flying upgrades if the hints lead you to believe that's a key talent for the upcoming event).

In the board game Robo Rally, players can draw upgrade cards that give them special abilities that change the way they can play. All the upgrades are useful, but the skilled player is the one who knows how best to use their upgrade and predict and negate the advantages of the opponent's upgrade.

The other way to play (which is much more difficult) is to create a game where symmetrical play will lead towards loss. For example, make it so that mirroring the foe results in fewer points than if you'd done something different. The sooner you break the symmetry of the match, the sooner the game starts to evolve into a unique competition.

On a tangential note, Advance Wars Online maps tend to try to create balance by giving the second player an additional starting unit. It doesn't create symmetry, but it does work to even out that first-turn advantage.

-SirNiko

This needs to be frontpage'd.

-SirNiko

The most important thing? I want to see something completely new every time. An item I've never seen before, a new monster, or some confluence of elements that results in something I didn't see last time.

The only reason I stopped playing Spelunky was because I stopped finding new secrets.

-SirNiko

In the screenshot Paul Eres posted, the walls seem to be half a tile thick, however they are aligned against the bottom edge of the tile. The top half of the tile is obscured by the wall due to the perspective. The top half of the tile is invisible, so it's essentially dead space anyway.

This means the walls are visually narrower than a tile, but are physically as wide as a tile, and the side of the wall that is visible has accurate collision detection.

Without actually playing the game in the picture, I assumed the opposite: even though the wall thickness clearly means it encroaches on the tile on one side, my assumption would be that characters can move to the other side of the wall. Two characters on opposite sides of the wall can be on adjacent tiles. Since you can't see both sides of the wall at the same time, the player is none the wiser even if you rotate the view. (Just redraw the 2-d tiles so that now they are flush with the new visible tiles).

-SirNiko

Edit: Like this:

http://i41.tinypic.com/2v7v5f9.jpg

* there are loads and loads of guns in the game, but they are all useless because the most basic weapon is so effective.

Relatedly -

*You will reach the final boss in every JRPG without ever using a single Elixer.

I'd love to see more games where those items feel like they're actually useful for normal play.

-SirNiko

When I read the initial concept, I was thinking something geared towards children, actually. (Although additional depth could make it entertaining for adults too)

In one of the Kotaku boards for Final Fantasy 13, a parent commented her child referred to the game as "The game where you just push X", since you could complete the first few sections of the game without having to navigate the menus or read anything. I was thinking this might be a similar type of idea.

-SirNiko

I think maybe doing away with freelook entirely is a big helper. Let the player focus on getting used to the arrow keys. Don't put stuff up and down, make all the things they'd want to see at eye level to start with. Don't give the player the option for strafe, and keep monsters relatively simple. A button to shoot and a button to block, for example. Make all interactive things activate by shooting them. Battles should mostly be one-on-one, or occur in narrow hallways where monsters are funneled towards the player. Focus on aspects like exploring for ammo, or recognizing which guns work best on certain monsters or situations (big monsters die to the big gun, little monsters to the little fun, swarms to the shotgun, far monsters to the rifle, etc.

Once players manage to get the hang of that, I'd add in freelook via mouse and strafing, but keep most fights so that monsters are all in front of the player, so they can focus on strafing around shots they can see coming and keeping track of foes on the edge of their vision, but not out of their vision.

-SirNiko

What's the goal here? To create a tradition console RPG that can be played with a single button (At any cost), or to create a unique RPG that needs only a single button to play in order to be simple to play?

The charge-bar setup for combat sounds like it could work, but I'm not sure it'd be all that enthralling. What would happen if I just kept using the fast attacks? Would that win every fight? Would I always lose? Do I just need to decide between charging 1 to beat this monster, and two to beat this one? Or maybe your goal is to make it incredibly complex, and the 'fun' is figuring out how to play an otherwise normal RPG with one button, which could work.

If I was to create a one button RPG (one button meaning no control pad or arrows), I'd make it so the hero explores automatically. He wanders the dungeon, and popups indicate points of interest. Hit the button when he passes a side tunnel or a chest, and something happens. He gets a power up or down (which is immediately applied automatically) he explores a side passage, or hits a switch that changes something.

Battles would do well to mimic Mario and Luigi for the GBA, just with one hero. All your attacks are chosen for you, and you just hit the button with the right timing to get critical hits or dodge attacks as is appropriate. Whether or not you use XP, whether or not the hero recovers between fights, whether or not fights are randomized (I'd suggest not to randomize them) and whether or not you collect items after the fight are up to you.

That's my two cents.

-SirNiko

I think Roguelikes tend to have a lot of exploration in them, not by what's been procedurally generated, but by the stuff that tends to be programmed in them.

If you throw a grenade in a sink, it makes a Greater Water Elemental appear. If you tame a Llama and name him Grue, he gains +10 to his vision in the dark. If you trick a Black Ooze into attacking a White Lichen, then cancel each other out and leave their loot. Stuff like that, which encourages players to try all sorts of combinations of A + B to see what happens, if anything.

None of those things are randomized, although the criteria for making them happen are more or less likely based on that randomization.

-SirNiko

Well, if you has already beaten the game, it is not the game's fault if you are still grinding. You are the one willing to go after those trophies.

Making it optional is good. That doesn't mean that the game couldn't have had more interesting optional content rather than "kill turtles for enough money to buy everything". I'm just disappointed it wasn't more fun considering how much I enjoyed the rest of the game.

-SirNiko

I dunno, are the Mystery Dungeon ones anything special or are they Shiren the Wanderer with different graphics?

They're a strange sort of combination of the two, but on the other hand are almost aggressively childish and easy. Abusing the game mechanics will guarantee a win in almost any situation. The storylines are even more inane than the normal games, which you would think would be difficult to accomplish...

The mystery dungeon games are simplistic but fun initially, especially since you can recruit all sorts of different pokemon as you go along, and you don't unlock the ability to evolve until you beat the last story dungeon.

They lack replay value, though, since they lack the kind of depth you can find in your average roguelike. It's all the same apples and gummis all the way through the final dungeons.

-SirNiko

Queens?

YES! That's why I couldn't find it, they're not Princesses, they're Queens! Thanks!

This is creepy. I JUST looked up this thread to ask about this very same game.

Thanks for the help!

-SirNiko

I think it's also important to note that Metroid and Zelda have two very different upgrade systems. Metroid tends to stack everything up. The Samus you play at the end controls just like the one at the start, she just jumps higher and shoots way bigger lasers and turns into a buzz saw when she jumps. In Zelda, you get a few passive upgrades (you sword being the most visible one) but all the other things you find are tools. Unless you know which situation you want to use them, they don't provide any benefit, and often times one tool is nearly completely replaced by another (once you have the morning star, you don't use nearly as many bombs).

The only thing in Final Fantasy 13 that's bugging me is the item grind at the end. I've collected all the whatsits you can get from quests. I've unlocked all the item shops. I now can defeat the giant turtles pretty effortlessly. The only thing left is to kill them ad nauseum to collect money to buy upgrade items to make my items better despite the fact I'm never going to use them because I've already beaten the game. But, really that just unlocks a trophy, and I think I'll just be content to never collect that trophy.

Maybe.

-SirNiko