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[Dragonmaw]

A topic not a whole lot of people consider: is it possible to over-polish your game to the point that it is not as fun to play as it normally would be?

Over-polish is when a game has been so finely tuned that it lacks that wonder of discovery. It pushes the player along a developer-designed path not only through overt mechanics, but also through psychological tricks. It is good for the average consumer, but for those looking for a more interesting and risky game might be disappointed.

Anyone have some examples they want to share? Ones that leap to mind for me are Fez (the intro) and Portal 2.

[Christian Knudsen]

This seems like an interesting topic. I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I get this feeling when the designer is much too present in the experience, i.e. you can pretty much point out every design decision and almost backtrack the line of thought and rationale behind them. I often get that feeling when doing something in a game that's basically a "hidden" tutorial for learning a specific ability that'll be used later in the game. I kinda liken it to watching a Michael Bay movie and suddenly becoming very aware of the cuts that occur like clockwork every two seconds.

[s0]

ChrK pretty much nailed it. The problem isn't necessarily polish, it's that everything feels contrived and formulaic. Seems to be a problem with puzzle games mainly.

[baconman]

While I can kind of agree with the problem indicated by your posts; I feel like that's something entirely different from polishing.

And the short answer is no, I really *don't* think a game can be overpolished. You can overstructure a game and make it feel stiff as opposed to feeling slippery; but actual polishing is always about homing in on that happy medium between the two, getting the exact feel that compliments your game's playstyle.

Even if you're aiming for a "gritty, unpolished feel," then the actual polishing of the game is still in the direction of creating that. And I've never heard of a game suffering from being too polished. Ever.

[_Tommo_]

This was exactly my big problem with Skyward Sword!
While I wouldn't call this "over-polish", because what damages your game can't really be polish, that's more like over-caring-for-the-casuals.

[EdgeOfProphecy]

It's possible to mess around with the design too much and strangle something that was once good, but polish should always be to help reinforce your core design and let it shine through.  If you start mucking about and degrading your core design, then you're no longer polishing.

I suppose you could "spend too much time in the polish phase" and end up polluting your design, but I would consider that a developer being careless more-so than having spent too much time on polish.

[Christian Knudsen]

The last.

[s0]

This was exactly my big problem with Skyward Sword!
While I wouldn't call this "over-polish", because what damages your game can't really be polish, that's more like over-caring-for-the-casuals.

Yeah Skyward Sword is a good example. Everything is well put together and there's nothing blatantly "wrong" with the game, but I still found it pretty boring tbh.

Maybe the issue is an approach to polishing that favors eliminating perceived flaws over really making the game's strengths shine. Personally, as a player, I'm not looking for games without flaws but games that do something exceedingly well.

[xrabohrok]

You can polish to the point that nobody cares anymore.  The best example I can think of would be Duke Nukem Forever, in which 3DRealms never got to "polishing it enough".  Thats a different problem than what was proposed earlier.

Now, can a game have the fun refined out of the design?  Absolutely.  Last game I've played that suffered from this was...ah...F.E.A.R. 2? Maybe?  They got Halo in my F.E.A.R.....

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

This was exactly my big problem with Skyward Sword!
While I wouldn't call this "over-polish", because what damages your game can't really be polish, that's more like over-caring-for-the-casuals.

yeah i agree with this, "polish" is the wrong word for it. perhaps it's better to say "trying to fix every little problem bad players have with your game" can ruin a game

so in a sense, i'd say it's over-playtesting, not over-polish. playtesting is great and necessary, but the dev shouldn't try to address or fix every single thing the playtesters complain about. example:

100 playtesters play a game. 3 of them complain that the first boss was too hard. the other 97 say nothing. but the developer's automatic tendency would be to make the first boss easier, *even though* 97% of players had no problem with that boss's difficulty

now, if 20 or 30 of them can't beat that boss, then you can change it. but don't overreact and fix a problem that the majority of players had no problem with, because doing so would then cause another problem (the boss would then be too easy for many or most of the players)

or, you can add difficulty levels. but *then* you have the problem that a lot of people inaccurately judge how good they are at games, and you might have really good players going with 'normal' difficulty and then finding the game too easy, or really bad players thinking they're pro and going with 'normal' instead of 'easy' and then giving up... so this isn't always a solution

[saturdaymorning]

Any Blizzard game. What Blizzard does is take an existing game and clean it up in the easiest ways possible. Even worse, they're not attempting to do anything cool or interesting to said game. They're just adding polish-- calculated, tested, re-calculated, and patched polish.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'd say that was untrue of starcraft 1 -- they took the rts genre and made it more interesting by having 3 opposing races, instead of the usual 2. that was pretty risky and paid off for them

but what you said is true of WoW, sc2, wc series, diablo series, etc.

[BlueSweatshirt]

To add onto the semantics thing, "polish" has the connotation that it's doing something positive for the game by smoothing out rough edges and making things generally more appealing, so of course in that sense I don't think "polish" is a bad thing, and it seems like we're talking about something somewhat different. I'm tempted to call it streamlining but I don't know how well that fits either. Damnit.

Words aside, I agree. Like said earlier I think this is exactly what happened with Skyward Sword.
In a game I don't necessarily want a *tailored* experience, I want my own experience. If I want to go check something out or explore a mechanic, I'd like to be able to do it. I think that's a big charm earlier games have on me, just being able to go out and ditz around and get comfortable with the game. Games these days feel like a highly sterile experience by comparison, and I don't necessarily like that. If the game isn't about exploratory elements, fine. But for a game like Zelda it's just disappointing.

[Richard Kain]

Yeah, I think you are talking more about "streamlining" than "polish."

At the same time, I do believe that pushing streamlining too far can detract from the overall experience. There is a place for extremely linear experiences, and there is a place for exploration. If you are going to give your player's a big-ass world to explore, attempting to hold their hand too hard or too often is going to come across as overbearing.

[baconman]

That's not streamlining; which is taking a relatively complex set of actions and simplifying them to common denominators - like having a potion that cures all status ailments rather than specific ones. I think "shoehorning" or "funneling" is more the appropriate term. And I agree, removing a sense of freedom from gaming is just chunk-blowing.

EDIT: OVERSTRUCTURING. There it is.

[_Tommo_]

That's not streamlining; which is taking a relatively complex set of actions and simplifying them to common denominators

I think over-streamlining is good, as there can definitely be too much of it. Just take the "lowest denominator" and try to apply it to "everyone" and here you have a bland an on-rails game that completes itself.

[mirosurabu]

Polishing is when you take a finished game and make it look shinier. Polishing adds to the game.
Streamlining is when you take a messy-looking game and cut it so that it looks a little less messy. Streamlining takes away from the game.

When you take too much from the game you end up making an anorexic supermodel.

Personally I think it's fine and sometimes even desirable to have unfinished and flawed bits in the game, provided they do not severely clog the game.

[s0]

Personally I think it's fine and sometimes even desirable to have unfinished and flawed bits in the game, provided they do not severely clog the game.

I agree.

[Dragonmaw]

One of my favorite gameplay flaws is in Catherine, and it's a deliberate flaw. When texting somebody on your phone, you press a button to write a line, then either write another line or rewrite the current line. Mechanics-wise, this is annoying, since it forces the player to essentially make blind decisions over and over until they get the message they want. Within the atmosphere of the game, though, it's brilliant, as it mirrors the reluctance of the protagonist and his constant self-doubt. When you rewrite a message you can hear him mumble "no, that's not right" or sigh or grumble because he is second-guessing his text.

[Richard Kain]

Perhaps "railroading" would be the term we are looking for?

And as I wrote earlier, there is a place where removing control from the player is appropriate, or even desirable. I would point to the Dead Space franchise as an example of this. The first game in the series offered greater freedom of movement and exploration. But when the second game took that away, and offered a more linear experience, it didn't really suffer for it. This is because the rest of the design decisions made around Dead Space 2 were in service of its more linear nature. The developer accepted that they were taking agency away from the player, and rolled with that. Dead Space 2 is an example of railroading done right, a polished, enjoyable experience despite the lack of exploration.