next »

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

But a lot of games did do the equivalent of hiding the turbo mode -- think of how Secret of Evermore hid that the second game controller can control the dog. Or how Metal Gear Solid hid that you could use the second game controller to bypass the mind control of Psycho Mantis. Or how Duck Hunt hid that you can use the second controller to move the ducks around. There are particular circumstances where withholding control information from the player can make the game better (at least for some players).

[TeeGee]

Sure. As I said, it's often blurred. Still, I believe the core verbs need to be known. You could play each of these games without knowing these secrets and some of that stuff could just pass as cheats.
Of course, no general rule is always right. It's always up to the designer to consider if a feature is within the core functionality or not. It's hard to draw a firm line between Naija making whirls and setting map markers - it's a matter of intuition.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I don't think specialized hotkeys are core verbs though, especially when you can accomplish the same thing with the mouse. They're just alternative, easier, but less fun ways of controlling the game. It's not like the game didn't tell you have to swim or something.

[TeeGee]

Yeah, I don't think Aquaria is really faulty here. I was just responding to the general "discovering controls can be part of fun" thing.

[princec]

As an example, one of Cas's criticisms of Aquaria is that doing the things it does won't help it sell games. But what if that wasn't their intent? What if they just wanted to provide a high degree of focused value on a narrow audience, rather than sell as many games as they could?

Well here's the rub - people who buy the full game get to see the other 90% of all the effort that went into it - the art, the sound, the story, the gameplay. So deliberately making it so that less people get to see all that stuff is just plain crazy: it just means you've wasted tons and tons of effort. It's like painting a picture and then putting it in a cupboard under the stairs so no-one gets to see it. You couldn't claim that was a good thing surely?

Cas

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Yeah, but similarly, let's say you removed all the puzzles in the game. That would also remove one of the primary values to people. All the work that went into those puzzles would be wasted. More people could get to the end, yes, but those that did would appreciate the game less and have less fun with it.

The point I'm trying to make is that hand-holding the player doesn't only expand your audience, it also restricts your audience (from some people), because not everyone likes hand-holding. I certainly wouldn't have bought Aquaria if it hand-held me, and others might not as well. So it'd be losing some of its core audience that way.

[Valter]

Yeah, but similarly, let's say you removed all the puzzles in the game. That would also remove one of the primary values to people. All the work that went into those puzzles would be wasted. More people could get to the end, yes, but those that did would appreciate the game less and have less fun with it.

False. You're assuming that a game with puzzles is more fun than a game without puzzles, which is obviously not true. If Alec had replaced the puzzles with action segments, I don't think it would have been a worse game.

The point I'm trying to make is that hand-holding the player doesn't only expand your audience, it also restricts your audience (from some people), because not everyone likes hand-holding. I certainly wouldn't have bought Aquaria if it hand-held me, and others might not as well. So it'd be losing some of its core audience that way.

That's why it's important to give clues and hints early on in the game, so that players can make it through the rest without help. Once you have some experience with the puzzle style of a certain game, it becomes easier to solve the rest of the puzzles.

It's also important to make clues optional. Make signs, or NPCs that you can talk to, but don't force your hints upon the player. Nothing infuriates me more than a puzzle game that will incessantly drop hints about what you should be doing, before you've even had the chance to do it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

If the puzzles were replaced by something else it would have been more fun for some, but less fun for others. Pure action games are less interesting to me than adventure games with puzzles, so I mightn't have bought it then either. In any game with puzzles you're going to have people who can't get some of the puzzles. And if you make the puzzles too easy you'll make it less enjoyable to the people who find the puzzles too easy. So I don't think it's as simple as no puzzles or simple puzzles make a game more accessible. Because a game actually becomes less accessible to some people if the puzzles are really simple.

As an analogy, let's say you're writing a novel. Your publisher might say, "don't use words like 'malicious' and 'coherent'! people aren't that smart, they can't understand words like that!" -- and yes, not using long words would make the novel more accessible to people who aren't very competent readers. But it'd also make the novel less appealing to competent readers, because they'd feel as if it were too simple for them.

[Laremere]

I can think of one very solid instance of were making the game more accessible ruined it.  When Spore was first showed off it had allot more science elements.  Just to name a few that were taken out, in creature stage if you had longer arms, you could reach farther, and the game also had a balanced eco system.  Then it all changed, ending up in a game that had cool tech, but at the very core of gameplay it was several very shallow games strung together ending with a very massive but repetitive space stage.  If Spore had been more like what was shown originally, a few people would have been put off by the more scientific elements, but I probably still would be playing it in some of my free time, instead of it just taking up shelve space.