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[Pentadact]

I'm a games writer, working on

. So I got interested in the area where writing about games and making them overlap: analysing what makes them good.

It's a little personal, obviously, but I found the list I came up with was helpful right away. I wrote it up in a post on Gunpoint's development blog:

http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2011-05-27-what-makes-games-good

If you haven't already, I definitely recommend trying to write down what appeals to you in games. It gets you to step back from your design and see new ways to improve it.

This was my list:

1. Challenge
How much you enjoy tackling what you’re being asked to do

2. Feel
Making individual interactions convincing and pleasurable

3. Freedom
The extent to which a game reacts to your choices with interesting results

4. Place
A world you want to be in

5. Promise
The temptation of further possibilities

6. Fantasy
The appeal of playing this role

A better explaination of why those, and why not others, in the post.

Cheers,

Tom Francis
http://www.gunpointgame.com

[Sankar]

First of all, nice text and initiative. I believe that learning from the past is a nice way to keep our "ancestors" alive and still learn something new. No need to reinvent the wheel.
I've read your blog and I think you got some good points there, I'll share mine:

Responsive and Intuitive Controls
A great game make you feel good while you're playing it. It rewards your curiosity to play around with the buttons and its responsive. The less confusion and complications the game put on the control scheme, the better. After all games are a tactile experience too, and I honest can't recall a great and memorable game that had clumsy unresponsible controls.


Style
New technologies give us lot of liberty as far as creating our games, but even the more advanced processors still aren't enough to make us be able to "do anything" in a game. So Style is very important because if a game style looks dated and limited, if it looks like the game tried to achieve something and failed miserably, It won't feel great.
Style is all about giving a game its own look/sound and at the same time dealing with possible limitations. A game with a catchy style makes us ignore any technical limitations. I've Played Metroid in every console it was released so far, and I thought the game was beautiful (both graphics and sound) in every single one.


It should be both Challenging and Rewarding
I've been writing a series of posts about this, but basically a game should Challenge you but at the same time make you feel Rewarded. New skills, areas, more liberty and so on... There are endless ways to reward the player, it goes from product to product.
The player must never feel like he can't complete something because the game is just "too hard". The player always should feel like he has a chance, and there is no need to frustrate the player a lot too. NES games loved to make us restart the game from the beginning at every single death, it was frustrating as hell.


Interaction
I try to shoot light bulbs in every single FPS game I play. If the lamp blows up, I smile. If the lamp blows up and the room gets darker, i get impressed... Most of the time nothing happens. I won't stop playing because of this, but I wish something happened.
Zelda Ocarina of Time still amazes me to this very day. I saw a sign-post, I slashed it with my sword, not only it got cut, it actually was cut in the angle of my sword motion, and on top of that the wood fell into the river and i could see little waves all around it. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my gaming life.


Creativity and Freedom
Now this is a confusing concept, because a game that offers you 10 different paths to choose from does not necessarily let you be creative. Creativity and Freedom are result of good mechanics, the gamer got some tools and he is able to do something out of it.
Like grabing some boxes, making a wall, hiding behind it, and so on. So, its not about "pre-scripted" moments, not about "choice", but about being able to have an idea and see it work.


Looks Familiar, Tastes New
Great games give us what we want, what we've been wishing for and at the same time, surprises us. Shadow of the Colossus doesn't come out of nowhere, its a third person game, it has sword, bow, bosses, a mute protagonist, a girl and even a horse. This could be a Zelda description, but it isn't. Because Shadow of the Colossus give the formula a different spin. Great games do this, they don't reinvent the wheel, they polish the mechanics that work from other games, and add something new and interesting. In Shadow you have the climbing mechanics, lot of gaps on the story for you to "create your own", giant bosses, no minions and so on.
Sometimes, movies and other games makes us wish we could "do something in a game" and a great game most of the time allows us to do something like that. I've been wishing to be able to defeat a giant beast by "myself", using my wits, courage and skill ever since I've heard Davi and Goliath story, and I'm not even christian!


A display of human skill
Almost all great games reviews have the following line: "we couldn't believe this was running on ..." or "the game takes technology to the limit" or something along this. Great games like great magic tricks or movies, always makes us admire the "humans" who made it.
We love to see how smart or capable our fellow humans are, "trick" videos on youtube gather millions of viewers. Japanese Martial Arts movies.
Great games amaze us the same way. I can't help but to everytime i play Shadow of the Colossus to be amazed by how far the developers stretched the PS2 hardware. Or when I play Another World, i always admire the fact that it was a single guy who did everything on the game (less the music) and so on.