Maybe explain to me why arcade game designers get a free pass on the unlimited continues. Because I always hear alastair john jack complaining about players "having to create their own challenge" (i.e. invent their own rules to make the game more fun). He never brings up arcade games when complaining about this, though.
The one credit limit is a designed rule. Evidence for this: score resets upon continuing (doesn't seem like much on its own, but then consider that these games have extends
based on score which let players regain extra lives), the games' steadily ramping difficulty curves balanced around a certain number of lives/health items (all of which makes absolutely no sense if the designers just wanted the player to keep feeding in quarters from the beginning), endings (sometimes even entire extra stages) in many games which don't get seen by people who continue, games that only offered continues in non-Japan regions (and all of the early ones with stage development which didn't offer them
at all, despite being around the same challenge level as many later titles, as well as even some later games which held out from offering continues.) If they really wanted to just rake in the money without being fair to players then they could have just done what many US arcade games did and make levels have continue time limits which are quite literally impossible to overcome, or even just require a new credit after each level. Likewise, a player who spends 200 credits over a few months to get good enough to beat
Metal Slug will actually be giving the operators a lot more money overall than a player who spends 20 credits a few times, then never plays the game again because he's seen all the ending screens and the explosions he needs. (BTW even if it
wasn't a designed rule, I'd still be for it just on the basis that almost all arcade games with continues are completely awful games if you get infinite lives and good games if you get a limited stock of lives -- additionally, from a player's perspective it doesn't even make so much sense to credit feed, because if you can't get past a hard part in a game then you'll get even less playtime and be even less ready for what's further up ahead on the next continue, so you'll just end up wasting money.)
I think the whole "make your own rules" thing only applies when that's the
only way the game can offer a significant challenge (I hope we've established that the 1-credit thing isn't a player-defined rule by now.) Speedrunning is just a way for experienced players to have more fun once they've exhausted all the "regular" challenge that the game puts out, it isn't necessary to make great games fun. I'll let Alastair speak for himself if he wants to though, because I know he's been lurking this thread lol.
Well, you could always NOT SAVE in an indie platformer (or, as I've mentioned before, play the various hardcore modes that are sometimes available, like in VVVVVV).
Yeah and I could always just not grind in a JRPG...design flaws are design flaws regardless of whether or not they're "optional," and the fairest thing to do is to assume that the developer expected the player to take full advantage of all the tools available to him unless stated or implied otherwise (like the continue thing.) Infinite lives being removed from
VVVVVV makes it a slightly better game but that doesn't really excuse its comparatively basic level design (not to mention that to even unlock the no death mode you need to first beat the game, unlock the time trials by collecting the Shiny Trinkets, and S-rank several of them.)
Bite-sized levels were prominent in old arcade games, partly due to technical restrictions. But I think Super Meat Boy is the only game you mentioned with such short levels, anyway.
Those obviously aren't levels in the same sense as
Super Meat Boy's levels. Early arcade games were designed to repeat infinitely, unlike SMBoy which has a concrete end and clear level progression (instead of just pure
difficulty progression, where the same exact stages are repeated with increasing parameters that make it harder.) The other games I mentioned suffer from the same core problem SMBoy does, they just break action sequences up implicitly through checkpoints instead of explicitly through discrete levels...if that phrasing makes sense. I think a better implementation of the "bite-sized level" concept would be something like
Alien Soldier, where most of the game's 25 stages can be beaten under 40 seconds if you're good enough (but at the same time, they're also linked together concretely, need to be beaten in succession with limited resources, rely heavily on unique and memorable setpieces, and give you an expansive and awesome moveset with both offensive and defensive moves, which are just some of the many reasons why it's a great game.)
I don't read very many game reviews, but with regards to the art: I think you hit the nail on the head when you explained that you yourself are using pixel art to save yourself time as a tiny developer. A lot of these guys aren't artists, so they're looking to their favorite 8 and 16-bit games for guidance. The vast majority of these games are hobbyist, anyway.
That said, there are also a lot of fantastic artists in the indie games community, and their games are lovely (Amanita Design, Konjak, Wolfire, Locomalito, Supergiant Games, Unknown Worlds, etc., etc.).
By "bland art direction" I was referring to stuff like
Knytt and
Super Meat Boy, not NES-aesthetic stuff. Wasn't ever saying the decision to go with a retro-aesthetic artstyle was necessarily a bad thing, or that there weren't talented artists within this scene, though. The comment about reviews was just a offhand observation that many people today seem to prefer "retro" titles to the actual games their developers say they were inspired by.
As for cheap hits... do you mean hits you basically have to memorize to get past? Because don't a lot of arcade games require much more memorization than the games you mentioned? Like R-Type, for example.
What I mean is deaths that are caused by things like wonky physics, overly large hitboxes, completely unpredictable (non-telegraphed) events, etc. Basically situations where it feels like you should have gotten through and often times the visual indication is that you're about to, but you don't due to not having certain prior knowledge. It's not just memorization, memorization is a part of most action games.
In the end, I don't feel like unlimited saves and small levels ruined my enjoyment of Super Meat Boy. The game was designed around both those ideas. Actually, I consider it a refinement on those old arcade games with short levels, since you have much better control over your character and can do some very impressive jumps using his inertia. The levels are also better designed.
The movement engine was actually a huge point of contention for me. There's a complete disconnect between the air and ground inertia; on the ground you run like Mega Man and turn on a dime, whereas in the air and while walljumping you slip around like Sonic the Hedgehog (except you need to make jumps ten times more precise.) The level design was also ridiculously basic for the parts I played (up until the regular ending); most of the levels relied on the same simple elements e.g. moving buzzsaws, missile launchers, locks/keys and the game never seems to find new ways of combining them or make the player devise new strategies for them, the levels just get slightly longer and chain a few more saws together. Sometimes there were decent world-specific elements like the portals and lamppost beacons, but those weren't developed to nearly their full potential thanks to aforementioned short level lengths. I can't even remember many particular level designs off the top of my head, they just kind of all blended together for me (probably also due to the length, as well as just
how many there were.) For a game which prides itself on being a "throwback" to titles like
Mega Man 2 and
Ninja Gaiden it's kind of disappointing that it references its inspirations constantly while playing nothing like them.
It this point, I'm not sure why it's a bad thing that people see the potential in games to engage the "sad" emotions. You like Mother 3 - the game does a great job of it. Shigesato himself Itoi expressed not only that games have the capability of making us feel "new feelings", but that this was what gave games depth.
I don't think it's a bad thing at all that people see the potential and want to work with it, I just don't think a
premium should necessarily be put on it or that sadness/grief should become a benchmark for "emotion in games." Games already run a huge gamut of emotions which really can't be experienced in any other artform to nearly the same degree, and just because they can't make you feel this one particular thing everyone talks about how games lack emotion. Also with that Itoi quote I'd replace "games" with "the narratives of games," because it doesn't have anything to do with an actual game's depth.
The "sport for nerds" quote is a great one... what do games have to offer that sports don't? You play a sport and you're actively moving around, getting physically stronger, you can physically hurt people and get hurt... hell, you can even hold a real gun and shoot it! Much more tension with some physical danger involved, right? Or actual death?
Can I pilot a spaceship into a fleet of aliens while zigzagging between bullets to gain points and multipliers which are displayed on my ship's screen, or maybe as numbers floating disembodiedly in front of me? How about defying the laws of physics by running at the speed of sound through surrealistic obstacle courses where my survival depends on how many Burger King onion snacks I collected? ...um, I can at least drop some colored falling blocks on each other at insanely fast rates to make them magically disappear, right? What,
none of that? Man, this "physical" stuff sucks.
And you're kind of right too, man. There's wouldn't be much desire to play
Supreme Commander if you actually have huge armies at your command which will do whatever you want them to, there's wouldn't be much desire to play
Thief if you're actually a master thief, there's wouldn't be much desire to play
Ace Combat if you're a real fighter pilot.* But I'm not cut out to do any of these things, and neither are you, and neither are most people on this planet; even if I was, I can't possibly dedicate my time to
everything (imagine being a top fighter pilot, a top government thief, and a top military strategist all at the same time in real life, lmao.) That's why we play videogames. They can make us believe we're doing all sorts of crazy insane things in all sorts of weird places, without as much of the time, tedium (like military school!), and luck that would be needed to actually get there in real life. Soon enough, they'll be able to give us those feelings of danger and physicality you mention too to almost the same degree as in real life without "actual" personal risk, and someday (probably very soon after) they might even be able to make us think we're different people altogether.
* except for training and practice for their own real-life work, but you get the point
Well, video games have the potential for a wider and more interesting set of rules than sports, and they also have graphics, music, stories, and everything else. In a video game you can be taken to another world! With an opportunity like that, people like ToT want to do more than just play new kinds of sports. Just like you, apparently, since you like Mother 3 so much.
What do you do in a world you
know isn't "real" without any objectives? If you had no actual goals your attention would just be drawn to how fake and artificial everything is; at best you'd just screw around aimlessly just to see what you could do, get bored eventually, and move on. It'd feel, above all,
empty. That's why the "sports" exist in the first place: to divert our attention from the fakeness, to help us focus on something, and to make the world seem amazing, immersive, and above all interesting and
important to us, even if those feelings might only last for a little while. That's also why the graphics, music, stories, and everything else exist. (Yep, even
Mother 3 does this.) ToT has tried to subvert this with games like
Endless Forest where there really were almost no possible meaningful goals or interactions, and just ended up proving the opposite point instead.
I think even you can see the problem with the line of reasoning you're using here. You're saying "play this neutered version of a game you don't like to get the experience you're after".
It might be neutered from yours or my perspective, but it wouldn't be neutered from
theirs, is the thing. They love games' visuals/sounds/stories, and they hate the stuff that "gets in the way" of enjoying all that for them, so why would they want to play through the "regular version" of the game when they could play through this other version which has all the stuff that really appeals to them, and as an added bonus it doesn't have those pesky parts where you have to interact with the game's world in situations where what you do actually matters? Michael Samyn even wants designers to "add 'skip' functionality to each gameplay bit" of their videogames, what does that sound like to you but the ultimate easy mode?
Hm, okay. Well I guess I should stop "following" (i.e. listening) to you and I'll listen to Shigesato Itoi, instead, and use this definition of depth for video games:
(snip)
Unless you're saying you're more talented than him?
Like I said before, that has nothing to do with a game's depth. Also,
Mother 3 is nothing even close to an "artgame" by any definition, nor is it necessarily a path which should be followed by games outside of the JRPG genre (though there are even better paths which could be followed within that genre, but this is
one possible game JRPG devs could learn and improve from if they cared enough.)
And this has absolutely nothing to do with my own personal talent, I don't know where you got that from (unless you're trying to pull the "what have
you done" joker card?) Is Itoi talented, and tons more talented than I am at this point? Hell yes. Are there dozens of great designers out there even
more talented than Itoi is at making games, despite working with more conventional game models? Hell yes.
EDIT: oh I get it, nah I was saying "less talented" in a general sense not specifically "less talented than myself"
"History proves that mainstream taste is often wrong! Oh, except for video games, I guess."
"But either way, good taste always prevails! Oh, except for the bad stuff that prevails, somehow. Hmmm... "
A lot of your arguments seem to run this way... where you contradict yourself and then come up with some more obscure reasoning to support it.
You'll find the reasoning is all fairly consistent at this point, I just simplified and didn't elaborate initially because the taste reevaluation thing was only slightly related to the real topic of discussion about "artgames" and ToT. As you can tell it's not a subject I had (or have, for that matter) nearly figured out yet, but this topic has helped.
You were arguing that the "critical process" is important, because genius often goes ignored by mainstream taste... except for video games, where most of the masterpieces are recognized as such very soon after their release. If we were to follow your reasoning, the games YOU LIKE will probably be forgotten in favor of the games you don't like, since pretty much every game you seem to like is a popular one.
Most of the masterpieces being recognized as such on sight only lasted up until the past decade, when the lowest common denominator fell several notches (and also while entire genres died or became zombified due to no longer being financially tenable.) Most of the older games I like have
already basically survived the test of time and the critical process, that's why they're called classics and not unknown obscurities.
This is like your snack analogy - a simple idea (that what's important and influential to people changes over time) turned into something needlessly complex so that you can somehow tie it to the useless war on art games.
The snack analogy had nothing to do with the "war on art games," it was just me repeating myself in a different way than I had before while talking about
Mother 3. And what's important and influential to people doesn't just "change over time," it changes in the short run until it generally stays constant for the long one. That was also a relatively minor point which was only tangentially related to the main subject, and I elaborated because someone wanted me to elaborate.
In fact, you're really just acting as a vector for the idea of art games, since you bring them up all the time and help turn these threads into massive ones.
Only if you believe that any publicity is good publicity! Anyway, you're right, I probably put far too much time into these posts for my own good, but at the same time I like to think I've written some of my best posts (or at the least, best
parts of posts) regarding design within threads like this one, and I'd hope you could say the same for yourself. I was originally going to say this is probably going to be the last thread I do this in, but then y'know, 2 weeks later...
Nevermind, it just goes back to your whole "mechanics is most important" argument. But as usual, you've clarified by saying that it's only most important sometimes. Okay, not much I can say to that.
It was more like "90% of the time" than "sometimes." Anyway, what I was "wat"-ing at was you saying I'm saying no one else is allowed to enjoy certain types of games that I enjoy. (christ that is probably the most awful sentence i've constructed in this topic yet)
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