After last monday's lecture we now have shared collective of ideas on what makes games fun and interesting (or not fun and interesting). This is taking into consideration the successes of games that implement the aforementioned ideas and noticing trends between them.
With the four games we examined together the element of "player-made content" is a huge cornerstone that allows Apples To Apples, Cards Against Humanity, LittleBigPlanet2, and Once Upon A Time to function effectively. We cannot deny that user-input systems in games have become a trend more than ever in modern gaming and that user-input to change the game elements draws attention. You'll even find on the back of some boxes phrases such as "Over 100 new player skins!" or "Customize your weapons and equipment to fit your combat style!" This same element can span between the character you make in an RPG to what kind of metal piece you want representing your token in Monopoly.
Psychology mentions that one of the best ways to get people to do something is to make it seem like the idea belongs to them. Once the idea is inherently believed to be their own it's rather more fulfilling and exciting for them to pursue such a goal knowing they have great part in how it's done and that their ideas are being recognized - this is sort of playing with the feel-goods of human behavior.
I do not play this game, but I'll end with this video articulating this idea from the designers themselves:
- Cam
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Talking about the games we played the first day? Well there wasn't a whole lot of gaming, but between "Once Upon a Time" card game and "Little Big Planet 2" on the PlayStation 3. That was a completely different range of gaming. Although I had always been a fan of playing video games, it was a quite different change to play card games for once.
I wrote reviews for the four games that we got to play by the second week of class. Although my all time favorite, must absolutely have to be the deeply anticipated Guild Wars 2.
As a fan of games that allow for player freedom to explore an created universe in unique ways or to achieve goals in a variety of choices I was hoping for something nice from the game Starhawk. It is from some of the crew that made Warhawk several years back. The game focused on single player only but consisted of large maps with several well balanced vehicles. While Warhawk never included the massive airships featured in early build videos that they had later thrown out due to time constraints
they did add the APC and dropships that had existed in earlier builds back in via DLC packs.
The game suffered from several issues such as lack of support on the servers, failure to address one-sided matches, and a large failure to integrate the DLC into the game's main base. The support from the developers completely dried out after the third DLC, but all in all it was a great game that supported 4-player split screen allowing you to play the game at social events with several of your friends or family. Not to mention that its servers are still in use 5 years after release.
Enough about Warhawk this is about Starhawk. Starhawk borrowed many aspects from its predecessor like 3rd person, UI, and vehicles, but it added a build and battle aspect. The idea was that the player creates the map from a blank slate and it is why it earned high praise in early reviews. The problems are that it lacked the 4-player turning it from a direct social game to a virtual social game for many players, it had not actuals servers (player hosted only), lacks most vehicles from Warhawk, lacks buildings or structures of any type (relying on the B&B), and suffered from massive imbalances. The studio loved the sandbox of building and destroying, but failed to realize that once you destroyed on side's "built" the battle was pretty much over. A player that would spawn in would be met with death from the other team that had set up camp in their base. The studio had created a spawn in "drop-pod" option that was very well thought out, it allowed the player to spawn in his/her zone and if a enemy was below them they could kill them...but since it shows a large red circle below it pretty much any person spawn killing players in the zone would get a early warning, back up and then shoot the player once they exited the drop-pod. Most of the game reviews played the game on private servers and lacked the fore site to see any of the imbalance or player hosted server issues resulting in one sided reviews. On the opposite side many fans of the first game felt betrayed by the lack of studio response to major game issues and the fact they ignored and dropped many aspects that made Warhawk very popular. The final result is a game that has dropped in price 20 dollars a month in and sales that have fallen below its predecessor's at the same point of its release life.
It is hard divorcing the game's successful predecessor from it, like a struggling actor from his/her parent that was successful actor. It seems that Starhawk's producers are suffering from the same issues, pushing away many things that made Warhawk great just because they did not want to be like their parents. I hope they can fix the game issues sometime in the near future before the game dies off, but most of all I was just hoping that they were going to release those massive airships they had designed for the prior game. In truth I could care less about many of these issues, I just want a game with large airships for some fun gameplay...so much so I even spent time making a video for a smaller airship (incase processor power was an issue in a game) to fill that void in my gaming experience.
