I try to play many video games, both in sheer number and in a variety of different genres. Part of this is in an attempt to become a better producer, but it\u2019s mostly because I find it fun.<\/p>\n
While I cannot play every game that comes out, the lending library that we have here at work, along with the company store and the occasional purchase means that I can get pretty good coverage of all the \u201cmajor\u201d games that get released (although the definition of major is heavily controlled by how much marketing a particular game receives).<\/p>\n
This initial brief inspection of what \u2013 to me \u2013 is a good game focuses on one aspect of games: difficulty. As I\u2019ve grown older and my total free time has become narrowly defined by my working hours, I\u2019ve started to appreciate more and more the shorter games with solid story and gameplay: the Portals, the Mirror\u2019s Edges, the Dead Spaces. That\u2019s not to say I don\u2019t get enjoyment out of an epic like Zelda or Fallout or GTA. It\u2019s just that the length, after the initial 15-20 hours, begins to feel like it\u2019s working against me instead of for me.<\/p>\n
Starting a long game isn\u2019t the problem. The problem is that with a long game, I\u2019ll often reach a point where the difficulty of progressing is no longer worth the reward of what I\u2019ll unlock. There\u2019s a very fine balance between making a game challenging and making a game hard. I feel that many games fall into the trap of needing to ensure an experience that isn\u2019t too easy and end up forgetting that difficulty requires fun gameplay to motivate the player to continue.<\/p>\n
Maybe I\u2019m bitter because I played Street Fighter IV for two hours last night and couldn\u2019t defeat Arcade mode on Very Easy. Maybe it\u2019s because I remember exactly when I stopped playing GTA IV \u2013 a mission where I had to clear out an entire building full of drug dealers. I did so and got a great feeling of accomplishment, only to be shot down by a police helicopter trying to escape and being reset to the beginning of the mission. Maybe I just suck at games with \u201cIV\u201d in the title.<\/p>\n
Regardless, it just felt like I was being needlessly punished by the game. Why weren\u2019t the GTA checkpoints in the mission closer together? Why are the Very Easy fighters on Street Fighter still so good at fighting? I should never have to say, \u201cWhat? Are you kidding me?\u201d to my TV while playing in regards to failing. I should only say things like \u201cOops.\u201d or \u201cAgh! I can do this!\u201d or \u201cWow, those 12 year olds are much better with sniper rifles than I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny because The Sims series is the exact opposite of most games. There is very little difficulty involved. In fact, if you let your computer sit there, your Sims will generally do a decent job at taking care of themselves. All our money cheats are right there in the readme and there\u2019s no stigma to giving yourself a million dollars to build that ultimate mansion. And yet, designers and producers on the team still talk about making sure that we\u2019re not making things too hard or too easy \u2013 that we walk that fine line where players don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re watching the game play itself but also don\u2019t feel inadequate because they\u2019re not \u201cgood enough\u201d to get past the first level (of a career or skill, for example).<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I try to play many video games, both in sheer number and in a variety of different genres. Part of this is in an attempt to become a better producer, but it\u2019s mostly because I find it fun. While I cannot play every game that comes out, the lending library that we have here at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,22,23,25],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-year26","tag-job","tag-producer","tag-sims","tag-video-games","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}