[Giligan]

I wrote this on another forum, and I think it's one of my better insights on video and compuer games, so here it is for public consumption.

I get what you're saying, but I've got to disagree. Before I say why, though, I'll posit this: A game's success, like movies, books, or music, is tied to it being done by a very specific formula. Hit that formula right and people will like the game. On the other hand, if you don't do things right, people will not like the game, even though they may not be sure why. The human brain's liking of something is largely tied to that something being done right, from the smallest details to the largest. I hate to simplify creativity, but let's face it, there's a reason that you have to go to college to learn how to write good movies, games, music, books, plays, whatever. It's because there's a very specific way to do those outlets of art.

That said, what I feel makes a game great is very much tied to my argument there, and also very much not tied to it. I don't think that what makes a game great can be laid out in bullet points, because if it could, every developer would have that list on hand and reviews would be pointless. On the other hand, there is a specific number of things a game has to do to succeed. These things are all abstract:

1, Use the player's imagination;
2, Be creative;
3, Make the player care;
4, Have good gameplay. (this is one of yours, but I've got to agree here. A game is defined by its gameplay, and it must be enjoyable for the player.)


1: Use the player's imagination

What I mean by that is difficult to explain, but I'll try to present it as easily as possible. Let's take perhaps one of the best recent examples of game design, Grand Theft Auto IV. (I didn't like the game, but that's just because I didn't like it, not because it did something wrong.) Grand Theft Auto utilizes the greatest tool a dame developer has, the player's imagination. In the game, the player must run around a giant city and accomplish tasks. But it has many obvious holes. The cars driving around don't actually go anywhere. The pedestrians never reach their destination. You can't go in all of the buildings. The story-relevent NPCs don't actually exist when they're not in a cutscene. But you, the player, never realize any of that. You never even think about it. In the player's mind, your imagination fills in all the blanks without you realizing it. That's good game design. On the other hand, if you can't help but notice the pedestrians walking along their perpetual programmed routes with no destination, if it's conspicuous, then that's a badly designed game.

Another example of this might be Halo. In Halo, all the aliens speak English and have names that can be spelled with human letters. Their ships are even named after things which only exist in human culture, like a hierophant. Yet the player never notices any of that; it's not conspicuous because it's well designed. Same as Captain Price, who is killed off in every COD game, yet comes back.


2: Be creative

This might be the most important thing. It's pretty self-explanatory; a game should be designed by someone who just thought the thing up, like "damn, I just thought of the most amazing video game ever designed". All too often, video games come to be when an executive says "I need such-and-such game", and there's no creativity. On the other hand, trying to do something different for the sake of it won't work either. You've just got to make the game right, and it'll stand out from the crowd. You can have a gun hovering on the screen in a first-person shooter and still do enough things creatively that it won't feel like a Doom rip-off.


3: Make the player care.

This is probaby tied with the second category for importance. If the player doesn't care about winning, losing, or losing a digital comrade, the game's a flop. The player must be invested in the stakes. In Mass Effect, you wanted the Reaver bastards to be destroyed, and that's what made it great. At the end of the game, you felt good because you'd killed Sovereign and won. You felt like a badass for killing him, and for saving everyone in the galaxy. That alone is why Mass Effect won game of the year awards. The player genuinely felt like he'd accomplished something. For this category, it's not enough to make the player care about the plot, though. The player also has to like or hate the characters, like Alyx in Half-life 2, so that he cares what happens to them. If Alyx had died in the Half-life 2 series, the player would enormously pissed off at Valve. Those are stakes the player becomes invested in. If he doesn't become invested, there's no reason for him to play the game.

Spore is another good example of this. It doesn't have any characters, but you care about the creatures, because you've created them. You create your own world, and you have stakes in it. That's important to the player. Therefore, it works. The game that succeeds is the game that manipulates the player's emotions into caring about something that only exists digitally, and yet not having the player care.

4: Have good gameplay.

You've covered this, so I won't get into it. The bottom line is that a game should be fun to play.



And there are my points. If a game is creative, uses the player's imagination, makes the player care, and has good gameplay, it'll be a guaranteed hit. That's just how I feel, though.