With the advent of the latest generation of video game consoles and PCs that are almost infinitely expandable, developers are being pushed to their limit to create the latest and greatest game of all time. There’s no doubt that some developers have been delivering: games like Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto 4, Killzone 2, etc. With games like these nowadays, it’s hard to imagine that there was a time when people were crazy over games like Pong and Pacman.
My worry is that because of such hits, many fun games have been overlooked. Note that I said “fun”, not “quality” or “good”. Games of such epic proportions in today’s world have raised people’s expectations of what a game should be like. When a new first person shooter is released, people start comparing it with other games like Killzone 2. When an open world game is released, it’s immediately compared to GTA 4.
My worry is that people often forget what games are meant to be in the end: fun for the person who’s playing it. Let’s face it, everyone has individual taste. A game that might seem horrendous for one person (eg. Cooking Mama for me) might provide endless amounts of fun for another person (eg. many girls out there). The first thing a casual gamer does when playing a game is determine if they’re having fun playing it. On the other hand, gamers have played so many more games that there are times we forget the simple fact that games are just meant to be fun.
There have been many a time when I’m playing a game and naturally start thinking about stuff like “Hmm, the models in this game look more shoddy than the ones that were in this-other-really-cool-game-I-played-not-too-long-ago.” or “This game is lame because it’s copying a mechanic that was included in this other game”. Gamers will just naturally start comparing certain aspects of one game with a better one, and in the end the game might seem inferior. However, we get so caught up with how the animation in a game is less realistic that we don’t even realise that we’re still having loads of fun playing it.
For example, if a game has cliche dialog and writing, it’s considered annoying. If a game has a stereotypical story or plot, it’s “lame”. If it doesn’t have an epic scale, it’s criticised for having a “limited scope”. Et cetera. You get my point.
There are 2 reason for this problem in my opinion. Firstly, game reviews. In the ages of Super Mario, reviews were never as wide spread or easily available as a few clicks of a mouse. Nowadays, with dozens and dozens of reviews for almost every game, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype. Not to mention that these reviews rely heavily on the subjective experience of the reviewers since they’re ultimately written by other people who will have absolutely no idea if a particular game is fun for YOU. There’ve been times when I just didn’t have any fun with a so-called “5-stars” game purely because they weren’t my type of game (eg. Bioshock, even though I love FPSes in general). Similarly, there’re certain games that I find insanely fun despite it receiving ridiculous scores (eg. plenty of PSP games) and I’m sure almost every other gamer has had similar sentiments as well. The problem with reviews is that many gamers have undoubtedly overlooked plenty of games that might have been insanely fun for them, but because of the negative reviews or just overwhelming hype surrounding other games, they’ve been missed out on those apparently inferior games which would still have entertained them till no end.
Second of all, is simply the overwhelming number of games that are being released today. Decades ago, there were only that many quality games to choose from, for example the SNES had TONS of games released on it, but only that many were worth playing. Fast forward to today and even the more mediocre games still have a certain amount of production quality to them. For example reviews of the game Legendary have been pretty bad across the board, but I’m sure there’re still some people who will love the whole idea and atmosphere of the game, be it because of its gameplay mecahnics or its story. The thing is that there are so many games released nowadays that only the best will be noticed, while mediocre games that might still be fun for some people will be overlooked for sure. Of course, the wider variety of games is a huge bonus, but it’s just so much more difficult for each individual to find the game he or she will love.
All in all, I have one piece of advice for all gamers when you’re playing any game: just have fun. Stop comparing it to previous games in terms of graphics, gameplay or whatnot. Also, go ahead and try out some games that might receive bad scores from game review sites or magazines, no harm trying anyway. Just ask yourself, “Am I having fun?” If so, just keep playing. If not, pop the disc out and move on to the next game. It’s just that simple.
9 comments ↓
Sean Murphy
April 13th, 2009
I know exactly what you mean. I’m playing Gears of War 2 and I constantly kept telling myself, “Hey they stole that from Halo 3, or I didn’t know Activision worked on this game.” These kinds of thoughts distracted from my overall enjoyment of the game, and its really a shame.
darthLegion
April 13th, 2009
the game that came to mind while reading this article is Geometry Wars: Galaxies. while it fared fairly well in reviews, it completely blew me away with its addictive gameplay and fun factor more than any other game i’ve ever played. to me, both versions (Wii and DS) are the best games for their respective systems. don’t miss it if you have one of those systems.
Rob
April 13th, 2009
Brilliant piece of blogging, and it captures my view entirely. Toooooo often are games (such as Wii games) put down to the lack of realistic graphics, which don’t affect the overall fun factor.
Good points, well made.
Grilled Seabass
April 14th, 2009
Good piece of blogging. But I think there are 2 schools of thought with this issue. 1st is the games should primarily be fun camp. The 2nd, favoured by the big developers, is that games should deliver ‘a cinematic experience’.
I much prefer the fun factor in games. I’ve rarely got caught up in the story of a game, mainly because the writing is so bad compared to a film or novel. So a game like Halo 3 for example, I much prefer the action rather the experience of playing through the story. That said, this generation is delivering cinematic experiences a lot better, Half-Life 2 and and Fallout 3 spring to mind. I guess it’s because gaming is still in it’s relative infancy as a medium, and developers are becoming more and more sophisticated in understanding gaming as a storytelling medium.
Seth
April 14th, 2009
Some good points, but I still think quality is a more important determining factor than ‘fun’ (however we define that.)
There ARE many more great games nowadays than ever before, and with a limited time to play as many games as possible, I will choose the ‘better’ games to play. I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything, as I’ll only be playing games that I enjoy. (Unless I’m reviewing them…)
Monkey Rimmer
April 14th, 2009
I agree completely! There’s been quite a few games I’ve enjoyed even though the reviews say don’t play it! It’s crap! etc. etc. I had emense fun playing House of the Dead Overkill, I’ve also enjoyed Boom Blox more than I expected. I much prefer to play my style of GTA4 than the style out of the box, as my version is FUN! Bus Stock Car racing is something everyone should try! As is Alamo – where you randomly choose a burger joint as your safe house and have a massive run-and-gun with the Police across the city!
Too often I feel that I’m being told “Buy this game cuz it’s ace!” when in fact I feel let down because it’s not fun! I ended up hating COD4 and COD5 for that very reason! I never finished COD5 because it just wasn’t fun.
I’m glad others feel the same about gaming, I was beginning to think I was abnormal!
Seth
April 14th, 2009
@Monkey Rimmer – House of the Dead: Overkill and Boom Blox both got very positive reviews, so they probably aren’t the best examples of ‘crap games that are fun.’
The fact is that there are so many more people playing games nowadays that even the worst games have loyal followers.
manuel
April 15th, 2009
Great blog it shoots down on the money, keep the good work guys, i also think that what makes a great game, is a good gameplay mixed with the fun factor, which means high quality game, take for instance Resident evil 4, right now the graphics are last gen, but if you put this game to someone that did not played the game till now, he will be blown away, because it has high quality in all fronts.
Samuel G
April 19th, 2009
I agree with you on a lot of your points, but at the same time I think you’re also leaving out a lot of other factors. For instance, let me talk about my time spent playing Killzone 2’s online gameplay. It is extremely cruel and extremely devoid of ‘fun.’ Yet despite all this, I find it completely addicting, and utterly rewarding. The skills necassary to win and play strategically are unlocked one by one, with many hours of grind to get there. But still, I find the unlocking of a new class, or weapon even, to be an event of great accomplishment, and the feeling i get on the unlock screen certainly justifies the mind-numbing frustration of the grind.
And the other thing that I feel should be brought up is the issue of money. Games are expensive, there’s no disputing that. Even on the Wii, which was supposed to be a gold mine of budget titles, it is hard to find a fun game worth its price tag. The thing is, while a game that is almost constantly fun is certainly worth the money, fun is a difficult thing to keep going for any amount of time. The fun of tapping out those catchy rythyms in Elite Beat Agents can only last so long. Aside from the fact that eventually it becomes too difficult to derive any major fun from it, even if it had infinite number of songs and a perfect difficulty curve, eventually I would get tired of it, and now it is not only not a fun game, it is a boring, or god forbid, TEDIOUS game. The thing about these fun games is, and not just on the wii, is that they are so fragile, and the fun brought on by their limited gameplay functionalities is eventaully their undoing. Eventually, when the two or three gameplay mechanics become tired, when you’ve seen it all, often your left with a game that now seems nothing more than a touch screen calibration program, as well as an apparently wasted 30-50 dollars. This is why I so often go for the complex, the large, the epic game instead of the simply fun game. When I plunk down 60 of my hard earned dollars, I want to know that a week, a month, a year from now, I could still pick up that game and find something thrilling about it. Fun is certainly able to be found in these big budget titles, (although less so than it once was), but when a game relies on fun to justify its simple mechanics, it just can’t justify its own pricetag to me anymore.