Saturday 21 August 2010

Do Modern Gamers Have Short Attention Spans?

It always seems to me that in modern times there has been a higher ratio games released that cater towards those with shorter attention spans. I mean this in many respects, the marketing of games and the game mechanics themselves.

Now before I continue, I just want to make a few things clear... I am not referring to casual gamers specifically nor those people who are unable to play games for large periods of time. I am referring to gamers as a whole. I am also not criticising individual games for using the "short-term mechanics" that I mention (as some of those mechanics I do enjoy myself) but rather the widely held belief that those mechanics are inherently superior.

It's clear that more and more games are using short-term mechanics. When I refer to "short-term mechanics" I am simply referring to mechanics that condense the risk/reward structures of a game into a shorter period of time. Basically, a short-term mechanic is where the punishment for failing and the reward for succeeding is low (this is not in reference to the difficulty). More and more do we see these in games. More and more do we hear people praising games when they do this, and criticising them when they don't.

There are many different ways that games use short-term mechanics.

First of all, there are save-features. Everyone seems to want to be able to save their game at any time. Place save points too far apart and there'll be a ton of complaints. Understandable if people are unable to play the game for large periods of time, or if such people are forced to leave their game too far from a save point, but I hardly think allowing people to save anywhere is going to make for a really enjoyable experience... Those two problems can be easily solved with a "quicksave" feature. Quicksaving is where the game allows the current state to be saved (as with normal saving) to a different file, but that file instantly deletes once it is reloaded. This is used to avoid "save scumming" that could be used with a "save anywhere" feature. "Save scumming" is where the player keeps reloading a save file in order to accomplish a specific goal (often not required for progression with the game) and keeps reloading until they succeed.

The problem with being able to save anywhere is that it greatly reduces risks that the player has to take, and simply replaces them with trial and error. Imagine this, you're in the middle of a dungeon haven't saved for 20 minutes, you need to get out in order to save. There are two treasure chests in front of you, one of them contains gold and the other contains a monster that could easily kill you, but you don't know which one is in which. Do you choose a chest at random or do you ignore them? In cases like this, you have to make a conscious effort to choose to pick one randomly or to ignore them. You would have to take into consideration many things. Is the gold worth taking the risk? what would you lose if you failed? is there a small chance that you'd be able to defeat the monster if you got it wrong? would it take 20 minutes to back here or would it be faster next time because you know the dungeon a bit better?

Now imagine that same scenario, but this time you're able to save anywhere. Not as much of a big issue is it? You'd choose one, if it was the wrong one you reload and pick the other. This would make the decision simply a small cost to your time more than anything else. Generally, such a decision that is placed directly after a save-point is rather pointless, it falls into the "decision that can easily be undone" category (which has an effect on linearity of the game, but I won't go into that just yet).

Save-anywhere games aren't necessarily a bad thing. Tomb Raider II for example uses a save-anywhere feature, but it takes about 10-20 seconds to save. This is good as it discourages constant saving, if the saving took the simple press of a button, without a doubt people would be pressing it every few seconds (I don't consider pressing "save" every few seconds fun). On the otherside you have Tomb Raider III that allows the player to save anywhere but the number of saves is restricted, if you ask me, that goes a bit too far in the other extreme and the lack of saving makes it far too hard (I'd probably give it more of a chance if save crystals were more common).

Going back to the example of being in a dungeon and having to choose to pick a chest or ignore them. It is an example how saving abilities can alter the time in which the risk/reward is an issue.

Allowing players to save more frequently is becoming more and more popular within games. Old platform games didn't allow saving at all, and dying too many times caused the player to have to restart from scratch. This is clearly because the games would otherwise be too easy (in general) and would be very short. In those days (as a child) games were more about retrying a game over and over again until it eventually got completed rather than continuing a savefile and progressing a bit more each day. Of course, the ability to save (even if rarely) is a feature that is favourable in many current games due to the overall length of the game.

autosave after each gamble, the player could just save scum until they get it right, which in reality just costs time.

If save scumming usually creates "un-fun" gameplay, so why would people do it? Well the simple answer is "because it works"

So why do people like to save anywhere? Well (ignoring those two reasons I've already given an answer to), the general answer is that it is not fun to replay a part of the game if you lose. I don't know why that is exactly, I'd understand if the game arbitrarily made you replay one segment over and over again without any changes, but that's not the case. If you lose, it's your own fault. You're supposed to be punished if you lose. If you're not punished for losing (or if that punishment is small) then that in-turn lowers to quality of the reward for winning. In the end people like to be given great rewards. The "greatness" of a reward for success depends on the difficulty of the task and the punishment for losing, it's about striking the balance. Besides, if the punishment for failure is low, then the difficulty must come from the difficulty of the individual tasks (or else the game would be too easy) (short-term mechanics). If the difficulty of the individual tasks is difficult then there are still going to be segments of gameplay that are to be replayed. These segments would be shorter but more frequent (due to the difficulty of said tasks)

It is true that a reward's size is based off the size of the punishment for failing. For example, Prince Of Persia (the 2008 version) is a very easy game. For one, if you fall down you're only punishment is that you have to re-attempt the obstacle that you failed at. The obstacles are not that hard to begin with. But even though some are more challenging than others, the feeling of accomplishment for succeeding them is not that great because there is that "I would've done it eventually anyway" feeling.

"short-term mechanics" also appear in other ways, a very common example in modern games is "regenerating health". Where the player's health recovers over-time. Even Final Fantasy does this. In the early FF games, you needed to go to a town to save, or use a tent, if one of your characters died, you had to go all the way back to the church. Later games in the series made it a lot easier to recover KO'd party members. FF10 and 12 fully cured all party members at every save-point, FF13 did it after every battle (of course due to FF13's battle system, that worked). Lots of more modern games allow players to regenerate their health over short periods of time, Gears Of War, inFamous, Uncharted all do this. There is less concern about preservation of health... in the early Tomb Raider games you could accumulate medi-packs and ammo over a series of levels, and you would be rewarded for skilled gameplay earlier on. With regenerating health, you're not rewarded for you're skilled "health preservation skills" from earlier in the game. In Uncharted this also is effected by the limitations on ammo, reaching the max ammo for the guns is so easy that preserving it only has a short-term effect.

"short-term mechanics" can be found all over, games don't use "lives" as much as they used to, or at least to not as much of an effect.

Remember, I am not saying that these mechanics are bad, but I think it is wrong to say that all games "should" use them... and it's this mentality that makes me think that modern gamers (in general) have a shorter attention span

Saturday 14 August 2010

My Experience With Buying Games From Second Hand Shops

I generally find that you get two groups of people when it comes to buying games. One group is the group that are "hardcore gamers" so to speak who'll buy something the day of release, or maybe the week of release for £45 or £40. Then you get the people who aren't gamers "to the heart" they just play games for a bit of fun... I'm not necessarily refering to casual gamers here. Typically these people are either kids who don't have much money, or parents who dont have much money.

The second group are the type that you find in second hand shops. These shops aren't very nice to go into; let's be honest, they are small, cramped, not all that clean and the they are full of kids "running around" (of what they can) and their parents shouting at them whilst they rummage through the 7-year-old PS2 games for £2. These shops target the unemployed, and it's generally those type of people that go to these shops. These shops don't offer much for stuff, and there are many games that you'd expect to see there... Fifa '07, Fifa '08 and all sorts of cheap games that nobody's really heard or cared about.

But here's the thing, I have bought quite a few games there. Why? well because if you manage to get passed all the rubbish that's there you'll find a pretty good deal. i got Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box for £2, same with Need For Speed: Pro Street. I got Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call there for 99p... that's right 99p! I can't find that game for any less than £30 anywhere else. It's because they don't understand the value of certain games, so they can't effectively price them, it seems to me they go off assumptions... "oh, this is a PS2 game, every other PS2 game we have is £1 or £2, let's make this £1"

Of course the football games are priced slightly higher than anywhere else (well, think of the customers who enter these shops)... oh and did I mention the stacks of 2-year-old football games there? that's another rant for another time.

One thing that really annoys me is this; the conditions of these games. I don't even understand how anybody could have so little respect for games as to put them in the state that they become. I have PS1 games that I have played many times, Final Fantasy VIII I got on September 30th 2000 (My 12th birthday) and the discs are still working fine, not all that many scratches. But I sometimes see these 360 games and PS3 games with tons of scratches all over them. The cover art on the box isn't in all that good condition either. Now consider this, I got Lucifer's Call for 99p, a bargain, I am very pleased... but the disc was full of scratches. Think about this, the person who sold it to this second hand shop kept the recipt of their original purchase of this game, they bought it 2nd hand for £18 in 2006 (guess that means I got it at least 3rd hand then). They clearly didn't take care of it very well, they probably turned it on and thought "bah! this game is slow and boring" (knowing the mindset of the youngens today, gee, I'm not that old). Now considering that I bought it for 99p, that means the previous owner must have gotten even less than that! 50p maybe? what does 50p get you? barely even a drink! so they must have thought "50p is better than this game"... not only that, but the shop thought "how much can we sell this for? 99p? alright then!" So what would've happened if I didn't but that game? well probably some random kid would get it and treat it just as badly. It just annoys me that there are people willing to pay lots of money for these games but can't get them cause some ingoramous is using it as a coaster.

I guess all in all what I'm saying is that if a game comes out, just wait! don't pay £45 for a 1-day-old game, unless of course you've been anticipating it for a couple years then I can understand. Before you know it'll be in some second hand shop somewhere for a bargain. I suppose this is also a message about not getting games brand new on the release day but I might talk about that another day (that is people who in general pay way too much money for the value they get)

Monday 9 August 2010

Response To TheLithP's Take On Final Fantasy XII

I've decided to use my blogspot page to respond to a comment I got from "TheLithP". I'm doing it here because 1. it's more accessible for people to see, 2. it's a lot to respond to, and 3. youtube's 500-character limit isn't a very friendly system.

I'll go through this bit by bit, (with his post in red italics):

Now, here's some complaints that I think you missed: The story & characters are terrible, the Espers are weak & the player does not have many options with them, the limits are poorly designed, the areas are often put together with little to no regard for a target level, there are long tedious dungeon/field treks with little storyline payoff, & my biggest one, it completely sucks at its goal of being part of a mini-series, this "Ivalice Alliance" shit.

First of all, I never thought the story and characters were terrible, though storyline I've always thought exists in games as a secondary feature behind gameplay. If a game has a bad storyline that only "ruins" my gameplay experience very slightly.

You're right, the espers do change very little the gameplay (from my experience at least), I never used them, I don't see this as much of an issue though as they're not central to the gameplay

The quickenings are not poorly designed, the main purpose of the quickenings are for a last-resort attack. When you are low on health and normal fighting is not enough to beat the boss, then the randomness of the quickenings is you're last hope of standing a chance. As they're damage calculation includes an extreme random multiplier, they give you a chance of succeeding against a boss which otherwise you'd have no chance.

Also consider this, obtaining the quickenings multiplies your max MP by however many you have. Each quickening on the board can only be acquired by one character... A lot of people complain how the FF12 characters have "very little difference between them" (which I don't think is a problem anyway) but if you want to max out their potential MP use, you have to take them in different directions.

About recommended level, I guess you're right, but I think its better that way... I've never seen character-levels as a goal but as a means to accomplish a goal. I've noticed a lot of people aim to reach certain levels, where grinding is their means to reach that goal... but the way I see it is that your levels are a by-product of the game itself, they are a means to accomplish a goal, not a goal themselves. I've always thought that if you're giving the player a "target level" to reach then that takes away from the flow of the game. If there is an area with strong monsters, I want to find out myself how strong I should be in regards to my own skill level.

Last point on this paragraph... I love dungeon crawling, especially when the game uses a self-revealing map system. I tend to find that big dungeons have that "relaxing yet challenging" feel to them. I love wondering around, bumping into a dead-end, turning back, checking the map, fighting enemies along the way. I could sit down for hours crossing dungeons if I had to. I have no problems with long paths and going the wrong way. Like I was saying about self-revealing maps, if you bump into a dead-end you still progress because you've discovered a "wrong" way. Also when you think of FF13 and it's linearity, people complained about that. On the contarary what I really dislike is being completely lost and end up running in circles, or not knowing what NPC to talk to to progress the story

1. Dude...it's an MMO fighting system. Reviewers have said that. It's not just moving around while fighting. More on that part, I'd suppose my problem IS that it doesn't change the gameplay. Movement should allow for better ability to evade. We shouldn't have so many enemies that come out of nowhere when it was advertised that this would "eliminate random battles." And in the process, it made it a LOT harder to actually avoid tedious fights.
Ok, I'm not too sure about the whole "MMO-likeness" of the game, but even if we say for now that it is exactly the same as an MMO fighting system, is that a bad thing? I love FF12 but I'm not interested in playing MMOs at all

I really don't see how movement not affecting the battles is a problem at all. People never had a problem with the inability to move during before so why is it a problem now that you're able to move without effect on the battles? Now I'd understand if for example, FF7 allowed to move whilst in random battles but had no effect, moving in that case would be a pointless feature. But FF12 does let you move because you're still in the "world" during fights... I thought it would be more annoying if you saw an enemy and then your characters couldn't move until the enemy dies, because in that instance the sudden inability to move would just slow down your progress

Even though I'm a big fan of random battles in RPGs, I dont think FF12's system was a bad one, you could say it did remove the random battles... my main point is that I don't think random battles are a bad thing anyway in games like this, and I don't understand why people hate them so much (I've gone through this in a previous blog post)

2. Straw Man, frankly. It IS true that you can make gambit systems that will fight entire battles for you. There are players who set up gambits to fight the entire Yiazmat battle for them while they take a nap. This IS a bad thing. A game should not be made so that you can spend hours not playing it. To be fair, the Gambit system is promising, but this is a pretty glaring flaw.

Personally, I found that only the bosses near the beginning can be done with ease just using the gambits themselves. But even if I am able to beat a boss with just gambits alone, I still have to set up the gambits myself. Not only that I'm having to constantly check to make sure that everything's going alright... most the time I find myself fighting a boss (especially that group of annoying small big-headed fruit things) and I'll find that things aren't going quite right, or the situation changes and I have to rearrange my gambits, this happens a lot.

I am sure there are people who can set up a perfect gambit configuration for Yiazmat, but you have to remember that there are people out there who are total obsessive with FF12... I don’t think many people can do that. I think most people wouldn't want to fight Yiazmat and just leave it up to chance, considering how long the fight is (several hours). Now if I was to fight Yiazmat (which I haven’t yet but I REALLY want to) I would not be sleeping as it happens, I'd be there to make sure I'm doing the best I can (don’t forget you need to actively move to restore MP over time, and you have to manually switch party members yourself)

3. There are 2 main problems with the license system. A, it's stupid. Gameplay restrictions in Final Fantasy are often linked to the storyline. This was done in the most slipshod way this time around. You're not exactly upholding the law. (B) Everything is shoehorned into this system. Gambits, summonings, equipment, abilities. It really cuts down on the strategic element, especially since you can't plot your course ahead of time without a guide. The thing is that this puts additional work on the player for something simple for no good reason. Also, you straw manned AGAIN. They're saying that, logically, you should not need a license, not that the game lies.

You said "Gameplay restrictions in Final Fantasy are often linked to storyline" now I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, I can think of two things that you could mean:
1. The storyline is fixed, you can't change the storyline yourself
2. What you're limited to is determined by your position in the storyline.
I assume you meant the second, but I'll answer both just in case... all Final Fantasy games have a fixed story line, but storyline =/= gameplay. In all FF games your limitations are determined by your story progression, especially in the more linear ones (FF4 and FF13). But in the more open FF games your limited by storyline not as much, such as FF12 and FF10-2. but even FF12 limits you by storyline to some extent... you can't acquire more powerful equipment/abilities until you reach the shops where they are located in the story. Now FF12 does give you opportunities to get things earlier if you work your way around, which just adds openness to the game... I think this whole linearity vs openness (in gameplay) isn't such a big deal, they both have strong and weak points.

As for your second point on this paragraph, I don't really have much to say... it would be nice if they let you see what all the licenses are before you're next to it so you can plan a route more. However I don't think that's much to do with the lack of user-friendliness, more so just a different way of setting the board up. If the internet didn’t exist (and people weren’t able to look up what's on the board) then discovering what exists on the board would be an element of gameplay, but since people feel like its "their right" to look up what exists on the board then people look it up without considering it "cheating"... I'm not saying it necessarily is cheating, for me, it's just an element of game-research but I just find it interesting how people feel like a full knowledge of the board is their inherent right, rather than their task. (again, remember, I'm not saying I disagree with you here, I just think it's interesting).

I'll give you an example of something that is really user-unfriendly... the FF13 crystarium, you have to manually hold down the X/A button to slowly put in points towards a crystal, and is harder to navigate round than it should be. FF12's interface if you ask me is the most user-friendly I've ever seen, but I'm going slightly off topic here.

Ok, final point. You said that you should "logically not need a license". But the thing here is that we're arguing semantics. If you replaced the word "license" with "skill" would it really make a difference? what about "materia"? The term "licenses" only exists to match the theme of the game. The only reason such restrictions become more obvious to people is because the game actively says so. There are many other features of games that make no sense using "real life logic"... like in FF7, why can't Cloud equip one of Vincent's guns, surely there's no logical reason why Cloud would be physically unable to hold a handgun. Using "real-life logic" you could make it so that he can, but is less skilled with it. FF12 uses "law and order" as it's theme, so licenses are used. Similar to how FF8 uses "abstraction" as a theme, what is Junctioning? why can each GF only be juctioned to one character at a time? How is it that you can hold 100 tents but not 101 potions?

Ok, that's my response, please let me know what you think.