Spinks comments, inspired by Pete: I’m firmly in this camp where feeling overly threatened by a game just makes me turn it off. When I see a hard mode, I automatically think, “Oh it’ll be too hard for me,†and switch it to normal (or easier) even though I’m a fairly experienced gamer. Pete suggests … Continue reading Difficulty
Yesterday we discussed bad designs made brilliant. Let’s talk about designs you hate that others love, perhaps because they are bad designs.
I have many disagreements with the dominant theory of raid design, one of which is gear-based alternative advancement that divides content into tiers based on arbitrary numbers rather that create fake difficulty. Whether or not you like synchronized dancing online, you should see something perverse in a system where everyone might perform all the steps … Continue reading Wiping By Design
There is little silliness quite like using a souped-up, thousand-dollar PC to play flash games, but I tend to enjoy them when MMOs run stale. As I have heard many say about no cover charge DDO, it is a low commitment, short duration, high yield gaming experience. They are intended as self-contained blocks. Most flash … Continue reading Portion Size
Taking my own challenge, let’s talk about one of the great classics: Contra from the NES. Nerds who know exactly what you mean if you talk about the spread gun, and many of us know the Konami code as the Contra code. On the plus side, this was one of the great early mass slaughter … Continue reading Review Old Games: Contra
I finished playing through Evil Defenders. It is a tower defense game for PC or mobile; I played PC. It is somewhat entertaining, but either you like tower defense and have already played better or have not and should play better. If you liked Kingdom Rush and want more levels of a worse version, pick … Continue reading Evil Defenders
I did not even mention when Plants vs. Zombies 2 came out because it made me sad. Mobile only, F2P with cash shop? Ouch. Now that I have a device that plays it, I of course had to try the sequel to one of the best games ever made. It’s not bad, but it’s disappointing … Continue reading Business Model Influence
You pay for your game and expect it to have a certain amount of content. There are many ways to pad that with fake longevity, most of which amount to adding gameplay flaws to hide the “flaw” of being short. Character advancement is the currently popular version, because grinding takes time and your players are … Continue reading Longevity
We have several commenters on the last post citing the problem as “overthinking”: optimization is sort of prisoners’ dilemma, in which optimization (defection) takes the fun out of the game, but if you don’t optimize (cooperate), you’ll be excluded from some significant portion of the game/community. By this logic, everyone would be happier playing with … Continue reading Overthinking
[Asheron’s Call] Asheron’s Call, my first MMO. We spend years hoping the next game will give us back that sense of fun, joy, and wonder at our first game. Our first anything. The newness itself is probably what we are seeking. On Dereth, we were all humans, visitors from the next dimension over who fought … Continue reading Some Things Asheron’s Call Did/Does Right