The first draft of this post was swallowed by the Internets, so hopefully this one will come out a little better.
I've been trying to think of a good topic for a post for the past couple of days and my mind led me to the topic of finishing games, namely why the hell can't I seem to finish anything anymore. I've played many games in my life and hope to play many more, but the list of games I've finished doesn't seem to grow at nearly the same rate as those I've played. The most common offender are RPG's. I love me some Final Fantasy, love it a lot, but I haven't finished Final Fantasy IX and it took me nearly 3 years to beat Final Fantasy X. At some point, possibly once I stopped having summer vacations with nothing to do, I just couldn't slog my way through a 40 hour RPG. Instead I've been enjoying games with shorter play times, your Portal's and what-have-you. It really is usually an issue of attention span, but occasionally, and the impetus for this post has reminded me, sometimes it is all about getting frustrated.
I'm proud to say I've only thrown a controller in anger once in my life. It was long ago when I was playing Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and couldn't for the life of me get past Vega, dirty spanish bastard that he was. In my rage I threw my Sega Genesis controller to the ground after what must have been the millionth attempt, receiving an admonishment from my mother that I was not to do that again. Since, I have held my temper fairly well, never having harmed an innocent piece of plastic, no matter how much it may cheat. Yet, this past week I came as close as I ever have to hurling a controller across to room, hoping to revel in it's destruction. What beastly game could possibly have been the instigator of such fury? Guitar Hero III. That's right, everyone's favorite party game, almost caused me to lose my cool. I play the game on hard, because medium is a touch too easy and expert is a touch to masochistic for my tastes. I've reached the second to last grouping of songs having never had to play more than a few songs multiple times, excepting those maddening boss battles, but all of a sudden I had to practice sections of each song to get through them. I made a rule with myself when it came to guitar hero; if I had to practice a song to get through it, I was done. I play video games to have fun, at least games like this, and if I have to practice it ain't fun. So that's it, I'm done. I've said it before, it has to be the end goal of a designer to have players complete their games. Hell, what would directors think if people never watched the ends of their movies? The game's difficulty hit a particularly hard spike and sent me packing. Can this possibly be considered a good thing by the designers? I understand the desire to have a challenging game, I really do, but I want to be able to finish a game as well. The easiest way to fix it in this situation would be to allow the players to choose the difficulty of individual songs in career mode, which would let me cruise through the songs on medium that I couldn't get through on hard. Then I could complete the game and have the chance to play all the songs there are on it. As it stands, I'm not going back in to play through on medium just to get to a few more songs.
While for some games the problem was length, for Guitar Hero I stopped because it became just too hard for me to keep up and keep enjoying myself. So are these some of the keys to an enjoyable experience? Bite-sized chunks, not overly long main gameplay sections, a difficulty that is challenging yet not too harsh? I think that if you can combine those things you will have a game that is fun and well received. Look at Portal, I finished in 2.5 hours or so and it is still probably my favorite game of the year. So, Neversoft, I beg of you, tone down the difficulty a bit and let us not quite hardcore gamers finish your game!
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I discovered this blog because I did a Google search for "they don't let you have bees in here." (Serious AD fan).
Anyway, I agreed with this post, though I have less insight to share with the world than you do.
When I was young, I read a letter to the editor in Nintendo Power (yeah, yeah) that helped me understand what I thought was great about some games and not others and why difficulty is not the end all.
It said, essentially, that difficulty itself is not what makes a game fun. You can make Goldeneye harder by going through karate chopping everyone, but that's not necessarily more fun. You can make a game go longer by putting impossible levels at the end, but then the player will just get overly frustrated and probably quit, that's not fun either. And some of the most enjoyable games are not necessarily difficult.
His best example, though, was the Legend of Zelda series. They combine easy, short term goals to keep you satisfied and feeling like you're accomplishing something while having fun, but the end game is no walk in the park. It's easy to run around Hyrule killing baddies and finding little hidden treasures. Going through every dungeon and finding and beating Ganon is not so easy, and that gives you a challenge, but you're still keeping yourself busy and having fun with "small victories" along the way.
And even in those games, having fun is more important than having a hard time. The best games don't beat you in to submission, they keep you happy.
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