<story><title>The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics</title><url>http://acko.net/blog/the-cargo-cult-of-game-mechanics/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jules</author><text>For me there are 4 properties that make a game great.&lt;p&gt;Number 1: breadth of options. Games like rollercoaster tycoon are fun because you have an incredible range of options. There is no linear progression from start to finish with only a few choice points in between that have little impact. There are choices everywhere. The opposite is a game like mario, where there are almost no choices.&lt;p&gt;Number 2: reflexes. Games like pong and mario are fun because they require actions at the right timing. Turn based games do not have that.&lt;p&gt;Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later. Although I have never played it myself, an example is World of Warcraft. You collect items, money and levels. There is something satisfying about this. Game designers often exploit it to make a game addictive.&lt;p&gt;Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent. It&amp;#x27;s not enough to just compete, there has to be interaction. If you put 2 games of tetris next to each other where the players compete for the highest score that&amp;#x27;s not good enough. First person shooters have this point right. The decisions of the players influence each other, rather than only competing via a score. Chess &amp;amp; go are the epitome of this.&lt;p&gt;The games that come closest to hitting all these points are real time strategy games. You have a large amount of options. Not as much as in a sandbox game like rollercoaster tycoon, but still far more than in the average game. You need reflexes to react to threats. You collect resources, upgrades and units. Last but not least, you have human opponents who also have a large amount of options that you need to react to. Not as strategic as chess, but far more so than your average game.&lt;p&gt;Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ekianjo</author><text>&amp;gt; Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later.&lt;p&gt;You mean you like hoarding? That&amp;#x27;s one of the most annoying parts of many games, managing endless inventories and collecting stuff for the purpose of having more. It distracts you from whatever goal the game might have.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent.&lt;p&gt;Really ? You have a strange conception of gaming then, because your world of gaming has basically started only with online games. There&amp;#x27;s tons of great solo games out there that require absolutely no one else but you to appreciate their depth. If you subject the definition of great gaming to human adversaries, then the issue is that you don&amp;#x27;t always find worthy opponents to play against, and the necessity to have people to play with. That&amp;#x27;s why great solo games never get old while MMORPGs and online games come and go and disappear forever.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...&lt;p&gt;Well RTS have been about micro-management for far too long, and that&amp;#x27;s just grinding when it lasts forever. There&amp;#x27;s not so much you can do about it unless you make the genre evolve, and it did not evolve much.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics</title><url>http://acko.net/blog/the-cargo-cult-of-game-mechanics/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jules</author><text>For me there are 4 properties that make a game great.&lt;p&gt;Number 1: breadth of options. Games like rollercoaster tycoon are fun because you have an incredible range of options. There is no linear progression from start to finish with only a few choice points in between that have little impact. There are choices everywhere. The opposite is a game like mario, where there are almost no choices.&lt;p&gt;Number 2: reflexes. Games like pong and mario are fun because they require actions at the right timing. Turn based games do not have that.&lt;p&gt;Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later. Although I have never played it myself, an example is World of Warcraft. You collect items, money and levels. There is something satisfying about this. Game designers often exploit it to make a game addictive.&lt;p&gt;Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent. It&amp;#x27;s not enough to just compete, there has to be interaction. If you put 2 games of tetris next to each other where the players compete for the highest score that&amp;#x27;s not good enough. First person shooters have this point right. The decisions of the players influence each other, rather than only competing via a score. Chess &amp;amp; go are the epitome of this.&lt;p&gt;The games that come closest to hitting all these points are real time strategy games. You have a large amount of options. Not as much as in a sandbox game like rollercoaster tycoon, but still far more than in the average game. You need reflexes to react to threats. You collect resources, upgrades and units. Last but not least, you have human opponents who also have a large amount of options that you need to react to. Not as strategic as chess, but far more so than your average game.&lt;p&gt;Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>prawks</author><text>Those are the 4 properties that make a strategy game great, which is completely fine. But you&amp;#x27;re kind of proposing that the best games are strategy games, which is like saying that oil is the best painting medium.&lt;p&gt;Those aren&amp;#x27;t necessarily the same properties that can make a platformer, or narrative-driven adventure game great. Or a puzzle game. Or an FPS. And those games &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; great (Mario, Half-Life 2, the Monkey Island series).&lt;p&gt;In the end, everyone has their own set of properties that make the artistic mediums they enjoy &amp;quot;the greatest&amp;quot;, and the same applies to games.</text></comment>