I thought it would be interesting to discuss a little game design philosophy - we all have our favorite genres, but which principles govern how much you enjoy your experience?
I am playing through System Shock 2 for the first time and I'm simply blown away. The game does almost everything right. It has made me aware of what exactly it is that other games are missing.
Bioshock, it seems, was an attempt to bring System Shock 2 to a new generation of gamers. One of the problems with SS2 was that it was too difficult for the average gamer, and thus didn't sell too well. Bioshock was easier than it's successor, a supposed "improvement". I won't go into the details, as we are only discussing principles and not specifics, but let's start with difficulty.
DIFFICULTY: most games rely on providing you with a challenge you have to overcome in some interesting way. The amount of fun you have depends on how you go about solving your problem, if you do it well you get to pat yourself on the back. The more complex your problem is, the greater the satisfaction of overcoming it. However: difficulty needs to be rooted in something the player has control over, or else it is pointless. Also, there needs to be a point to the challenge, a motive.
MOTIVATION: Pain for the sake of pain... no thanks. A goal is required. The carrot on the string. Save the earth from and alien invasion? Reunite a piece of meat with his girlfriend? Those are long-term goals. Short term rewards are also essential. Perhaps reward smaller tasks with supplies, such as ammo and health? A new weapon? To avoid this sort of thing from becoming overly repetitave, we also need:
PROGRESSION: There needs to be some sense that you are moving forward. Completing tasks which advance you toward the main goal, levelling up, becoming more efficient at dealing with older types of enemies, that sort of thing.
STORY: not only gives you a context for your busyness, but essential to your emotional response to the game and the depth of its immersion.
There is quite a bit of detail I could go into, such as how the complexity of your challenges can be created through things like specific ammo types being more effective against certain enemies, making resources scarce so that you think about every little decision you make that depletes them and so on, but this is already tl;dr, right?
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