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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27630 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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I think you're ignoring that video games are big business these days, with large staffs. You're going to have a lot of people just phoning it in, along with a general regression to the mean. It's possible for a single person operation to knock it out of the park (or completely bomb, but you're probably not going to hear about that game). It's really hard for a 1000 person operation do do anything that far above average (average for a professional).

In addition to the size of the staff, you also have the costs of the game exploding; one of the interesting side effects of this is has been that anything put into the game has to become accessible to anyone who has the game (or they've wasted a lot more real money than they would have before).

A long time ago, I remember reading a definition of the 'types' of gamers; although I cannot for the life of me track it down, I can remember that some of them were as follows:

  1. Immersion - the feeling of being a part of the game, and the story.
  2. Subsumption - the feeling of being a passenger, carried along by the story.
  3. Agency/Power Fantasy - the feeling of influencing the world.
  4. Exploration - the feeling of discovering the unknown, and finding things no one else had.
  5. Challenge - the feeling of overcoming adversity.

(you'd assume that with this much detail, I'd easily be able to track it down, but alas, no luck).

I am pretty sure that the strategy of making all content in the game accessible to anyone ends up alienating players who enjoy challenge and exploration. I could also see arguments as to how anyone who enjoys immersion and power fantasy would end up feeling dissatisfied too - I just don't personally find those as critical in my enjoyment of games, so can't comment.

Although it may be cherry-picking a little bit, I think it's fairly obvious that a lot of what makes some games into a sudden and surprising success is that they tap into one or more of these markets that are just not being explored by the mainstream.

  1. Dark Souls (and its sequels) really cannot be beaten until you 'git gud' enough to overcome the levels.
  2. Outer Wilds explicitly lets you figure out how to beat the game on your own, with the in-game guidance being extremely minimal.
  3. Something like Baldur's Gate 3 is extremely good at reacting to most decisions you can make.

I think a lot of people rush to defend the plot to these games because the plot literally feels better when it's acting in support of the feeling that you want to get from the game. Unless you are a Subsumption (and possibly Immersion) gamer, you become interested in the plot when your other wants are being met.

Is it a version of Bartle's 4 types of MUD players?

That seems very strongly related, although it isn't the one I read back in the day. Thanks for sharing!

I think a significant part of it is simply staff size. A 10-man team can create a work of art. A 1000-man team is answering to shareholders first.

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