Me either, and I played a little. (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Friday, December 11, 2015, 03:57 (3270 days ago) @ Korny

I dunno. Playing a game for such a short amount of time, and passing judgement on that is a pretty lame thing to do. I try to play a game as long as I can before I decide for sure that I don't like it, since you have to get used to the game, and the ways in which it differs from your comfort zones. Especially in this day and age of progression systems, where games take a while to pick up and open up for players.

I actually pretty strongly disagree with this. I get where you're coming from, and I don't disagree that it's possible to miss out on great experiences by giving up too soon, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to give games extended periods to hook me.

That's really unfortunate, but it's a reality for many folks.

If it takes thirty minutes or more for your game to become fun, you designed it wrong.

No, it's about pacing, and not overwhelming the player.
The "big reveal" in Bioshock? It's at the halfway point of the game. The story doesn't center around it.
The Last of Us? It's two hours into the game before you see your first Clicker.
Mass Effect, Gone Home, Borderlands, Tomb Raider, Journey, Shadow of the Colossus; all landmark games, many of them masterpieces, and all of them have very slow starts.
Heck, the fantastic Assassin's Creed 2 starts you out as a baby, and takes a while before you see your first wrist-blade (Abstergo escape notwithstanding).
Imagine if you hopped into a game, and they threw all of the freedom, mechanics, and complexities at you the minute you hit the ground? Warframe did that, and people complained about its ridiculously steep learning curve (they have since added an extended tutorial quest). Developers just can't win.

I'm not really saying they should just start you with everything. But those games were arguably still fun without every single ability or mechanic in play. Assassin's Creed 2 still has the free running before you get to other mechanics. The Last of Us introduces new elements as time goes, but the basic gameplay doesn't change drastically. Mass Effect throws you straight into the shooting action immediately. Halo doesn't even you give you grenades until the end of the first level, but it's still damn fun without them.

It's like when I tried to watch Breaking Bad and found it incredibly boring. Everyone told me, "Oh but it really gets good in season 2!" Screw that. I'm not giving a show an entire season to catch my interest.

And you seriously missed out. Breaking Bad is one of those few shows that only got better and better, and ended on its own terms with a very satisfying conclusion.

I don't doubt that at all. I gave it three or four episodes and I was bored. Maybe I would enjoy it if I watched it longer, but after three hours, I deemed it a lost cause and a waste of my time.

I think it's unfair to ask developers (and showrunners) to cater to the give-me-now audience. They have Michael Bay movies for that (not that I'm limping you into that category of consumer). Sometimes things take time. Others, like Gears of War and Call of Duty, throw you into the fray faster, but good storytelling takes time, and good games sometimes need to establish the world that you're in before unleashing you into it.

I do too, but they do need to remember that first impressions do mean a great deal to many people. You have to give me something to work with. If you can't teach your mechanics pretty quickly, maybe you need to reevaluate your game's systems and see how important they all are. Some games do have a lot of complex mechanics and are better for it. Some are needlessly complex and suffer for it. If it's going to take three hours to prove that it needs and benefits from that complexity, you've probably lost me as a consumer, because I very likely won't make it that far. Every mechanic needs to be fun, I think, that way the experience isn't only enjoyable once they're all in play.

Granted, I do try to give games a bit of time to teach me its systems, but seriously, an hour tops. If I find absolutely no enjoyment in an hour, it's not worth it.

And that's fair. If an hour in the game's mechanics haven't developed, or the story hasn't started going somewhere, it's fine to step away. We don't all have time to let things grow on us, but because of that, we often miss out on greatness.

And I do recognize that. But that's a price I'm willing to pay. I have better things to do than play a game I'm not currently having fun with. I'm sure I missed a lot of good games over the years because of it. I'm okay with that. Because I've also wasted a lot of time playing shit games, hoping they would get better, or that I'd see what everyone else was seeing.

The Dark Souks example is perfect. I personally loved it, but I sure wouldn't have given it five hours of I hadn't loved it. The opening did suck a lot, insofar as its not fun. But it quickly teaches you the base mechanics then let's you go, and let's you figure out the high level mechanics on your own.

Morrowind comes to mind as well. It throws you into the world and the game very quickly and explained absolutely nothing. This worked extremely well for me, and is one of the large reasons I fell in love with it. It also turned off every one of my then friends that I tried to get to play it.