More incentive talk

by Tails , Across the Pond, Wednesday, July 10, 2013, 22:47 (4197 days ago) @ Cody Miller

This is why Portal 2 dropped challenges and advanced chambers. "We looked at Steam, PSN and XBL, and only like 11% of the people playing the game ever tried them, and fewer than 1% finished them all. So we didn't put them into Portal 2"

Well, guess what? Those things were awesome.

I'm sure a minority of people use forge, yet if it were taken out that'd be a huge problem. Most people probably never used films in Campaign, but they are gone now and tons of people miss it.

Likewise if you have to create 'incentives' for casual players to keep playing, then you're going to make your game worse for the people who actually do like to replay, an decrease the overall quality if your game.

Halo 4 is the biggest seller of the Halo series appealing to the most people, but is it the best? I think we all know the answer to that.

Don't look at the 'evidence' look at your gut and make a game that is simply fun for its own sake. Bungie used to do this well: you know your game is good when it gets delayed because all your employees are playing netgames instead of working (then blame it on the boxes).

(Emphasis mine)

Those Portal challenges that were so awesome? Those were "incentives" to replay the level (quickest time, fewest portals etc. - they encourage you to play the exact same content but in a different way).

Would you perhaps concede that (as is virtually always the case) implementation is king, and that Valve simply got it right where others sometimes get it wrong?