Thoughts (Gaming)

by PerseusSpartacus, G'rndl Prime, Monday, November 04, 2013, 13:21 (3833 days ago) @ RC

Books have varied barriers: sentence style, length, complexity. Whether they have visual or audio aids/ques. What range of vocabulary these use.

Similar with games.

It's up to the designer what kind of access barriers they put in place. There are no shortage of varied input devices and methods these days. No end to the variety of in-game and out-game training you can implement to overcome said barriers.

Not only that, but different genres have different 'access barriers'. For example, the same kind of fluidity and ease of play you achieve in Halo over the course of a week would take several weeks - maybe even a month - to achieve in Age of Empires II. This is fairly obvious: a real-time strategy game is inherently just more taxing, complicated, and hard to pick up than a first-person shooter game. Then, within each genre, there is some amount of variation. Pathways into Darkness takes a lot longer to pick up than Halo, because it's got so much more complexity and even the basic combat is harder. Starcraft II is easier to pick up than Age of Empires II.

Now, before you say 'yes, that's true, but you're talking about difficulty, not barriers', I have to ask, what's the difference? Returning to the book example, picking up a book and picking up a game are similar things. You need to have a little literacy to read a book, but you likewise need a very basic understanding of how to operate a game in order to actually play one. Once you have that basic requirement, you can start reading or playing. As you're reading or playing, your literacy or skill increases, and you get better and better. The thing is, some books and some games have different basic requirements than others. If you're in kindergarten, you can't be expected to right off the bat pick up George Orwell, and likewise if you have no experience in gaming whatsoever, you can't be expected to immediately pick up Starcraft. Difficulty often sets these basic requirements higher or lower, and so it plays a part in setting the barriers. That's why it's best to have some experience in playing FPS games before you jump into Pathways into Darkness.

Things get trickier still when you think about how being able to play a game is different than being able to master it. You can pick up Age of Empires II, but you probably won't be able to figure out the complex strategies detailed on the University of Age of Kings Heaven until you've played a lot and gotten a real feel for the game. It takes longer to do that, though, than it does to get a feel for Halo, where within a few months, you can be off and setting up your own Cavern Megabattle. This is mainly because in RTS games, there's inherently a much bigger difference between noob-dom and mastery than in FPS games. There is still some variation in this disparity even within a given genre, but even so, the variation from genre to genre is the most important part in this respect.

Sorry I went on for a long time there, but once you got me thinking, I just kept running with it. Maybe you guys have something more to add?

Vale,
Perseus