How much choice do you really think you have, Cody?

by RC , UK, Monday, April 01, 2013, 07:48 (4253 days ago) @ Cody Miller

A lot of people actually really suck at creating their own goals. It is much easier to adopt one. That's not 'obedience' because in games you can still fully choose not to do it.

Again, in real life we call folks who have no goals or are unable to form goals 'losers'. Why do we not tolerate it in life, but suddenly do in leisure activity?

You give people too much credit. Most of the goals people have are merely adopted.

You said in another post that your ideal game would have a strong community that self-generated the goals.

In a game that had a strong community, the goals would still be adopted the overwhelming majority of the time, just from a different source. You think game developers (at least some of them) don't love the game they're making and want to share the many activities and fun things to do with their players? Bungie explicitly say 'we make games we want to play.'

As I said, it's a sacrifice in the self-generation in order to give it to more people. That knowledge-sharing is something innately human. Forcing kids to study math may make some of them hate it, but it will still be useful to them and others become physicists and mathematicians.

You really think many people want to spend their leisure time doing research to try and find what the fuck you can do with this game they've bought?

Many people are quite happy to have the game suggest something for them. They either accept or decline, and can get on with shooting aliens to get there.

Besides, some types of goals are either impossible or made difficult without in-game technological support. Or are made more rewarding with the in-game immediacy.

Time Attacks / Speed Running, for example, is much easier with an in-game timer and replay system. Just ask every racing game player ever.

If they don't realize it, and they leave the game, they are not the type of people who would want to take on these challenges in the first place.

Ridiculous. Ignorance of some activity does not mean you would not want to do it. That just means you're ignorant.

There is a huge difference between adopting goals created by people who love the game, goals which net you no reward other than the fun of doing them, and adopting the goals of the developers who want to keep you playing / paying which reward using in game means.

And the purity was sacrificed as soon as games were made to make money. No shit. There are ALWAYS going to be trade-offs between profitability and just 'making a good game.' Unless you become a billionaire and can finance the games entirely yourself, this is something you're going to have to accept to some degree. Where the line in the sand is drawn is going to be different for different games, but it's still there.