"WHEN DOES THIS GET GOOD?"

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I usually try to play as much as I can of a game even if I don't like it before I give up. This worked so effectively on Ni No Kuni that I actually finished it (I really dislike that game XD).

I gave up on Puppeteer pretty quickly, though. I was deluded and thought it was going to be like the theatre level of Psychonauts (???), and was sorely disappointed. I simply did not like the aesthetics, music or premise and so had no patience with it.

But there are plenty other games that I didn't like at first, kept playing and now laud them as some of my favourites ever. So... I (usually) have a fair amount of patience with games. And some masochistic tendencies (buying bad games deliberately is a hobby of mine...).
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Feldschlacht IV
author=LockeZ
Also, I promise you don't have any less time as an adult than you did as a teenager. 8 hours of work takes the same amount of time as 7 hours of school plus an hour for homework, and the number of hours in a day hasn't changed recently. If you're choosing to spend your time on other things instead of entertainment, that's on you.
Even assuming that you can work just 8 hours a week to support yourself (many work more), and you're single (some aren't) there's possible commuting, grocery shopping, studying, upkeep of your place (cleaning, housework, etc), studying if you're going to school while working, hobbies, running errands, friends, dating, socializing, etc. This isn't taking into account that some people have married or have serious significant others, or have kids, too!

So yeah I guess you don't have any less time as an adult, assuming you do nothing else except play video games, so yeah sure!

You didn't have chores in high school?
You weren't allowed to date in high school?
You had no social obligations in high school?
You didn't help out with the cooking in high school?
You didn't have a commute to school every day in high school?
You never had a part-time job in high school?

I feel like dating, socializing, romances, hobbies, and having kids are things that are things you don't have to do. I'm sure most of us enjoy most of those things sometimes, and there are lots of times when we don't want to play video games, so I'm certainly not saying that playing video games six hours a day is the perfect life or anything like that. But how you balance it out is up to your own preferences and interests, not your age.

Personally, I definitely have way fewer social obligations than I did before I graduated. The ones I do have are all either people I talk about game design to, or people I play online games with.

Some people are married or in a committed relationship, but that's their own choice, and ideally it should give you someone who's always there to play games with. And some people have kids to take care of, which I pity. You poor, poor sods.

author=Kentona
530 to 7 is usually prepping supper, eating supper, getting the kids to eat supper, cleaning up after supper. Evenings are play time (LEGO, action figures, knights and castle toys, kiddo videogames...and sometimes I let the kids join me in play time.) or activities like driving them to music or swimming lessons, then some nights it's bath time, or homework time, or shovelling the driveway time. Then it's the struggle to get the kids to bed, then it is time to hang out with the wife, maybe watch some TV or movie and fall asleep, and do it all again.
I see three problems here. #1: You're not playing video games while making and eating dinner. Failure! I don't think I've ever eaten dinner while not also either playing video games or watching TV in my entire adult life. #2: You're not playing your own video games while the kids are playing theirs games. Why??? If they're school age, they don't need your supervision. #3: Your wife doesn't like video games? Divorce that trash.
You weren't allowed to date in high school?

You are asking the wrong question here...


You didn't have chores in high school? I had chores.
You weren't allowed to date in high school? You are asking the wrong question here...
You had no social obligations in high school? not really...
You didn't help out with the cooking in high school? ha! no.
You didn't have a commute to school every day in high school? commuting took minutes! I miss that.
You never had a part-time job in high school? nope. "school comes first" was the motto.

author=LockeZ
author=Kentona
530 to 7 is usually prepping supper, eating supper, getting the kids to eat supper, cleaning up after supper. Evenings are play time (LEGO, action figures, knights and castle toys, kiddo videogames...and sometimes I let the kids join me in play time.) or activities like driving them to music or swimming lessons, then some nights it's bath time, or homework time, or shovelling the driveway time. Then it's the struggle to get the kids to bed, then it is time to hang out with the wife, maybe watch some TV or movie and fall asleep, and do it all again.
I see three problems here. #1: You're not playing video games while making and eating dinner. Failure! I don't think I've ever eaten dinner while not also either playing video games or watching TV in my entire adult life. #2: You're not playing your own video games while the kids are playing theirs games. Why??? If they're school age, they don't need your supervision. #3: Your wife doesn't like video games? Divorce that trash.

#1: actually, I am playing while making supper! They are just limited to games on my phone because it has to be able to played in spurts with frequent interruptions. My current game is Angry Birds Epic.
Playing while eating supper is super rude. (and right now Disney's Robin Hood is in pretty much constant repeat on the TV in the living room, which is next to the dinning room)

#2: actually, this is my time to try to attempt to play (and where I spent most of my hours grinding away in SWTOR). Typically, though, they wanted to sit on my lap and watch Youtube when I am on my PC - so I need to play games that I can effectively play 1-handed (ie- SWTOR, Plants vs Zombies, most RTSes on lower difficulty settings). And if I try to sit down on the couch and load up the Wii U or PS3 they decide they want to play their games. And yes while they don't need my constant supervision, they demand my attention. I get interrupted at least once every 10mins - so any game that requires more than 10mins of uninterrupted devotion ie- League of Legends, or any game without a Pause ie- the first version of Diablo 3 (I think it has Pause now, but it doesn't matter because the game is shit), is right out.

#3: she used to :(
Time management is rough.
We all got 24 hours a day, it is yours to use them. But frankly, I don't see any problem with not being able to spend as much time with games as you did as a kid. Makes you appreciate the time you do play them more in return.

I think it is also a common fact that our attention span is getting shorter in general, regardless of the why.

As for games .. I do give them a try.
Some I need to warm up on because the controls are iffy (talking about you, Dark Souls port, oh why do I not own a PS3 myself?)
Some get better as you go along.
Some show promise or a nice idea, they intrigue you.

And then there's a bulk of games with nothing to show. I could play along, but if I can't see a glimpse of hope or a spark it usually just gets worse. Sure, you can enjoy your mediocre time-sink, but that's not really the point.

I cut down on trying it out .. because frankly, it does not rent. And if I know the game is worth it, I know so before or when I start playing.

There are games I wanted to enjoy and kept playing.
FFX was like that for me. It felt like tutorial still, and so I thought - let us continue. A few hours more, it was still boring. A couple of hours more, it was just as boring. But it seemed to me that something was supposed to be going on, when I could not feel a thing (except hate for the mc), so I dropped it halfway. I played roughly half of it and it felt no more interesting than the tutorial. Sue me.

Shadow Hearts 2 was like that as well. The first one I adored and loved for its silliness and its nice atmosphere and the whole overdone creepiness (everything was evil). The second installment .. nope. I played, and played, and wanted to like it - I couldn't. It only got worse and worse. I got more than 40 hours in and gave up.

Okamiden is a shitty sequel and I didn't bother to play more than the first boss to know what it is about - a okami clone, just with everything that's fun taken out, and stuff I couldn't care less about added.

I think we should not abandon games when some of it seems boring. But we should certainly abondon it when there is no possible room to improve. We should check whether it is a miraculous wonder of an early low. But there's a mid-low much more often than an early one.
Story may take time to build up, but you get that. You get that they're just starting off.

But when they're throwing rotting meat at you thinking it's fresh, don't eat it.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Kylaila
I think it is also a common fact that our attention span is getting shorter in general, regardless of the why.


http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_pace_of_modern_life.png
its like we romanticize the past or something.




anywho, I got the most gaming done in my life ever when I was in university. SO MUCH FREE TIME imho.
author=LockeZ
Emmych I think you're just a bad player. If something is good then it's worth the effort.
look, there's the other part there: i'd rather CREATE stuff than consume it. As a kid, I was certainly creative, but nothing really came of my attempts to create, and I was largely satisfied with consuming media since I was able to find stuff that covered the stuff I was interested in. Now I am older and my tastes are different, aka when it comes to games, there aren't enough cool ladies, there aren't enough queer folks, games focus too much on punching and not enough on conflict resolution, there's too many oscar bait games, too many games that have lazy plotlines I don't give a fuck about, etc. etc. etc.

Games are also demanding as fuck! Sometimes they want you to sink 60+ hours in, and MAAAAN. Maaaaan I don't have time for that, especially when I'd rather be doing something else. And the fact games are expensive? Ha ha ha I gotta save up for tuition and rent and other stuff, man. I don't have the cash to be dropping $50-70 on every cool game that comes out, so of course I'll play it safe and only buy games that I know I'll like, such as the Pokemon Sapphire and Majora's Mask re-makes.

If I even hit the point where I'm going to be spending an hour or two on a game, I've already bought it and it's already passed my "sure I'll try this" tests. Like the only reason I got DA:I is because I knew I could play as a cool lady in a party of cool ladies and be BFFs with some queer peeps. Like, I am a simple person with simple tastes: I promise you, if I'm into what you're offering, I'll know pretty quickly. I can't think of many games that I've slogged through for a few hours and ended up loving, if any.

tl;dr i'd rather spend my time writing about lesbian vampires than risk dropping a bunch of dollars and time on a boring game
author=LockeZ
author=Kylaila
I think it is also a common fact that our attention span is getting shorter in general, regardless of the why.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_pace_of_modern_life.png

Also, it's not that we've become shorter in attention span, but that we can access so much at the touch of our fingertips and we've become much better at multi-tasking. I mean, back in the past you'd sit there watching a movie and when the ads came on you'd go do something else for a bit. Nowdays you sit there and if it's not engaging enough you check your phone, google something, pull up RMN to read while waiting for the movie to get better... It probably doesn't help that the novelty of things like movies and the like has worn off a bit now that you can access them at any time instead of having to make a set decision to sit down and watch them for x hours. You can watch that shit on your phone or tablet while cooking or even just listen to a podcast while reading a book and doing something else.

Our attention spans haven't shortened at all - we just have a lot more options than having to sit through things one at a time and have become masters at juggling time better.

I mean, let's take a look at game making - and I'll use my own example since I was gammaking back in the 90s.

Back then I'd sit at the computer and play around with RM95. I might have also had my CD player on now and then but not often. That was it.
Nowdays I'll load up Ace, have a movie on in the background, also be checking on RMN at random intervals (and other sites) and perhaps do something else if needed (talk to someone on the phone, talk to sister/brother, play a DS game (yes, I do this - have it on and play a bit of it as a break)). It's not that I'm not doing stuff for hours anymore - if anything I'm spending more time doing this stuff - but that I'm doing more things at the same time.

So, yeah, I don't buy into the myth that kids (and teens and young adults and older adults) aren't doing stuff for long. That's bullshit. They just have so much they can do that they do it at once when things get shit (like movies - hello, we've so many shit movies nowdays goodgodHollywoodwillmakeanyoldshitintoamoviehellpgreyshadesofshit). And that is 100% a-okay.


author=kentona
and right now Disney's Robin Hood

Your kids have good taste. >.<)b
author=emmych
I don't have the cash to be dropping $50-70 on every cool game that comes out
...
tl;dr i'd rather spend my time writing about lesbian vampires than risk dropping a bunch of dollars and time on a boring game

That's why you buy old games no one cares about anymore like Armed & Dangerous or The Red Star, or peruse the Wii's Virtual Console section (or wait for crazy 80%-off sales). There's a lot of good stuff out there you can pick up for peanuts!

author=Kylaila
Okamiden is a shitty sequel and I didn't bother to play more than the first boss to know what it is about
This is one of the ones I decided to give a chance. 20 hours worth of chance, really. Trust me, you didn't miss much. I think the bosses and some of the enemies are a bit more interesting than in Okami, but not enough to justify the rest of the game. Especially those cutscenes... I mean, a guy should not take 7 straight seconds to say "..."!

author=Shinan
damn strategy game tutorials are bad
Advance Wars is the best. "You can use the D-Pad to move the cursor and the A button to make selections!" It's like... how do you think I even got here?

The funny thing about a lot of tutorials is that they spend more time than needed telling you basics like "use the move stick to move and the attack button to attack", but then gloss over the finer points that people would actually get tripped up on. Like, Tales of Graces NEVER TELLS YOU what Accuracy and Evasion stats do. Likewise, Metal Gear Rising tells you how to parry, but they don't tell you that you have to re-press the direction if you want to cancel your attack into a parry or continue to parry additional attacks. You just kinda have to figure that one out on your own.

Likewise, a number of other tutorials don't actually care if you're learning anything. Like, they'll tell you "push Block to block attacks", but then let you continue on your merry way, even if you don't ever figure out how to successfully block anything and just button mash your way to victory (I think being too easy is a bit detrimental to a tutorial).
On it's own, I didn't mind Okamiden too much. I mean, I have yet to finish it (unlike the original which I've finished about 3-4 times and want to replay yet again), but I didn't think it was too bad. It was super cute seeing all the throw-backs and kids and :3

Not horribad, though it did have bad practices in it.
author=Liberty
Also, it's not that we've become shorter in attention span, but that we can access so much at the touch of our fingertips and we've become much better at multi-tasking. I mean, back in the past you'd sit there watching a movie and when the ads came on you'd go do something else for a bit. Nowdays you sit there and if it's not engaging enough you check your phone, google something, pull up RMN to read while waiting for the movie to get better... It probably doesn't help that the novelty of things like movies and the like has worn off a bit now that you can access them at any time instead of having to make a set decision to sit down and watch them for x hours. You can watch that shit on your phone or tablet while cooking or even just listen to a podcast while reading a book and doing something else.


I find that I'm terrible at multitasking. The more activities I'm doing at one time, the less I'm enjoying or focusing on any of them. I kinda insist on giving 100% of my attention to one thing instead of 25% of my attention to four things.

If nothing else, there's a bunch of studies that show the same thing; the brain is really bad at multitasking, despite our modern world making it seem more attractive.
tutorialchat: Telling the player how to do something and never a chance to really use it for ages is a great way to have the player forget they can do a thing. Like, in Windwaker you learn to parry at the start of the game but by the time you fight an enemy where parrying is by far the most effective way to fight it (aka not hitting it with regular sword swipes) it's hours later and some players (me) may have forgotten it even exists.

I don't think I found out about parrying until the midboss of the Wind Temple, and that was by accident against a Dark Nut. Holy shit did that make a world of difference.
Oh well, so I learned today's people are the same good old people. Thanks, nice quote-collection you linked there.

Well, many enjoyed Okamiden. It does have a charm to it, but it is something I got tired of seeing in its simple form really quickly. It just put emphasis on stuff that I frankly am not keen on .. so each to their own.

Often it's blatantly obvious you will/or will not enjoy a game.
But bias can be difficult when you are new to the genre and how it plays out.
I remember literally forcing my brother to play Okami, and once he got into it, he loved loved loved it.
@turkeyDawg: CRIES I'M TOO CHEAP EVEN FOR THAT OTL

...like yes i have shit to pay for but i neglected to mention that i'm also just cheap OTL OTL OTL
WHOOPS
EMUALTORS, SON, EMULATORS!

LOAD UP DAT MAME-PLUS AND SNES9X!
(I randomly recommend J. J. Sqawkers and Magical Pop'n respectively!)
Ciel
an aristocrat of rpgmaker culture
367
for tv shows and movies i used to give it 15 minutes, but now i give it the first scene. it's like rule#1 as a writer that the first scene, even the first sentence, has to be gripping, so you pour effort into developing extremely compelling scenario as the first thing the viewer sees.

assuming every writer knows that, if they make a boring or uneventful introductory scene it can be pretty safely assumed they have no idea what they're doing and the rest is going to be either just as boring or even worse

the first scene being compelling is the reason i watched breaking bad despite being predisposed to dislike its subject matter (dont care about drugs/new mexico)

i give video games a little more time but the same principle kind of applies. if i just feel good being in the game world because of the art or music or writing i'll forgive anything else so i don't care if it ever gets good as a 'game'.

if it doesn't have those other things i will quit almost immediately if there's some super offensive mechanical element that demonstrates the creator has no idea what they're doing

i also love star ocean 2 for a variety of reasons but that opening is hilariously long. i just feel good inhabiting it though
I accept that some things require investment, such as exercise. However, I'm not very tolerant to this when it comes to video-games.

I work full-time. Then I spend some of the money I've earned on a game. I can not buy the idea that I then have to work with the video game to earn my fun. I already did the work when I earned the money to buy the game.

Mind you, I do believe in delay of gratification, but not in delay of having fun. For example, letting the player start with a basic weapon and giving it that awesome sword or gun later is a good way to handle delay of gratification. However, making the game boring at first and not introducing the fun until after a few hours is a shitty way of handling it.

Also, if a game needs time to get fun, I think it's poorly designed. In my experience, games which needs time to set something up (and also fail to be funny while doing the set up) do not have that great of a payoff. The story and/or the gameplay ends up being no better than in games which are fun from the get go. Basically, they start out poorly in order to set up something averageish.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
Yeah, I'm with Crystalgate on this one. I'll usually decide whether to drop a game after the first hour or so, and I'm under no obligation to continue playing it for the developers' sake.

I guess you could argue that by buying a game and not playing it I'm wasting money, but, at the risk of humblebragging, I earn enough that I can buy a new game every week or so and still have plenty left over for everything else I need my money for + savings - so that's not really an issue for me.

The real issue, as has been pointed out, is time: I'm a single guy, but full-time work/Japanese lessons/socialising/chores eat up a large portion of my weekdays. However, thanks to actually being able to afford games I'm a much bigger gamer now than I was in my school/Uni days. It's awesome. <3
author=Crystal
Mind you, I do believe in delay of gratification, but not in delay of having fun.For example, letting the player start with a basic weapon and giving it that awesome sword or gun later is a good way to handle delay of gratification. However, making the game boring at first and not introducing the fun until after a few hours is a shitty way of handling it.


I like this statement and it's a good way to think about it.
author=turkeyDawg
(I randomly recommend J. J. Sqawkers and Magical Pop'n respectively!)


I just came here to say that sometimes I call my girlfriend JJ Squawkers
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