GAMEPLAY IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS

They are important but not necessary. Like I said before, better graphics and music and story can make a good game better. (at least, up until the point where realism begins to start trumping ease-of-use! *shakes fist at 3D RTSs*)

"To be honest, the real talent of a game-maker lies only in creating good gameplay. Stories have nothing to do with it."

whoever said this is p stupid.

if he uses rpgmaker that is very ironic.

i always make sense you just need to keep up

I disagree heavily with whoever made that statement.

For my opinion on this I'll probably go into boardgames for a minute. In boardgames there's a similar discussion going on. It's about Theme.

Most games have some kind of theme, the exceptions are abstract games that are all about stacking blocks and/or thinking about logic puzzles. (examples Polarity, Jenga and Ingenious)

Then there are games with a "tacked on" theme. These are games where the theme could be exchanged to anything without changing the game significantly. Many people say that most Reiner Knizia games are like this. Where the theme was more of an afterthought than something that was part of the design process.

Lastly there are games oozing with theme. A notable example is probably Arkham Horror where everything in the game is about the theme. Essentially it is a game where if you don't like the theme there's not a huge chance you'll like the game.


Alright so back to video games. You can put some of these in similar categories. There's abstract games (usually puzzle games, Tetris for example) then there's games where a theme is tacked on (many old platformers are like this. They're all "Mario clones" with a different theme tacked onto them. This is most obvious in games based on movie licenses.). And then there's the games where theme is everything. I'd say RPGs often go into this though a game like Portal is a game where the theme is closely integrated with the gameplay.

Of course as with boardgames sometimes when theme is tacked on it's "your kind of theme". So certain tacked on games you like more than others even though the mechanics are exactly the same. I said earlier that RPGs are oozing with theme though in reality they're very tacked on. Most RPGs have very similar mechanics (it's a genre after all!) but with different themes.

And then when a theme floats your boat you'll fall in love with a game. An example is the Infinity Engine that made a bunch of PC rpgs in the 90s. I really didn't like Baldur's Gate and its fantasy tripe combined with bad gameplay. But when that exact engine was ported into Planescape weirdness I fell head over heels in love. The theme had changed and I was all over it.

You can also say that for RPGmaker games theme is everything. Because all RPGmaker games have a very samey feel since they are sort of limited in what you can do (alright maybe not if you're really good, but for 95% of games) with it. Yeah you can tweak balance and systems in RPGmaker but the core mechanics are the same (select option, select target, execute)


Holy shit this was long and I changed viewpoint over the course of writing. Hahaha. I'll leave with a tangentially related article that I probably have linked in other topics before. (I'm pretty certain I have)

Theme is not meaning (and part 2). How theme and mechanics interact. And how sometimes the theme has nothing to do with the mechanics. ("tacked on theme" comes to mind)

Because all RPGmaker games have a very samey feel since they are sort of limited in what you can do (alright maybe not if you're really good, but for 95% of games) with it.

Good thing the bulk of my intended audience is not in the RPG Maker community!

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@soli: Sorry, I should have made a "something is wrong with you rmn ;_;" topic instead.

You can't say "games absolutely have to prioritize x and y over everything else" because that isn't going to be true in every case.

I am actually suggesting this. Ultimately there is definitely no in-built game aspect tier list in your head when you make a game. You just... make the game piece by piece. I'm sure no one ever thinks "oops im spending too much time on graphics, better make sure gameplay work is 5 hours ahead because that's more important to me!"

Seems we mostly agree, though from what you've said so far in this topic I would almost not have guessed so. For the record I think you gave the topic a somewhat misleading name!

To elaborate on what I said above, and to kind of expand on what Darken has kind of been saying, you need to play to your own strengths. If you are not good at writing, don't have tons of unskippable dialogue and cutscenes in your game. If you're bad at dungeons and puzzles, keep your dungeons short. If you're not good at balancing fights, don't have an absurdly high random encounter rate. Emphasize the parts of your game that you are good at, whatever they are, and do your best to streamline the rest so the player isn't spending a lot of time doing things that were made badly.

I spent some time discussing things like this here if anyone wants to read.

Then you make the omnigame, where everything is given equal amounts of time and awesomeness.

Ready? Go.

Oh for fuck's sake, flik, we already went over why this is a stupid response.

EDIT: I, for one, thought it was pretty much common sense that the mechanical soundness of a game is required for a game to be playable. The preceding, when combined with the design sense of the developer, constitutes "gameplay". Now, graphics and sound tie in to gameplay to a point - "I want the player's health displayed as numerical digits" is both a graphical and a gameplay decision. Making those digits unreadable, while a very poor for gameplay, is a purely graphical fallacy.

Now, "Gameplay" has to at least function at a basic level for the game to function as, well, a game. Story, graphics, sound, and so on are dressings for the foundation of gameplay. They can enhance the experience, but are ultimately not required and can be completely disposed of, if desired. However, poor dressings (i.e. the unreadable digits) can ruin an otherwise sublime dish, so if a given dressing cannot be done at least "good enough", it should probably discarded entirely. (How do you discard graphics? See geo's DF screen)

What is a game with broken gameplay? Same as a novel with broken plot, I suppose.

Gameplay is necessary for a game to be worthwhile. Story, Characters, Graphics, Music, and so one are nice things to have. How nice they are to have is what varies from game to game, not the importance of at least passable gameplay.

Point - movies are probably a better analogy that novels.