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How does debugging actually work?
Ok, for those who don't know me: total newb, no knowledge of scripting, haven't figured out how to make a game yet.
Right now I'm just lurking and scouring info about game making while creating the maps for my first game using the default tiles and I saw this thread:
http://rpg-palace.com/categories/game-maker-s-guild/game-making-support/tutorialxpvx-debug-mode
...and it reminded me how I don't know how to debug so...um... how exactly do you debug?
Obviously I have to remove the bugs and I have to actually have bugs but how does a debugging mode help in detecting those bugs other than making a cheat mode that makes it faster to play through the game...or is that the point? You're still bug checking but the mode just makes it faster to reach a problem point?
I know the thread elaborated on it but having no actual idea about elements like variables, I really have zero idea with regards to why seeing those variables would be important while playing the game.
Playing/enabling the debug mode in other games, my impression is that they sometimes vomit out codes that read like jargon to my eyes at a rapid rate.
Right now I'm just lurking and scouring info about game making while creating the maps for my first game using the default tiles and I saw this thread:
http://rpg-palace.com/categories/game-maker-s-guild/game-making-support/tutorialxpvx-debug-mode
...and it reminded me how I don't know how to debug so...um... how exactly do you debug?
Obviously I have to remove the bugs and I have to actually have bugs but how does a debugging mode help in detecting those bugs other than making a cheat mode that makes it faster to play through the game...or is that the point? You're still bug checking but the mode just makes it faster to reach a problem point?
I know the thread elaborated on it but having no actual idea about elements like variables, I really have zero idea with regards to why seeing those variables would be important while playing the game.
Playing/enabling the debug mode in other games, my impression is that they sometimes vomit out codes that read like jargon to my eyes at a rapid rate.
Any RM games/prototypes with a purer grappling combat system?
The below is not related to a grappling combat system but I don't know how to explain what I mean by purer grappling system without explaining it.
Anyway this is purely from my head. I don't have anything written down nor do I know how to script this nor have I looked long and hard for a script to do this nor have I even tried to change the actual database of rpgmaker's combat system.
I just read a tutorial that you can have bars for anything in rpgmaker and I'm trying to think up of a fall-back stock combat system that is on one hand simple but on the other hand wouldn't make me slack off on the design part by making me turn a lazy map into a dungeon crawling grindfest.
I decided that for rpgmaker's design, a 2 bar combat system would be ideal but it just wasn't enough.
The 2 bar system is basically a dual tug of war system where you can lose not just if your HP goes down to 0 but if the other bar goes down to a 100 even if your HP is at 100%. The games I saw this in used the 2nd bar as a lust meter. Maybe there have been other systems that uses that but I can't remember any example that is as notable or opens up such diverse gameplay strategies. (It's actually one of the issues I can't figure out. How to rename the lust meter so that it can apply to more general games. Only other meter I've seen of this nature that was also notable is an insanity meter but I just can't help but think you're not supposed to lose when you go insane but instead turn berserk)
Anyway the above is one of the many reasons why I couldn't be satisfied with a 2 bar system so I plan to have a 3 bar system where the final bar is an endurance meter that basically works like this:
-Enemy grapples = paralyze effect
-Shrugging off the effect uses up the meter instead of time based
-While grappled/paralyzed, the enemy can trade hp damage at the price of paralyzed duration by using the grappled player as a shield.
Obviously this doesn't come anywhere near a true grappling system but I consider this purer because grappling actually changes the dynamic of the fight via grabbing and not just perform a melee contact body impact damage type of design.
The game doesn't need to be similar to the above example either. It just has to have some dynamic where grappling means more than damage or status effect. The more varied the better. I'm not looking so much to play a fun game as much as I'm curious what the game designers did to bypass the graphical and animation limitations of rpgmaker.
Anyway the inspiration for this topic came because I recall a DnD comment that said grappling systems were a mess in PnP. I don't play PnP so I don't know if they improved upon this but considering my more meta-threads has been locked, I thought this would be much simpler than a thread asking for designs where the designers used dated methods to work around actions that normally need a more advanced animated engine to perform.
Anyway this is purely from my head. I don't have anything written down nor do I know how to script this nor have I looked long and hard for a script to do this nor have I even tried to change the actual database of rpgmaker's combat system.
I just read a tutorial that you can have bars for anything in rpgmaker and I'm trying to think up of a fall-back stock combat system that is on one hand simple but on the other hand wouldn't make me slack off on the design part by making me turn a lazy map into a dungeon crawling grindfest.
I decided that for rpgmaker's design, a 2 bar combat system would be ideal but it just wasn't enough.
The 2 bar system is basically a dual tug of war system where you can lose not just if your HP goes down to 0 but if the other bar goes down to a 100 even if your HP is at 100%. The games I saw this in used the 2nd bar as a lust meter. Maybe there have been other systems that uses that but I can't remember any example that is as notable or opens up such diverse gameplay strategies. (It's actually one of the issues I can't figure out. How to rename the lust meter so that it can apply to more general games. Only other meter I've seen of this nature that was also notable is an insanity meter but I just can't help but think you're not supposed to lose when you go insane but instead turn berserk)
Anyway the above is one of the many reasons why I couldn't be satisfied with a 2 bar system so I plan to have a 3 bar system where the final bar is an endurance meter that basically works like this:
-Enemy grapples = paralyze effect
-Shrugging off the effect uses up the meter instead of time based
-While grappled/paralyzed, the enemy can trade hp damage at the price of paralyzed duration by using the grappled player as a shield.
Obviously this doesn't come anywhere near a true grappling system but I consider this purer because grappling actually changes the dynamic of the fight via grabbing and not just perform a melee contact body impact damage type of design.
The game doesn't need to be similar to the above example either. It just has to have some dynamic where grappling means more than damage or status effect. The more varied the better. I'm not looking so much to play a fun game as much as I'm curious what the game designers did to bypass the graphical and animation limitations of rpgmaker.
Anyway the inspiration for this topic came because I recall a DnD comment that said grappling systems were a mess in PnP. I don't play PnP so I don't know if they improved upon this but considering my more meta-threads has been locked, I thought this would be much simpler than a thread asking for designs where the designers used dated methods to work around actions that normally need a more advanced animated engine to perform.
How would you design your game to destroy/demean it's quality from becoming a classic
Obviously I don't mean intentionally making your game design worse.
Think of it like the opposite of my other thread "What would you do to increase the legacy of your game design?"
For those who might be confused as to what's wrong about having a game that's like a classic I refer to this quote by Mark Twain:
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
Obviously Twain didn't mean for one to destroy their work and this doesn't apply to all videogames but with Rpg Maker games there's always a twofold problem:
-Make a great free rpg maker game and suddenly the audience considers it a standard rather than an outlier and it becomes so difficult for newbies to make and get their games judged correctly
-Make something so much of a classic and suddenly people end up tuning out to the name of the game. This is even more worrisome when it comes to famous indy developers. There's a rock band effect at first but then everyone sorts of tune out when they think it's made by that name. Instead of playing the games, they end up bookmarking it instead unless the developer manages to get past this hump or manages to deceive visitors
Of course for the great game developers, there's little reason for them to even consider this. After all, who the fuck cares what your audience thinks if you have the capability and the name recognition to always get and pierce through the art of your work for art's sake?
I see this as more of a problem for people who aren't so good. For example, since I'm totally new at everything from coding to scripting to understanding RpgMaker game, if I wanted to make a Rpg Maker game where the sprite is on horseback and has an animation to get down - I would have to request it, find a script for it or hope a humorous take of a player referencing to an invisible horse would come off as an intelligent metaphor rather than a lack of resources especially if I was aiming for a more serious type game.
This isn't to say that I should think I could make a classic game from my first game but that's the difficulty of this thread and it once again relies on game makers sharing their own experiences because it's so difficult to just chance upon this if you are a player. No sane game maker I assume would want to reveal the horridness of their game design until they reach a certain level of capability and they can put little clues in interviews or threads like what horrible mistakes they did to their games but it's such an easily ignored topic.
Think of it like the opposite of my other thread "What would you do to increase the legacy of your game design?"
For those who might be confused as to what's wrong about having a game that's like a classic I refer to this quote by Mark Twain:
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
Obviously Twain didn't mean for one to destroy their work and this doesn't apply to all videogames but with Rpg Maker games there's always a twofold problem:
-Make a great free rpg maker game and suddenly the audience considers it a standard rather than an outlier and it becomes so difficult for newbies to make and get their games judged correctly
-Make something so much of a classic and suddenly people end up tuning out to the name of the game. This is even more worrisome when it comes to famous indy developers. There's a rock band effect at first but then everyone sorts of tune out when they think it's made by that name. Instead of playing the games, they end up bookmarking it instead unless the developer manages to get past this hump or manages to deceive visitors
Of course for the great game developers, there's little reason for them to even consider this. After all, who the fuck cares what your audience thinks if you have the capability and the name recognition to always get and pierce through the art of your work for art's sake?
I see this as more of a problem for people who aren't so good. For example, since I'm totally new at everything from coding to scripting to understanding RpgMaker game, if I wanted to make a Rpg Maker game where the sprite is on horseback and has an animation to get down - I would have to request it, find a script for it or hope a humorous take of a player referencing to an invisible horse would come off as an intelligent metaphor rather than a lack of resources especially if I was aiming for a more serious type game.
This isn't to say that I should think I could make a classic game from my first game but that's the difficulty of this thread and it once again relies on game makers sharing their own experiences because it's so difficult to just chance upon this if you are a player. No sane game maker I assume would want to reveal the horridness of their game design until they reach a certain level of capability and they can put little clues in interviews or threads like what horrible mistakes they did to their games but it's such an easily ignored topic.
Morality: What do you do to design around it when designing for it?
To avoid flamewars, just post the actual design work around without the context of which morality it is you are trying to design for except if it's vague and general like good and evil, lawful neutral or things to promote certain actions.
Hopefully everyone knows that the world tends to design around morality for obvious and non-obvious reasons.
Lots of people intentionally censor details when telling something to kids.
Ad industries are based around concepts like sex sells because sex appeal or arousal need less thought to bypass and do not really require core themes like naked and half-naked bodies unlike more controversial themes like Christianity where the closest anyone has come to a unified stock strategy is to create cross-like structures that don't imply crosses or utilize Messianic stories related to myths without directly implying which specific concept they are getting reference from as to not alienate any group.
The problem with these strategies of course is that they are designed to make the moral lesson "hollow".
If you are designing a concept of underdog David vs. Goliath themed stories for example, you're often designing for the size issue because that's what helps make people forget about the specific religious story.
The good side is now you have an appealing story that has relied on what worked for ages and the bad side is that the morality is washed away. Of course this isn't a problem for those who are designing for making a game appealing and fun, very problematic though if you are designing for a game that sends a certain message of morality.
This is why even sandbox games (w/ dual/triple alignment paths) often favor the good guy story and bad guy stories are even closer to anti-hero stories especially when you add the amounts of genocide level deaths just from killing mooks.
To reduce repetition, here are some of the concepts I've seen:
-It's all a dream but we won't tell you (get your PC to do something crazy that gets them in jail but then apply Mary Sue-ish plot structure that make sense but aren't highly plausible to get them to a journey of mental dysfunction discovery)
-Luke, you are my father;poor version: I'm your sister Luke (making the familial origins a revelation so that people disassociate from the whole bastard father thing)
-Everyone is doing it (drugs = buff items)
-It's an invasion (Invaders = bad)
-Implied horrible past in the form of fear of boss abuse (The ole' he did things to me line comes to mind)
...as you can see though, most of these are weak in that yes you are designing for the morality of the game but mostly you're not making the player feel the morality. You're just tugging them along and maybe once or twice, make them know it and address it but not react to it.
It doesn't compare to the emotions that are brought out by legit hated games such as:
-Rape games being considered sick and promoting rape rather than just fantasy
-A Lee Harvey Oswald simulator making people who love general FPS stating even this is too much even though it's just a generic sniper rival simulation
-People thinking GTA promotes violence
I think what's worse is that it's too easy to be lazy because that's what gets you praised.
For example, CNN can convince some people (especially in the past) of not being as biased by Fox because they play to the biases of the liberals rather than the Republicans while also playing up to some rivalry alternative to Fox.
Recently, there are some people who are starting to wise up to HuffPo too: (especially relevant considering HuffPo is supposed to be new media and is part of a label that includes such different services like Reddit, Twitter, etc.)
http://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/palsc/huffington_post_is_just_as_sensationalist_and/
Sometimes there are party that even delude themselves, take this comment where someone is so fed up by his own self-serving party that he said the party line should be:
Debunk the bullshit, even if it's on our side.
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/paszu/i_remembered_this_documentary_from_internetville/
As game designers the pressure is even higher. Imagine a Marxist who wants to promote Marxist ideals, the temptation to create a perfect suited world is tempting especially with the limitations of game engines.
I'm not even highlighting these things because I'm pro- or anti- something. If you are pro-Marxism for example, by diluting your world into something that fits that ideology, the morality of that ideology has less value thanks to a blander world.
The destruction does not only apply to major ideological labels. Most people don't think currency is related to morality and yet in reality, central banking is the number one concept that creates the space for corrupt politicians to enter and monopolize the government.
Many game designs (of which rpgs are very guilty of) don't even sniff this and have a fairy tale like story of greed even the ones considered deeper and more intellectual. It's not even that the concept needs heavy complexity. The Mcdonald's flash game for example showed how it can be simply done and yet it's often delegated to parody where as Metal Gear Solid is considered deep and of a much higher grade than the Mcdonald's flash game.
This concept just time and time again holds back the potential for game design because the odds are simply in favor of the fantasy and when someone dares to do it poorly, there's little room for experimentation due to fan hate and how often times most developers who even bother with this are personally biased and even the most open minded ones will give up at the slight hint of complexity thanks to a certain form of ideology. Like because the free market is based on economics as much as politics, you rarely get attempts at rpgs that have a free market concept especially ones that show rather than tell that the rpg is centered around said concept. As a result, the traction of game design in terms of currency have become something closer to simple currency vs. advanced currency instead of currency structure and no matter how great or informed a coder is in currency structure, with zero design for the morality of currency, most currency systems end up being a gimmick such as supply and demand +/- buy and sell systems.
Take for example a simple idea. An event triggers when a PC maximizes his money. I.E. people react that your guy is richer than the kings. Basic free market competition related plot that can lead to exciting and unique battles that don't have to be boring, educational or bash your head "free market rocks!" stuff but it never reaches that even for people who do the scripts to design for morality because the pay-off is so little and people don't actually design for morality because they think they cannot get away with it or they stop their creativity because they think too much in terms of teaching tool/propaganda game.
That's the puzzle I think. Yes, the design work around is important but I think the sum of the answers is just to create a collection of opinions to enable bigger opportunities for designers to explore rather than worry about finding a way to implement the sets you game designers or game theorists would share and have already found out.
Hopefully everyone knows that the world tends to design around morality for obvious and non-obvious reasons.
Lots of people intentionally censor details when telling something to kids.
Ad industries are based around concepts like sex sells because sex appeal or arousal need less thought to bypass and do not really require core themes like naked and half-naked bodies unlike more controversial themes like Christianity where the closest anyone has come to a unified stock strategy is to create cross-like structures that don't imply crosses or utilize Messianic stories related to myths without directly implying which specific concept they are getting reference from as to not alienate any group.
The problem with these strategies of course is that they are designed to make the moral lesson "hollow".
If you are designing a concept of underdog David vs. Goliath themed stories for example, you're often designing for the size issue because that's what helps make people forget about the specific religious story.
The good side is now you have an appealing story that has relied on what worked for ages and the bad side is that the morality is washed away. Of course this isn't a problem for those who are designing for making a game appealing and fun, very problematic though if you are designing for a game that sends a certain message of morality.
This is why even sandbox games (w/ dual/triple alignment paths) often favor the good guy story and bad guy stories are even closer to anti-hero stories especially when you add the amounts of genocide level deaths just from killing mooks.
To reduce repetition, here are some of the concepts I've seen:
-It's all a dream but we won't tell you (get your PC to do something crazy that gets them in jail but then apply Mary Sue-ish plot structure that make sense but aren't highly plausible to get them to a journey of mental dysfunction discovery)
-Luke, you are my father;poor version: I'm your sister Luke (making the familial origins a revelation so that people disassociate from the whole bastard father thing)
-Everyone is doing it (drugs = buff items)
-It's an invasion (Invaders = bad)
-Implied horrible past in the form of fear of boss abuse (The ole' he did things to me line comes to mind)
...as you can see though, most of these are weak in that yes you are designing for the morality of the game but mostly you're not making the player feel the morality. You're just tugging them along and maybe once or twice, make them know it and address it but not react to it.
It doesn't compare to the emotions that are brought out by legit hated games such as:
-Rape games being considered sick and promoting rape rather than just fantasy
-A Lee Harvey Oswald simulator making people who love general FPS stating even this is too much even though it's just a generic sniper rival simulation
-People thinking GTA promotes violence
I think what's worse is that it's too easy to be lazy because that's what gets you praised.
For example, CNN can convince some people (especially in the past) of not being as biased by Fox because they play to the biases of the liberals rather than the Republicans while also playing up to some rivalry alternative to Fox.
Recently, there are some people who are starting to wise up to HuffPo too: (especially relevant considering HuffPo is supposed to be new media and is part of a label that includes such different services like Reddit, Twitter, etc.)
http://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/palsc/huffington_post_is_just_as_sensationalist_and/
Sometimes there are party that even delude themselves, take this comment where someone is so fed up by his own self-serving party that he said the party line should be:
Debunk the bullshit, even if it's on our side.
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/paszu/i_remembered_this_documentary_from_internetville/
As game designers the pressure is even higher. Imagine a Marxist who wants to promote Marxist ideals, the temptation to create a perfect suited world is tempting especially with the limitations of game engines.
I'm not even highlighting these things because I'm pro- or anti- something. If you are pro-Marxism for example, by diluting your world into something that fits that ideology, the morality of that ideology has less value thanks to a blander world.
The destruction does not only apply to major ideological labels. Most people don't think currency is related to morality and yet in reality, central banking is the number one concept that creates the space for corrupt politicians to enter and monopolize the government.
Many game designs (of which rpgs are very guilty of) don't even sniff this and have a fairy tale like story of greed even the ones considered deeper and more intellectual. It's not even that the concept needs heavy complexity. The Mcdonald's flash game for example showed how it can be simply done and yet it's often delegated to parody where as Metal Gear Solid is considered deep and of a much higher grade than the Mcdonald's flash game.
This concept just time and time again holds back the potential for game design because the odds are simply in favor of the fantasy and when someone dares to do it poorly, there's little room for experimentation due to fan hate and how often times most developers who even bother with this are personally biased and even the most open minded ones will give up at the slight hint of complexity thanks to a certain form of ideology. Like because the free market is based on economics as much as politics, you rarely get attempts at rpgs that have a free market concept especially ones that show rather than tell that the rpg is centered around said concept. As a result, the traction of game design in terms of currency have become something closer to simple currency vs. advanced currency instead of currency structure and no matter how great or informed a coder is in currency structure, with zero design for the morality of currency, most currency systems end up being a gimmick such as supply and demand +/- buy and sell systems.
Take for example a simple idea. An event triggers when a PC maximizes his money. I.E. people react that your guy is richer than the kings. Basic free market competition related plot that can lead to exciting and unique battles that don't have to be boring, educational or bash your head "free market rocks!" stuff but it never reaches that even for people who do the scripts to design for morality because the pay-off is so little and people don't actually design for morality because they think they cannot get away with it or they stop their creativity because they think too much in terms of teaching tool/propaganda game.
That's the puzzle I think. Yes, the design work around is important but I think the sum of the answers is just to create a collection of opinions to enable bigger opportunities for designers to explore rather than worry about finding a way to implement the sets you game designers or game theorists would share and have already found out.
What would you do to increase the legacy of your game design?
Just an initial disclaimer:
-There's no "perfect design" and there's no definite method for this question. I know that and that's why I'm making this topic. The quest for the hypotheses of many (especially contradictory ones) is just as much if not more important than a thread to discovery a theory.
-Yes, many times things last because of a high budget and many modern marketing techniques work towards things of those nature and those things often have nothing to do with the actual design of the game. That doesn't mean there aren't aspects that do apply to a game. Again, this thread is about gathering hypotheses and not stating the unhelpful stock and general obvious.
-The thread is phrased this way because it rarely helps to try to answer this generically. Take things like romantic characters. How do you make people remember them more? Great emotions, great dialogues, attractive design...but that doesn't mean just because you can point out elements of the trope that you would have thought of it before something actually occurred. Everyone thought the idea of vampires was played out and then Twilight came for example. Horrible as it is, Twilight's legacy far surpasses many better stories.
To help streamline this thread, I have put forth a few categories to consider when answering:
Reviewability:
This is a term I just came up with after sporadic viewing of the Social Network from different random intervals thanks to reruns on HBO.
The movie is notable to me not so much because of the movie but because of the conversation and the content surrounding the movie.
Unlike other movies, I haven't seen any other movie that has "hated" reviews that address the content in a shallower manner than a meaningful one. Mostly about it being boring. Equally mind boggling is that the like reviews are not very caring of the actual contents of the movie and focuses too much on the themes.
The result is that you have a movie whose intellectual content does not match it's legacy. That is to say where Citizen Kane may have people talking about Rosebud or Batman may have people talking about the Joker, people will remember Social Network as simply being Social Network and that's not bad but it's flawed in that it doesn't give credence to the actual contents inserted not only by the director but the themes raised in the entire movie.
For videogames, the easiest ways to spot this is to look at fanfictions. There are simply games that people would write more fanfictions for and other mainstream games where they won't. If ratio is not a question than content diversity certainly is.
You might wonder what this has to do with reviews but if you look at many of the clues for these factor, many of them start from reviews.
There are games with 10/10 stories like Metal Gear Solid that generations from now, people would barely talk about on their own except if marketing raises it. Then there is the opposite. Games like Portal who are only notable because of a gimmick and an addictive song ending will forever be brought up in people's heads. In RPG maker games, there are even games with cheaper stories that get more comments and quality stories that are respected but barely get any comments or discussions until which games you like pops up.
Memetic possibility:
You can't quite account for viral especially if we're taking away the marketing stuff that actually has to do with the actual game content rather than the game hype but that doesn't mean there aren't designs that are more talked about.
For example, people will talk about the increase of zippers in modern Final Fantasy costumes but they will rarely talk about the character designs in Vagrant Story despite it being a superior game with a fan following.
The difference between reviewability and this is that it pre-empts releases and then seeps into releases.
If you've monitored Gamefaqs, you've all seen this. Some unknown games suddenly jump in message board rankings because lots of people are talking about it even if it's just a request for more FAQs.
Good old games:
Good old games are games that years down the line people still talk about. Many times these are mainstream games but many times they are not. These are the types of games that encourage mods even at a later date or make people make obscure fansites for a game that was supposed to be bland, predictable and limited according to the reviewers.
Database notability:
These are the games that somehow enter the hallways of abandonware sites or indygaming databases. For example there are Rpg maker games that are on reloaded.org and there are rpg games in this very site that get the hits.
This quality is two fold. First, the quality of a game to be on more databases so that years down the line someone is guaranteed to find and maybe talk about it.
The second is pure download hits. Often times these are misleading because it can involve things with sex in their names regardless of actual content but you always know after that is where the real jewels are. The latter are often the ones that people first mention when someone asks for recommendations.
Spoiler Ok!
This is when a major plot twist in a game becomes so ok to talk about that everyone doesn't even feel sorry for spoiling it to you. Again these are the games that years down the line are like Twilight or Harry Potter or Inception that just keeps being raised regardless of how crappy they really are especially in hindsight. People just treat these scenes as Holy Grails.
-There's no "perfect design" and there's no definite method for this question. I know that and that's why I'm making this topic. The quest for the hypotheses of many (especially contradictory ones) is just as much if not more important than a thread to discovery a theory.
-Yes, many times things last because of a high budget and many modern marketing techniques work towards things of those nature and those things often have nothing to do with the actual design of the game. That doesn't mean there aren't aspects that do apply to a game. Again, this thread is about gathering hypotheses and not stating the unhelpful stock and general obvious.
-The thread is phrased this way because it rarely helps to try to answer this generically. Take things like romantic characters. How do you make people remember them more? Great emotions, great dialogues, attractive design...but that doesn't mean just because you can point out elements of the trope that you would have thought of it before something actually occurred. Everyone thought the idea of vampires was played out and then Twilight came for example. Horrible as it is, Twilight's legacy far surpasses many better stories.
To help streamline this thread, I have put forth a few categories to consider when answering:
Reviewability:
This is a term I just came up with after sporadic viewing of the Social Network from different random intervals thanks to reruns on HBO.
The movie is notable to me not so much because of the movie but because of the conversation and the content surrounding the movie.
Unlike other movies, I haven't seen any other movie that has "hated" reviews that address the content in a shallower manner than a meaningful one. Mostly about it being boring. Equally mind boggling is that the like reviews are not very caring of the actual contents of the movie and focuses too much on the themes.
The result is that you have a movie whose intellectual content does not match it's legacy. That is to say where Citizen Kane may have people talking about Rosebud or Batman may have people talking about the Joker, people will remember Social Network as simply being Social Network and that's not bad but it's flawed in that it doesn't give credence to the actual contents inserted not only by the director but the themes raised in the entire movie.
For videogames, the easiest ways to spot this is to look at fanfictions. There are simply games that people would write more fanfictions for and other mainstream games where they won't. If ratio is not a question than content diversity certainly is.
You might wonder what this has to do with reviews but if you look at many of the clues for these factor, many of them start from reviews.
There are games with 10/10 stories like Metal Gear Solid that generations from now, people would barely talk about on their own except if marketing raises it. Then there is the opposite. Games like Portal who are only notable because of a gimmick and an addictive song ending will forever be brought up in people's heads. In RPG maker games, there are even games with cheaper stories that get more comments and quality stories that are respected but barely get any comments or discussions until which games you like pops up.
Memetic possibility:
You can't quite account for viral especially if we're taking away the marketing stuff that actually has to do with the actual game content rather than the game hype but that doesn't mean there aren't designs that are more talked about.
For example, people will talk about the increase of zippers in modern Final Fantasy costumes but they will rarely talk about the character designs in Vagrant Story despite it being a superior game with a fan following.
The difference between reviewability and this is that it pre-empts releases and then seeps into releases.
If you've monitored Gamefaqs, you've all seen this. Some unknown games suddenly jump in message board rankings because lots of people are talking about it even if it's just a request for more FAQs.
Good old games:
Good old games are games that years down the line people still talk about. Many times these are mainstream games but many times they are not. These are the types of games that encourage mods even at a later date or make people make obscure fansites for a game that was supposed to be bland, predictable and limited according to the reviewers.
Database notability:
These are the games that somehow enter the hallways of abandonware sites or indygaming databases. For example there are Rpg maker games that are on reloaded.org and there are rpg games in this very site that get the hits.
This quality is two fold. First, the quality of a game to be on more databases so that years down the line someone is guaranteed to find and maybe talk about it.
The second is pure download hits. Often times these are misleading because it can involve things with sex in their names regardless of actual content but you always know after that is where the real jewels are. The latter are often the ones that people first mention when someone asks for recommendations.
Spoiler Ok!
This is when a major plot twist in a game becomes so ok to talk about that everyone doesn't even feel sorry for spoiling it to you. Again these are the games that years down the line are like Twilight or Harry Potter or Inception that just keeps being raised regardless of how crappy they really are especially in hindsight. People just treat these scenes as Holy Grails.
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