SLASH'S PROFILE

author=heisenman
Assuming kentona theory is the right one, if I were to make something that would continue generating interest after a long time, I'd probably leave some things morally ambiguos or up to interpretation to encourage people to discuss and confront each others opinions on the matter.

Ok, this still falls into unhelpful stock and general obvious territory. orz

This is actually similar to a well-known literary technique that Hemingway coined "the Iceburg Theory". How it works: you have a fully fleshed-out plot, world, and storyline, but you only present the reader (or in this case, player) with 10% of it - similar to how you can only see the tip of an iceburg. What happens is that your story will naturally hint at but not directly tell the rest of the story for you. It avoids tedious or boring "plot dumps" and leaves a lot up to the player's imagination, which is often more interesting than what you would have written.

Example games that have embraced this: Canabalt, World of Goo, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac

Note that this works especially well in an interactive medium like games, because the story subconsciously develops in the player's mind as he or she plays, saving you from the doldrums of boring and terrible exposition dumps.

-Yes

-Absolutely yes, although I'd probably like a small team, and admittedly I'm a bit of a control freak so I'd have to work with people who are on the same wavelength

-Yes, even moreso than I do now

-I make games not for money now, although they're usually just game jam games or school projects, or just little fun things I throw together. They can help raise people's awareness of you (this guy makes GAMES?), they can be experimental pieces that you use for a commercial product in the future, and obviously I just love making games so fucking much

@LockeZ: To be fair, I made the chess analogy, but in my case you could easily replace chess for "insert game here".

Snodgrass, I find it really hard to follow your train of thought in your posts. I can see that you think some games are too easy for players and I agree, but I'm having a really hard time trying to understand most of what you're saying.
Oh right, the run-on sentences don't help.

My point is that it's unfair and frustrating to kill the player before they know how to play the game, what the right buttons are, or even was HP means. Some games are innate enough where players can pick it up and know all of the rules, but not many. It's not like I think games shouldn't contain challenges.

author=LockeZ
If a challenge isn't harder than challenges I've already done, it feels like it's not a new challenge. Once there is nothing to accomplish that I haven't already done, I have no reason to keep playing.

I agree in general, but with the caveat that you should insert short "rest points" for your players; areas of relatively easier difficulty. This has a two-fold advantage:

• Allows players to recover mentally from the previous challenge and prepare for the next

• Builds suspense - if the player knows the next part is going to be harder, it's less exciting.

In general though, the next BIG challenge should be harder than the previous. Otherwise the player will undoubtedly get bored.

Yea they're actually pretty good, I got my friend to try Hero's Realm and he was determined to hate it because it was an RM game, but he couldn't stop playing.