What Makes A Good Game? (GAM200 1)

What Makes A Good Game?

There’s a lot of things I really value in games and expect to be in them to be considered “good.” It’s very hard, I feel, to break down all of the elements because every game and genre has different qualities to it. Something that might make a good shooter might be a horrible attribute to have in, say, a strategy game or an MMO. Even with accounting for the differences in genres, I think it’s still very possible to identify common elements that I can appreciate in games no matter what I’m playing.

The first one, of course, is not related entirely to game design. I really value a game that manages to make its art style work for it. The reason this one is actually first for me is that I do consider myself a designer that’s very oriented towards the art side, at least in my method of thinking. Games need to work with their art assets- whether they’re hyper-realistic or simple and cartoony, the entire game should work to emphasize those art assets and highlight the good qualities of them. I’m not really a player that tends to shun non-realistic looking games. In fact, I tend to like them more than their counterparts. There’s no substitute for good art, in my mind. If a game doesn’t look great, then it suffers even if the mechanics are fantastic.

The above thinking applies in the design side of things, too. If you’re making a colorful, cartoon-like physics puzzler, you know that you have a lot of room to make mechanics for your game very over-the-top, and you might not need perfect, realistic physics. I suppose a good example of this might be Cut The Rope for mobile. On the other hand, if you have a very dark, gritty, realistic game, you want to tone down the crazy gameplay mechanics - unless, of course, there’s some sort of magic involved.

Another thing I really value in (mostly online) games is both replayability and the ability to have you coming back. Things like daily quest systems in MMOs are a fantastic example of this. They keep you coming back each day for new things- whether it’s story content, in-game currencies, or some other form of reward, you have incentive to come in and play that game each day. I think that might be why WoW’s managed to hold onto me for so long, is that I want to log in each day. On the other hand, though, I should note that the player should never feel like they have to log in, like they’re missing out on major progression if they don’t do their “wizard chores,” as it was put one time. It’s a fine line between the two, and managing to hit it is a mark of good design. At the same time, it’s very hard to do this for every player.

Simplicity is something I value immensely, in a lot of ways. I think back to when I tried the beta for Elder Scrolls Online was that I absolutely hated the UI. It was ridiculously complicated, and horrible to have to sift through and find what you were looking for. That was one of the major reasons I was turned away from that game, actually, was just simply the user interface. That’s a reason why I’m struggling to get into Guild Wars 2 is the same reason- the UI. Simplicity is king, and in my opinion, simplicity is a major reason that some games are more accessible than other ones. As it relates to gameplay mechanics, simplicity is what allows me to enjoy games more easily. I’ll have an infinitely easier time jumping into a Mario game than I might attempting to play Pillars of Eternity. This isnt’ to say I don’t like complex games, but I feel like having simplicity be a factor in designing everything is important. Simplicity is what makes things accessible, but also what gets players to bite and want to sink their teeth deeper into a game. You start simple, and then ramp up the mechanics so the player can learn what they’re doing, and then you’ve tricked them into happily playing a complex game.

Name three to five (3-5) games that you consider to be among the greatest in gaming history. Explain specifically what you think make this game stand out and succeed.

World of Warcraft

Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Zelda: Majora’s Mask

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

Super Mario 3d World

The reason I put World of Warcraft up on this list is because I feel like 12+ years of refinement has made this one the best MMORPG on the market- and one of the best games ever made. WoW has progressed from a game built off the back of the Warcraft III engine into a titan. WoW has a lot of the elements I listed above, such as where the game keeps you coming back every day. It has a very good art style. Unlike a lot of other MMOs on the market, WoW isn’t taking a realistic approach to graphics. The whole universe seems to fit the art style, which is somewhat stylized and cartoony. The final note I want to make is about WoW’s lore, which is rather unique. The Warcraft medium has crossed over from a trio of fantastic RTS games into an MMO with 6 expansions, and it’s created a massive amount of lore. I, really, really like lore and world building, and so being able to recognize elements of the lore being put back into the game is something that I think makes WoW really great.

Next, I listed the twin Legend of Zelda N64 games of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. I put both on that list because I feel like both of them are innovative and groundbreaking in different ways. Ocarina was a game that really set a lot of modern standards for gaming, and still manages to stand up next to current-day games even twenty years post-release. It’s considered to be a perfect game, by many standards. It has a good story, without being overwhelming for the player if they don’t want to get too engrossed into it. It has a sizable world that’s full of hidden secrets- there are very few parts that aren’t used for at least something. The game, in my opinion, has a high amount of replayability, and there are so many collectibles that you can spend a lot of time just exploring Hyrule for them.

On the topic of Majora’s Mask, I feel like this game very much still flies under the radar. This game had one of the most interesting gameplay mechanics I’ve ever seen, in the form of the 3-day system. The player is trapped in the world of Terminia, and has to continually experience the same 3 days again and again, playing a song on their ocarina to reset time before the world ends and a moon crashes into the planet. Reliving the same three days is so good because every event is scripted to happen at the same time. You’re able to help people in this, but you can’t help everybody. That’s the beauty in Majora’s Mask, and it manages to completely perfect the tone of the game. The characters in the game all struggle with the impending end of the world. Some flee to the countryside, others abandon all hope- some even stand in town square and yell at the moon even as it bears down on them. You, Link, must restore hope to this troubled world... but you can’t save everybody. If you want to help the lost lovers unite before the moon crashes, then the old lady has to get robbed on the first night. It’s a beautiful weaving of story and gameplay mechanics that hasn’t quite even been replicated in the years since, while also keeping the Zelda formula. There are still dungeons to fight through, heart pieces to collect, and hordes of enemies to battle.

Is greatness in a game due to success in just a few elements (such as the weapon balance of Halo) or does it require success in every major area?

I feel like greatness of a game requires multiple elements to be successful- however, that doesn’t mean that the credit for being great all rests on the shoulders equally. I think that players can really look at a game and identify one element to champion as being the sole thing that made the game great, without looking at the other great elements.

Are their certain elements of a game's design that MUST be successful, as a baseline, for a game to even aspire to greatness?

Specifically for design, I don’t feel any specific areas have to be executed successfully. There are, for example, horribly imbalanced games that have still been called “great.” Outside of having a functioning game with workable controls, I feel like all elements of design up in the air.

Have you played games that were good, but with just a few tweaks could have been great? What did the designers miss, and why?

I’d actually say that this statement sums up my feelings about Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I loved the game, and I thought it was really, really solid, but there were a few parts that just really missed the mark for me, such as the choice to minimize music. While the official stated reason was because they didn’t want music to get repetitive, I feel like the designers could have taken steps while making the game to counteract that- or found better music. On another note, I feel like the dungeons for the game were really, really lacking- they were basically just semi-extended versions of the game’s shrines that made the player think about manipulating a 3d space. They were totally unlike any other dungeons in previous Zelda games, and I respect the attempt at something new. However, I really felt that the lack of traditional dungeons really did hurt the game.

Can greatness be artificially induced, by the power of marketing hype, the reputation of the designers or the reputation of a previous title? Can you give examples?

I would say no. Greatness is something that’s sort of decided in retrospect, assigned to a game as it begins to cement its place and legacy in gaming, if it has one at all. Marketing hype and review scores can often play a role in helping greatness- however, I don’t feel like they alone can induce it. I think that Minecraft, actually, is a very interesting example of a game that’s acquired “greatness.” While there is quite a lot of marketing that’s being done on the game now, especially after the Microsoft acquisition, the actual greatness of the game was created long before the marketing really began. The early fanbase and community built around it really did a lot to help that game cements its place and become “great” before it was heavily marketed.