[jules]

For me there are 4 properties that make a game great.

Number 1: breadth of options. Games like rollercoaster tycoon are fun because you have an incredible range of options. There is no linear progression from start to finish with only a few choice points in between that have little impact. There are choices everywhere. The opposite is a game like mario, where there are almost no choices.

Number 2: reflexes. Games like pong and mario are fun because they require actions at the right timing. Turn based games do not have that.

Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later. Although I have never played it myself, an example is World of Warcraft. You collect items, money and levels. There is something satisfying about this. Game designers often exploit it to make a game addictive.

Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent. It's not enough to just compete, there has to be interaction. If you put 2 games of tetris next to each other where the players compete for the highest score that's not good enough. First person shooters have this point right. The decisions of the players influence each other, rather than only competing via a score. Chess & go are the epitome of this.

The games that come closest to hitting all these points are real time strategy games. You have a large amount of options. Not as much as in a sandbox game like rollercoaster tycoon, but still far more than in the average game. You need reflexes to react to threats. You collect resources, upgrades and units. Last but not least, you have human opponents who also have a large amount of options that you need to react to. Not as strategic as chess, but far more so than your average game.

Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...

[ekianjo]

> Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later.

You mean you like hoarding? That's one of the most annoying parts of many games, managing endless inventories and collecting stuff for the purpose of having more. It distracts you from whatever goal the game might have.

> Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent.

Really ? You have a strange conception of gaming then, because your world of gaming has basically started only with online games. There's tons of great solo games out there that require absolutely no one else but you to appreciate their depth. If you subject the definition of great gaming to human adversaries, then the issue is that you don't always find worthy opponents to play against, and the necessity to have people to play with. That's why great solo games never get old while MMORPGs and online games come and go and disappear forever.

> Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...

Well RTS have been about micro-management for far too long, and that's just grinding when it lasts forever. There's not so much you can do about it unless you make the genre evolve, and it did not evolve much.

[DanBC]

> Really ? You have a strange conception of gaming then, because your world of gaming has basically started only with online games.

SNES bomberman was fantastic if you played against other people, especially if you had the 4-player tap.

MicroMachines (Sega megadrive / genesis was probably best version) was similarly excellent multiplayer but not online games.

GoldenEye, SnoBow Kids, Mario Party, Mario Kart, etc were all excellent games when played multiplayer.

[ekianjo]

So what? there were not the only games out there. I enjoyed playing Civilization, Colonization, Dune, Half Life, Ultima for hours and hours without having the need to play with anyone. Human opponents are not necessary to have great games.

[knome]

I'll agree you do not have to have humans to make an interesting play experience. However, the addition of human opponents creates almost infinite replayability. I probably had two, maybe three runthroughs of Half Life, with as many as two hundred hours of gameplay. It was an excellent game, superior to any other FPS I had played upto that point, and I enjoyed it greatly. However, I am not sure I would even want to calculate the amount of time I spent in the Counterstrike mod during the same period even if I could. Thousands of servers, millions of unique opponents? It was a daily ritual of my early twenties, often a few hours a night to relax after work.

Yeah, both were great games. But one was a great game that never seemed to end.

[tragic]

I kind of feel the opposite. Yes, with CS there are thousands of people to play against and so on, but how different are the bouts from one another really?

I much prefer linear, narrative-driven single-player games, if they're done well - on the ninth or tenth play through of HL1, Deus Ex, Vampire: Bloodlines or whatever, I still feel like I'm noticing new details; the world feels more 'alive' to me without thousands of other normal human beings getting in the way and ruining the suspension of disbelief. It's like going back to a great film or novel.

It's a matter of taste, of course, but I in no way feel MMO games and such are more 'advanced', as some people in this thread seem to think. There's a particularly grouchy film critic over here who likes to ask, "would Citizen Kane be better in 3D?" Likewise: would FF7 be better with a million 14 year olds running around telling people they got pwned?

[glogla]

You should try Spec Ops: the Line then. It sounds like it would be game exactly for you.

[cwyers]

I agree with you about preferring immersive single-player to multiplayer a lot of the time. But "would Citizen Kane be better in 3D?" is such a weird question -- it's hard to recognize it as such now, as much of what it does is now commonplace, but it's such a pioneering film in how it uses technology, and there's a lot of special effects in it. Who's to say Orson Welles WOULDN'T have found a use for 3D if it had been available to him?

[imanaccount247]

"So what?" is that multiplayer games are a recent, online-only thing. They are not.

[jules]

None of the points I mentioned are necessary. These are all factors that weigh in to a game's fun.

Edit: no need to downvote him....

[jules]

This is exactly what I mean. Bomberman is actually a dull game if you play it against the AI, but I've had way more fun playing bomberman with friends than other games just because of the multiplayer aspect.

[jules]

> You mean like hoarding?

Hoarding is what you get if you take this as far as you possibly can to make a game addictive. Cookie clicker is the ultimate version of this. The fact that you get a mindless grind if you take it as far as you possibly can doesn't mean that a little bit of collection can't be fun. e.g. picking up a new weapon in a FPS.

> Really ? [...]

Compared to playing against human adversaries, I find playing against AI or in game metrics less fun. I realize it's heresy because many classic games are single player. YMMV.

> Well RTS have been about micro-management for far too long

I agree, but on the other hand most other genres are even more about micro management and less about decisions. The situation has actually improved. If you compare Starcraft with a modern RTS like Forged Alliance you have far less micro management nowadays because of UI improvements. Starcraft 2 on the other hand, even though it is a newer game than Forged Alliance, has a lot more micro management and fighting against the UI instead of against the opponent.

[rasz_pl]

>You mean you like hoarding?

The best option I have seen for/against hoarding is "drop all" (Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13) on enemies. Basically every time you kill someone in the gameworld they drop ALL the items they were using/carrying.

You might try hoarding for the first 10, maybe first 50 enemies, but at ~100 it becomes unmanageable and you are forced to stop hoarding, or stop progressing in the game.

[saraid216]

> You have a strange conception of gaming then, because your world of gaming has basically started only with online games.

Chess.

Go.

Tag.

Oh, sorry, games don't exist off the computer?

[splawn]

There is an idea floating around out there that boardgames are becoming more popular recently because of the social gap left behind when multi-player video games went online, removing the need to physically be in the same room as your friends.

[saraid216]

Seems plausible, though there's no way that's the only reason.

[ekianjo]

aren't we talking about computer games here?

[saraid216]

Well, the long form answer is linking this post and that post:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/02/10/are-single-player-games...

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/02/15/have-single-player-game...

[tripzilch]

Online games have existed for a while. I played Worms 2 online in 1997, over dial-up. Before that, various games over LAN (Snipes!). It's absolutely true that Human vs Human adds an entirely new dimension, even for games that are otherwise pretty simple.

[prawks]

Those are the 4 properties that make a strategy game great, which is completely fine. But you're kind of proposing that the best games are strategy games, which is like saying that oil is the best painting medium.

Those aren't necessarily the same properties that can make a platformer, or narrative-driven adventure game great. Or a puzzle game. Or an FPS. And those games are great (Mario, Half-Life 2, the Monkey Island series).

In the end, everyone has their own set of properties that make the artistic mediums they enjoy "the greatest", and the same applies to games.

[protonfish]

I think you have described 4 separate types of games. Any game that tried to do more than one or two of those would probably just be a mess. I'd also say that adventure, action and multiplayer are all valid genres, but #3 just works its way into games like a disease that panders to our baser desires and turns games from a fun pastime into drudgery.

[joshvm]

I think the issue is expectation. If you let people pick up loot, why can't I steal cups and pillows? The Elder Scrolls capitalised on this. Even if there's no ingame benefit to pinching a cushion, it's certainly possible.

As long as the interaction is in line with the genre, no problem. In Mario, I don't expect there to be another route to the castle so I don't look for it. In Call of Duty I don't expect to be able to loot the corpses for money.

However, if you raise expectations to the point where your audience thinks they can do anything, then they'll attempt things you never even considered. When they don't work, they get annoyed or frustrated and your game is now tarnished to them.

Minecraft is so popular in part because the world is simple enough that you can do virtually anything, within reasonable expectation.

[Vektorweg]

Actually, i don't like RTS much, because i often forget to do something important and quickly lose the game. It requires a good training in time and task management, which is a bit stressful. And the unit movement is often a micromanagement skirmish.

[spindritf]

Turn based games do not have that.

i often forget to do something important and quickly lose the game

I liked playing the first Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War against the AI by pausing the game, issuing orders, running it for a while, pausing again, issuing orders... The replays would last a third of the game time and they were actually quite enjoyable to watch. A lot was happening at once since I could actually match AI's speed that way.

It also made it harder to skip some important step, or forget about a unit doing nothing at the edge of the action, etc.

[jules]

This I consider a positive. The skill gap between an average player and a good player is vastly higher in RTS than in other genres. A 10th percentile player usually has a basically negligible chance to win against the top player. A 20th percentile player has a negligible chance to win against a 10th percentile player, etc. I personally like the competition. If a game is not stressful that usually is just another way of saying that there is little skill involved. That is fine too, the point is to have fun after all. It's just a personal preference.

[DaFranker]

>If a game is not stressful that usually is just another way of saying that there is little skill involved.

For some definitions of "stress" and, most particularly, of "skill".

I take rather great pride in my GMing skills when playing a tabletop RPG game, but if there's any amount of "stress¹" involved in the same sense that there is stress¹ when I play RTS games, then I'm definitely doing something wrong. Of course there's "stress²", but that's the tension and uncertainty in the events of the game I run, or the uncertainty relating to my players and what their reactions are going to be.

So "skill" here can't be used as a scalar measure, and there's definitely no single one measure of "skill" across different game genres. Declaring a linear correlation between "skill" and "stress" seems rather premature and, IMO, detrimental to the discussion.

[jules]

I agree that there is not a 1-to-1 relationship, but there is undeniably some correlation. If a game is easy then it is not stressful.

I disagree that there can't be a measure of skill across different games. You can just look at the probability of a top X% player winning against a top Y% player. If an average player has a low probability of winning against a top player, then there is a high degree of skill involved. If an average player has a decent probability of winning against a top player, then there is a high degree of luck involved.

[DaFranker]

> I disagree that there can't be a measure of skill across different games. You can just look at the probability of a top X% player winning against a top Y% player.

Solitaire.

You can't measure my probability of winning against you. This metric sucks.

In a more general way, while in many cases for perhaps a broad range of people stressfulness will correlate, to some nonlinear degree, with the correlation between their choice of action and their odds of achieving a goal (see what I did there, with the second-degree function and everything), the fact that this very (stress-to-skillness) correlation varies in formula from person to person leads me to believe that it's a symptom of a different variable being more meaningful.

What I'm saying isn't that stress doesn't indicate anything, but rather that it's not a very appropriate yardstick to measure things like fun and player engagement when the correlation between stress and skill-dependence varies so much from person to person.

For me, for example, time pressure and assiduousness-related pressures (remembering to always do X when Y or always do Z every time K) will far eclipse any notion of skill-dependency and impact-on-success as far as how stressful I feel is concerned. Give me a game of Chess, and I'll be rather unstressed, despite the high skill-dependency. Put a timer, and my stress level shoots up exponentially, despite skill-dependency remaining more or less unchanged (since the time limit applies to my opponent as well, and doesn't really change the ratio between my choices and my odds of victory).

[jules]

> Solitaire. You can't measure my probability of winning against you.

This applies to any single player game. The discussion was about FPS and RTS.

The rest you wrote makes sense, I agree.

[Vektorweg]

FPS can be really difficult too, but there is always some time between the challenging parts of the game. Just a moment to take a breath, which you don't have in a modern RTS. I think, FPS aren't stressful, but RTS are and FPS are still highly based on skill.

RTS have more factors, making the game more random, because a human can't control all factors well. Therefore, less advanced players have better chances to win once.

[jules]

The second paragraph is not true at all. It is far more likely to get a lucky kill in a FPS than in a RTS. For example in Forged Alliance if 100 average players play against a top 10 player I'll bite my nose off if even one of them manages to win.

[Vektorweg]

Sorry, i counted in matches instead of turns. Of course, there is always a luck shot. But in a usual match with at least 5 turns, its extremely difficult to win for a less advanced player.

[mattmanser]

This is the worst type of "gaming" and probably exactly why the RTS genre is dying.

If people within 10% of each other means one gets thrashed then it's simply not fun for one of the players.

The RTSes you're lauding, which I do enjoy, often are little more than thinly disguised rock/paper/scissor with a big dash of "what is over powered today". Until it all gets balanced into a vanilla mush of nothingness. With the added bonus of the occasional unintended broken mechanic, tower rushes, marine rushes, zerg rushes. Anything called "rush" is usually an exploit of poorly thought out mechanic and an all or nothing of wasting 2 peoples time for ten minutes after which one or the other simply quits depending on whether the rush was spotted or not.

Most RTS games also seem to suffer from the same "let's play for 5 minutes of building and capturing exactly the same things every single game before the match actually starts"

I myself do love these games, but I have friends who hate them. It's not the pinnacle of gaming, it's simply one form of it.

[jules]

> If people within 10% of each other means one gets thrashed then it's simply not fun for one of the players.

You just need to balance games correctly. This is why modern games use Elo or TrueSkill to track each player's performance, just as in chess. Chess too has a huge skill gap: an average player has no chance against a top player, but using Elo even games can be played.

I disagree that RTS is like Rock Paper Scissors. Starcraft maybe, but a well designed modern game no. In Rock Paper Scissors any person can have a roughly 50% win rate against any other person. The fact that an average player cannot win against a good player with any rush strategy indicates that it's not Rock Paper Scissors.

The same goes for the start of a game. A good modern RTS does not require a standard 5 minute opening.

> It's not the pinnacle of gaming

Oh, certainly. RTSes usually do very poorly on some other points (e.g. storytelling), and aren't the best even on points that they score well on (e.g. chess involves far more decision making). Whether you find those important is completely subjective.

[ajuc]

> This is the worst type of "gaming" and probably exactly why the RTS genre is dying.

I don't know. I play sc2, and after a few or at most a dozen of matches I just have to quit - too much stress. But I quite like it and I return to it every few days. I don't waste as much time as I would on some no-stress rpgs or europe universalis alikes (waiting for positive reinforcement type of games). These are just different kinds of games. Starcraft fills similar niche like chess - relatively quick competive sport. I don't see people running around bashing chess for the use of clock or the fact that you will lose a lot when you play chess.

> If people within 10% of each other means one gets thrashed then it's simply not fun for one of the players.

Or maybe some players like to get trashed 50% of the time if it's in a honest game? Ladder system is there to match people with similar skill and it mostly works. Inventing chess that are less stressful (let's say you can throw a dice to see if the enemy attack worked) wouldn't make it better game.

[vonmoltke]

I got turned off multiplayer RTS games way back in the C&C: Red Alert days, where every single game was "build a shitload of tanks and rush your opponent". Every time I have dipped my toe back in over the years since I have found basically the same mechanic. Plus, I don't really want to get better at a game where the primary skill is clicking around the map like a manic Jack Russel terrier on speed.

[data_scientist]

Minecraft online also have all the properties you cite, and there are even more options, collectiond, and human interactions. Think about it: the other players can be adversary or allies, and that can change whenever you want.

[revscat]

I just erased a moderately long reply and am going to offer up as rebuttal a single title.

Myst.

[nitrogen]

To anyone approaching Myst for the first time, I suggest picking up Real Myst on Steam.

[Vektorweg]

I made a list about the properties a game should have: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/58847/32928