In the news post from yesterday’s Penny Arcade, Tycho talks about two things that I’m conflicted on: Multi-player being preferable to single player, and the game Overlord.
I can see why a person might be more interested in playing with other people, the dynamics of the game change, the challenge is higher, but I’ve always personally preferred to play by myself. Why you ask? Because most people I meet are ass hats. Some games are just made to be played in multi-player because it’s too difficult to make a reasonably good AI (e.g. Real-time Strategy games). Joyfully one does not have to listen to their opponent whilst playing RTS, but the folks you find playing on-line are usually addicted like crack to that particular game, and have honed the art of micromanagement down to a laundry list of moves to make on a per-millisecond basis. Needless to say, this removes much of the enjoyment from anyone who is forced to leave their house from time to time.
The only FPS game I’ve managed to tolerate any kind of online time in is Gears of War, and this is only because the game is that exceptional. It does carry the rider of most shooters though: Half the time you play, you hear the belligerent moaning of what can only be a frat-boy, pissed that you’ve blown his skull off yet again.
Tycho, having rather the opposite opinion, was surprised to note that he had blown 6 hours straight playing Overlord (an interesting game basically being a cross between Dungeon Keeper and Pikmin).
Now, don’t get me wrong, I liked Overlord, a lot in fact. The game is funny, and there’s something about swarming a horde of 50 minions over an oncoming throng of halflings that just tickles you the right way. I do however note there is a major problem with this game that causes me to be seethingly irritated with it.
Essentially the entire game is spent killing small fuzzy things which occasionally will drop lifeforce – small glowing orbs which increase the size of your pool of minions. On my first play through the game, I accumulated somewhere between 1500 and 2000 units of lifeforce total.
Now, I’m one of those guys who really likes to get the achievement points. And some of the achievement points in this game are insane. One achievement is gained by at any point in the game having over 10,000 lifeforce in your pool. Think about that, it’s possible to beat the game, accomplishing almost all of the possible accomplishments, and only accumulate 1/5 of the lifeforce needed for that achievement. One gets achievements for full upgrading each of the three armor sets, a feat which cost you several thousand lifeforce per armor set. A third achievement for completing the game at maximum corruption is only possible after killing over 1,000 peasants, only accomplished by continually going to a city, running around slaughtering everyone, and repeating over and over again.
A game which I initially quite enjoyed has been associated with a mindless grind in my inner psyche. There is nothing more depressing than sitting in the same spot, killing the same guys (usually trivial to do so), over and over again just so that you can continue with your life. It is, as a developer, an easy way out, but it lowers the value of your game, please stop doing this.
World of Warcraft, another of my past addictions, eventually turned me away because of both of the above issues. Once reaching the maximum level, the only possible tasks are to schedule several nights of your week, consistently week after week, to hang out with 40 people or so, and grind a raid dungeon. Just put a gun in my mouth right now.
Can we just make a rule where nobody is ever allowed to put grinding into a game ever again? Or at least make it such a taboo that only the most sadistic developers do so? This is not a practice that we should be encouraging folks, and if anyone out there is a developer, I would encourage you to bring that message back home.
