Steam friends is basically a way to know within the client who is online and what they are playing; but more than that its a system to advertise, often with the help of the community itself. I use it to check out what people have bought and are playing, and often find stuff in there that I want to buy myself. Pure profit all around, its genius in its simplicity but the name is really a bit of a lie. Its Steam Adverts.
Oh, I agree. I was a big proponent of Co-op before it was cool (So many years of senseless deathmatch…) :
The trick there is to make players work together. There’s still a lot of inertia from competitive or single player gameplay that makes co-op difficult to implement.
Insider marketing tip: the little thing that pops up and says “princec is playing Left4Dead2” - that is one of Steam’s most powerful marketing tools.
Cas
[quote=“princec,post:64,topic:39745”]
But that is difficulty. Adjustable difficulty is not a substitute for challenge. Think of any type of game. Multiplayer videogames, chess, sports, etc. It’s no fun if your opponent is holding back, especially when the illusion wears off and you realize your actions don’t matter because your opponent could have beat you at an stage of the game if they chose to. It’s important that the player is in control of their character, not an AI or difficulty control system designed to show pity on people. It’s not fun if the game holds your hand the entire way if you’re starting a new game and it’s not fun for a game to throw everything it has at you and wait for you to slip up as an experienced player.
For a clearer example, think of all the side scrolling Mario games. (With the exception to the Japanese sequel to Super Mario Bros.) Sure most players run into the first enemy of the first level and die, but the game makes it easy to learn fast. Some people might get a game over before passing the first level, but they can usually make it to the second level on their next try. The genius of some classic games is that the first level is replayable no matter what your skill level is. The player is in control of how reckless or cautious they want and the game doesn’t have to compensate one way or the other to keep skilled or unskilled player’s attention. On top of that, the games give you meaningful rewards for better performance (higher scores, time bonuses, extra lives, and access to more challenging levels.) The huge range of player skill levels that those games can accommodate is pretty amazing and there’s no need to tweak the game to try to beat or go easy on the player.
The whole design of Mario is relatively “easy” though. You’ve been so thoroughly hoodwinked by just how clever the Mario designers have been at making their game accessible you haven’t even noticed! Genius at work I’d say. I wish I were anywhere near as good.
Cas
If anyone doesn’t realize how good mario and they other NES classic are, they should just play all games of the NES library
its like 80% garbage 
obviously the internet is full of shows of shitty games, since AVGN…
Now you’re the one speaking from the perspective of a small number of gamers. Think about the games with no continues. Pretend you didn’t discover or hear rumors of warp zones and magic whistles. Now think of Lakitus throwing spiked balls from the sky, confined spaces with Koopa shells, hammer bros, etc. Shortcuts aside (which actually don’t make the game more or less difficult), they did not make the games easy at all. You didn’t realize how many difficult elements there were because there is such a smooth learning curve.
Nintendo does a pretty good job of maintaining the feel of sidescroller Mario games even as the format and audience changes. You still have simple gameplay and constantly increasing difficulty as well as a risk/reward system. The first levels are still fun to play no matter what your skill level is and are usually well suited for competitive speed runs. I bet even the DS and Wii games have a large group of players that can’t make it more than halfway through the game. Then there is the group that can beat the last level, but have to skip optional levels, and then there is the group that manages to discover all the secrets and unlock all the extra levels but can’t beat the game without continues, and then there is the group that can beat the game from start to finish if they’re cautious, and then there is the group that does all that while collecting high scores by making risky jumps, getting time bonuses, and doing combos that require a lot of skill.
The role that challenge, reward, risk, and learning play in those games go very far to make the game fun without the concept of difficulty settings. The games still sell well for players that can’t unlock/visit all the levels because there is a lot of content for even the players that take much longer to master the game and because there is a meaningful reward system for people taking paths requiring more skill. One thing that has remained pretty constant is that half of the levels will be inaccessible to most players simply because they’re too difficult. (This includes casual gamers that do breadth-first traversal of the levels but never make it past world 4 or 5 and average players that do depth-first traversal, taking advantage of alternate paths and just barely managing to beat the last level.) Skill is going to be a significant (and only) barrier that prevents certain players from beating most levels, but that’s a good thing because it creates a more rewarding experience for everyone. Probably the main characteristic of the games that is that there is virtually no concept of difficulty as a function of enemy strength or a player handicap. Instead difficulty is a function of the risks the player chooses to take.
Player requirements: Is it fun?
Publisher requirements: Will it sell?
Those are the only questions that need to be answered. All this frippery about difficulty levels is window dressing. This is a video game, not the Sistine Chapel.
I don’t know how I missed the bold text even though I remember reading the rest of this post. That applies fairly well to what I was talking about. There’s plenty of space in those games for both cautious and exceptional players to play on the same playing fields and still find a fun challenge. There was no need to tweak the game mechanics to handicap the player or punish the player more for small mistakes to appeal to a larger range of players with different skill levels.
Developer requirements: Can I make this in time before I run out of money/brain?
Cas
But requirement #1 is violated when the game becomes impossible. Take serious Sam and I wanna be the guy for example
By impossible I assume you mean “nearly impossible”. There are people who find enjoyment in such games too, especially old school gamers. Its not winning that provides the fun, its doing a little bit better than the last time the game kicked your hiney that can provide an equal amount of satisfaction.
Oh there are plenty of amazing old games and plenty of shit ones. I have a small portion of my hard drive (and it’s able to be small!) devoted to classic OS and console emulators. Then fairly regularly I play through some of my old favorites again.
Recently I got Mega Man X on the iPhone. I fucking love Mega Man X. And the iPhone port is pretty good, they made some good choices to get past not having a controller. But, one thing I noticed: it adds difficulty levels. Mega Man X is one of those games that is super duper hard, but also extremely well balanced. I was not able to beat it as a kid. Later as a more badass gamer I could. Now, playing on iPhone, I find “normal” difficulty means “stupidly easy.” Maybe we can give it some allowances because you inevitably make mistakes due to touch screen controls, but… it’s so easy. I beat pretty much every single boss in the wrong order with very few powerups. The only times I died were due to control issues. I think they decided that to bring their game to a modern audience (and an iPhone audience) then they’d have to make it stupidly easy. Bummer.
Classic games I still play and are still awesome:
- Dark Castle (Mac OS 7)
- Super Metroid (SNES)
- Sim City 2000 (Mac OS 9)
- Super Mario RPG (SNES)
- Gunstar Heroes (Genesis)
- Oregon Trail (Mac OS 7)
- Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego (Mac OS 7)
- River City Ransom (NES)
- Mega Man X (SNES)
- Castles Siege & Conquest (Mac OS 9)
- Taskmaker (Mac OS 7)
- Power Pete (Mac OS 7)
Hey, are text games old? Or are they not video games?
Almost anything can be a videogame with enough work.
…and yes purely text games are old. Obviously.
hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy? yeah that was text based. i had a lot of fun with the web version.
anyone played king’s quest?
I meant, are they too old to be a videogame? :point:
A video game is a game that is conveyed via video.
So a Choose Your Own Adventure book is not a video game, but a text adventure is. But if you put a CYOA on a computer then it would be a video game.
:clue:
How about an adventure eBook with animations.
Is that a video game?