Is a game that pleases the majority still a good game?

Hrm, allow me to reflect what seems to be the common argument, ... by that logic. Simpsons Tapped Out is a good game and comparatively Magic the Gathering is not. The much heated debate on whether LoL, HoN or DotA2 is the better game is instantly solved - obviously, LoL is the better game - as it's more popular, draws more players and viewers and makes more money.

By that logic, a game that with relatively niche appeal, Mojang's Scrolls for instance, or even DnD itself is a bad game.

I gave the most open ended question possible - gave my opinion and thoughts freely, got called conceited for it... whilst people insist on posting... "No! I'm right." posts making inaccurate jibes or illogical statements to much bro liking.

The real answer to the question (as people seem to need to have the right answer, rather than discuss it in a discussion forum), that a few have tried to elude to and unfortunately (as always) have been overlooked...

"Is a game that pleases the majority still a good game?"

No, people liking a game does not make that game good. Just because you, or a vast majority of people like it, doesn't in anyway define what the game is. Taste has nothing to do with an unbiased evaluation of the quality of various aspects of a game.

Hence why I talk about and dislike the idea of pre-emptively trying to make people like a game. How many games recently have been lauded, loved and liked up to Millions of times on every social networking site available and then struggled and suffered backlash from so called fans. How many games have suffered as companies "try" to make a more "pleasing" game experience (>.> subsequently how many of those games had a Starwars license?).

I believe I've even directly stated that, success of a game and therefore popularity of a game is a product of it's design. Yet people seem to want to believe that this is the other way around, that great design is born of successfully pleasing gamers first - despite how selfish, arrogant and how often reality proves this ignorant notion wrong. So I piggy backed off of this - should've been really obvious - notion, allowing those that wanted to discuss to at least understand where I was coming from ...

Ultima games were built by a company and people who believed in the notion of creating worlds, yet when someone has the audacity to think from this perspective, to roll back the Ultima veil and think about once again creating a Britianna that players can truly experience - "Heavens no! That's no Ultima of mine! Begone discussion, feel the wrath of my tl;dr! and impenetrable mindset!".

Judging by the number of people who complain these days about having to read ... I'm guessing to be a good game SotA must have limited text involved? Boy are you guys going to be happy pissed when the SotA book arrives... or should they cancel it because many of you don't like having to read anything much longer than a tweet? (*note to self* Suggest the SotA novel be "tweeted"out over the course of the year following release...)

Wanting to think about a game in terms of design that isn't perhaps pleasing to the majority, so as to come up with new ideas that are not weighted down by the necessity of not offending the delicate sensibilities of the entitled gamer that require everything to be spoon fed via concepts they already know and like ... should not be this difficult, within a community that likes to self assuredly tell itself how mature it is.

"Is a game that pleases the majority still a good game?" - It depends, discuss - this is the General Discussion forum after all, not the 5 minute Argument Clinic.

 

You are putting to much weight in your own opinion.

"Is a game that pleases the majority still a good game?"

If a game is successful (pleasing the majority = majority thinks its good) then by definition its a good game. YOU may not like nor I may not like it, but in a minority our opinion is moot. Now a game can SELL well and still be considered by the majority to be a bad game. That just means the marketing or hype was enough to convince people to buy it.

In the end "Good" and "Bad" are opinions: nothing more. If you want to go by facts then games are neither good nor bad: they just exist to be judged by others.

 

The majority just needs an opportunity to be exposed to something new. Something that pushes them to think outside the box, and make decisions for themselves. Once they get a taste of freedom, they will never want to go back.

 

Alas, as your efforts seem noble I will put some effort in.

For one thing you have to understand that a lot of people read these discussions at work and in between other tasks and so huge walls of texts, when there are new posts every 10 seconds, sometimes need to get skimmed over. Not to mention the font/colors here make it hard for me to stay focused, but I wont go down that road here...

Also it seems that your posts come off with a bit of attitude or angst and perhaps this is where you are getting some of your 'flack' from people?

That being said...

I think it really depends on your definition of "Good" and to whom. As a publisher I see a game that pleases the majority as being successful or 'good'. Now if you mean good on your own personal level then as I stated, very succinctly I thought, this naturally would limit your audience would it not?

You have to find a balance that will allow you to continue developing a product in todays cruel fast paced "internet'ed" world. When you have teams of people that are employed by your product and you want to keep them employed over the next X number of years in order to continue making the game ands it add ons you need a successful business model not just a niche player pleasing one. A few hundred or thousand players as your base, doesn't pay the bills in that environment. Times have changed a lot since these innovative original games and one man production companies where able to storm the world.

Now does that mean I think all hope is lost for a mind blowing AND large player based experience? No, not necessarily - but maybe for a bit.

I am thinking with RG and Tracy's story (His book, which I will actually read all of, is one of the main reasons I invested beyond RG himself) we will have some attachment to this experience, and come away very pleased.

However until technology takes a step forward, I certainly think we have begun to pan out and spin our wheels in the terms of different directions you can take a game today and be Innovative! Mind Blowing! or Game Changing! and still be appealing to the "Majority" which is now a global internet tweeting instant gratification crowd.

 

Again. If I got hundreds of thousands of people to like a game ... then went ahead and made a game. Would it automatically be a good game. No. People liking a game is not deterministic of it's design.

Case in point, Yogcast Adventures.

Design that is successful and therefore hopefully successfully appeals is a good game.

Games in SotA's genre that have been designed with the intent of pleasing a majority of gamers, have for many years had great trouble finding and retaining their audience (Tabula Rasa, SWG), even ones with astronomical budgets (SWTOR).

Therefore designing with pleasing gamers in mind does not equal a game that when confronted by reality actually does please gamers.

This is really simple logic. Not weighted opinion.

Understanding this allows you to break away from ... "OMG, plox don't doo tis! Evry1 will hate yoo!" mentality to then have design discussions that are about non standards ideas and not simply written with the intention of getting more likes.

 

This thread is impossible to read. Everybody replies with a wall of text. It's kind of funny. However it goes to show we are interested in SotA, but don't have many good topics to talk about at the moment. Everything has been hashed out and we are left with this stuff... Hey the majority is the minority of the game sux to be us if we too good walls of txt. lol

 

Just picking out this point as it's actually quite an interesting one that a lot of people seem to agree with in one way or another.

I've read best selling (majority appeal?) books that are almost over 20 years old that are more innovative, mind blowing and game changing when it comes to their ideas regarding massively multiplayer experiences than nearly any game I've played.

It's been decided that a series like Ultima that is decades old, in a genre that is older still ... is appealing to the majority.

My opinion, is that the majority is a fussy bunch who cannot be trusted to see beyond what's dangled in front of them, and will want it more the more you tell them they can't have it or the more you let them believe it was their idea, just like spoilt children. Which is probably where my perceivable angst comes from. Hence the desire to talk about ideas that are not restricted by the constantly detrimental notion of pleasing a group of people who want want want, and then bash the finished product.

 

If your game pleases the majority, they it is tremendously successful and a good game.

But if you ask the majority (or even a small group) what they want, you will likely build something terrible. Players don't really know what they want. You never could have designed something like the iPhone in a focus group. Because people wouldn't have imagined a phone, camera, and an mp3 player as a useful combination.

 

Context. SotA. A game that has yet to be released. If it pleases the majority, yet no one has played it and therefore there is no gauge of it's success. Is it a good game, because people like the idea, the list of features, or have simply grown attached to the franchise or marketing material?

 

So as I said before.
1) Trying to please a focus group gives you a Frankenstein product which is a pile of features but not really coherent.
2) Trying to please a market is a noble goal but harder than it looks. This is what all the smart MBAs try to do.
3) Very few people have the intuition to invent something new, but sometimes it works out very well.

Piles of features, even brilliantly executed, do not necessarily make good products.

GuildWars2 is an example of making a lot of good inventions at the start, but in the end, it was a pile of features without an encompassing vision.

 

Based on how I'm reading what you've written ... I think you're pointing out another point of potential failure. So we have ...

1. Game made to please people, that potentially fails at being a good game.
2. Game designed to be innovative without the creative vision to make it all work.

That's pretty much where I'm coming from when I'm thinking from the perspective of .... dumb down a simulation to make a game, rather than throw features together and then hope they work.

All games are abstractions of reality or a perception of it. Therefore to remove a lot of the potential for divergence into nonsensical game design, and to maintain a clear definable vision, start with the simulation, and abstract out the layers until you have something that's achievable and makes sense.

Comparatively, many of the games that seem to have failed recently have asked questions like... What do players want? What do players think is missing from their current games? And then become so tied to and pinned down by those facets of a game, that they develop the entire game around them and then live or die by the strengths of one or a very limited set of features, whether it's the visceral combat of Tera, the dynamic events of Rift or the story delivery of SWTOR.

Where as, if you're deciding how much to cut back a given feature from a simulation of the world you're trying to create, you're consciously weighting all aspects of the game against each other - rather than hyping one aspect and filling the gaps in with appeasing similarities from other games.

And when it comes to real RPGs, having a well balanced game, that pushes the creative limit of your developers and designers in all directions just seems like a much better attempt at success, than having the next best story game, or the next best MMO combat game, or ... the next based around a concept, here's hoping it's a success when it's all put together! - effort.

We know reality works (>.> mostly). Working backwards from there just seems like the sensible solution to a problem based on short sighted desires or the necessity to make a monetarily successful product that's long since become common place and accepted.

 

Well, that's not a fair comparison of mediums here. Books can live in the pure imagination while games, currently, have to exist within the boundaries of our current technological platforms and their respective limitations.

Well what I actually find far more annoying is the tendency for some individuals and most pseudo journalistic want-to-be blog sites to bash everything BEFORE it comes out, because they just know its going to fail. Which warps peoples views of the product before it's even available.

Hmm, not sure where you are going with this one? Fantasy games are meant as an escape from reality, not a simulation of our current existence. We have that.

I think the best chance for a game to distinguish itself currently is within the story and having that story easily accessible through the gameplay.

 

There are games, even old games, that have already made huge steps towards bridging the gap between science fiction and reality. It's just not vogue. Yes it's easier to write about such things than it is to make a game of it, but the technology has been around for over a decade.

I would say the (bias driven) dishonesty and or fanboi-ism of the media and people in general. There are many imperfect games, with niche appeal that have suffered due to the expectations placed on them (through either fault of their own or populist opinion) rather than being allowed to grow in the manner that nearly every successful franchise has.

I could be wrong, but I believe this is a common faux pas. A Fantasy game still has a reality to it. And the Ultima series is a perfect example of a Fantasy series that is intrinsically tied to a version of our own reality. Beyond that, when designing a fantasy reality, I don't remember any that isn't simply an expansion or alteration of the same principles of our own reality. If you can think up a reality that passes the typical cognitive tests we go through to determine what is and isn't real, within the context of another ruleset, then you have the basis for a new game world and can abstract it out into manageable, implementable systems that deliver the expected results of that new reality. Just as you could do with any of the mind blowing fiction that's been floating around for decades.

 

Well of course most all things will have a base in reality, because we live in it... I was simply commenting on your idea of reverse engineering this reality to make a good fantasy game when I referenced not having a need for a simulation.

As we have apparently moved into some alternate universe of speculative fiction, I will take this oppurtunity to bow out of this conversation and wish you a good day.

*tips hat and leaves the table*

 

Wow applying basic cognitive science to solve problems is SF ... ... ... Backpfeifengesicht.

I never knew that implying that, if something can be perceived to be real then it is adequately real enough for the purposes of creating a fantasy, was a concept so haughty it must be some type of fiction.

 

I think one of the "problems" now of dumbing down games for the LCD is that there is a lot of market saturation. There are so many more options out there for games to play than there were back when U7 came out. With this many games, gamers as a whole have developed a form of gamer ADD where our attention span for games has gotten very short and we all demand new experiences as frequently as we can get them, and there is always somebody willing to keep them in supply.

If a game makes you click too many times to do something simple, the ADD saddled gamer will tire of it and move on. If you have to write down notes on quests and do some research for yourself rather than be automatically pointed in the direction of the next quest, people think it is a waste of time. This is unfortunate. Some may say TSW wasn't very good, but I liked it because of the refreshing investigative quests that really changed the way I thought about questing in an MMO. At the same time, the inventory system was terrible and wouldn't allow you to auto-sort or stack anything. This is the perfect example of how many complex systems all need to be focused on simultaneously to strike a balance between modern convenience and not hand holding too much for the LCD. That game is not doing very well and it makes you wonder that even if they had everything polished to a bright shiny finish, if the LCD of gamers were just too lazy to enjoy the difficulty of a new perspective and went back to playing more of the same "easy" games that just told them what they had to click for the next 10 seconds instead.

 

yeah I can see that being possible.

 

Pretty much spot on... I think this isn't helped at all by the problems of player expectations and the ease at which people are misled, either by bad or intentionally misleading marketing, or because there is no accurate, honest, consise statement of intent with regards to what a game actually is.

As soon as the industry standardised low attention span gamer is confronted by something they don't like and didn't expect, they *bawk*.

Many games are presented as conforming to an easily understood model, understood genres and understood settings with understood intentions that players can comprehend and quickly decide whether or not it is a game that is worth their time. SotA is unfortunately a good example of this, ... for many it's an MMORPG, and therefore must conform to many of the associated preconceptions that define what an MMORPG is for the majority of people. For many it's an old school RPG, with a conflicting modern social gaming feel. For quite a number of people, SotA is a chance to revisit Ultima Online ... and out of context there are Dev statements that can be confused to support this notion, even though elsewhere it's stated that this is not the case. And there are still myriad perceptions of what SotA intends to be.

I find it both sad and droll the amount of times one of these groups, calls on their majority ownership over the perception of how SotA should be, to support their desire for a feature or design decision to go their way. No one seems to want to find out what the clear vision of SotA is at this stage of development, as much as they want to live in their own bubble hoping or outright believing that this game (or any game) will deliver on promises that have not been made. Let alone do they want to help the design of Sota reach a balance between modern convenience and hand holding or become a well rounded product in general unless it conforms neatly to their preconceptions.

None of this is helped by marketing to appeal to the widest number of people, ... though I think in the case of SotA, it unfortunately generally appeals to multiple highly strung groups making the issue more to do with that no one really understanding how the game will feel or how it will play once all the many pieces of information we have regarding it's development eventually come together - and are therefore, for now, replacing that lack of understanding with wants and desires that conform to what they know. 99% of the time, what gamers know, is other games...

The chances of all these groups being pleased is slim, it's likely that a uniquely blended game will appeal to a cross section of gamers, and then polarise chunks of these gamers because of what it does and doesn't contains. I think what would be really useful for SotA is a clear well spoken and often referred to round up of the intentions of the game, so that people aren't disillusioned with the game when it doesn't meet their plethora of different expectations.

Majority appeal is great, whether you can or whether it's even the intention to actually please them is another question entirely. And the last thing a game needs is upset fans zealously bashing you for the 9001 things you did wrong in their eyes because a game didn't please the masses who have conflicting ideas that they expect your game to somehow placate.

 

I read the whole post, but I'm just going to add to this a bit.
I've looked for this in every persistent multiplayer online game I've played. The summary of what the game should be. It never exists, publicly, and that's a real shame. Some official sites in games that have classes, have descriptions of those classes. They never change. They're also rarely, if ever, accurate. Despite years of role/spell/skill/combat tweaking, they're never updated.

In some cases, the role assigned to particular classes is in fact completely false. Classes that are publicly supposed to "do the most damage" end up being the best healers and have the lowest damage output. Those that "wear heavy armor" are specifically forbidden from wearing heavy armor. Non-combat skills that are often mentioned on the official site don't even exist in the game, or crafting and harvesting that is nothing even remotely close to reality. Inaccuracies like that really chafe after a few years.

I've had the privilege of attending a community summit for EQ2, as a representative for a single class, in the past. I was able to directly converse with the developers in formal meetings as well as an informal setting for a few days.
What I learned from that event is that, in general, individual developers aren't intentionally misleading. The marketing department IS intentionally misleading. The poor guy coding C/++/# for client/server performance tuning? He doesn't have anything to do with the overall public face of the company. He's just trying to get things to work, at all, and happy to get his paycheck. It's true some developers can be extremely stoic in the face of public opinion, and while that can be good, it can also be very very bad. The reason they can be stoic is because there is no formal engagement method to/from the public for them. Some developers, like those with titles such as "lead combat developer" or "skills and combat lead", make changes with every patch, and there is absolutely no feedback loop other than the forums, which are among the worst methods of collecting feedback from a large audience. So, you've got multiple groups affecting the customers, and no cohesive presentation to those customers, and no way for those customers to provide feedback. Not an ideal situation.

Designers, artists, anyone producing content, and the people just trying to get the milestones reached so the money keeps flowing? They also have almost no daily care for the public face of the company. That's left to the community relations staff, and the marketing department. The first being chronically understaffed and has no budget, while the second is invariably staffed by selfish and opportunistic sociopaths. Post launch, customer service is left to defend the walls from the hordes of angry customers, with as little public interaction as possible. It's a recipe for disaster all around, and typically ends up being exactly that. No one wants to touch the web site or update anything, because customers have scripts running 24 x 7 watching for any change, ready to demand an explanation from the entire department or company. As time passes, getting CR/CS or anyone non-technical to get face time with someone who can actually confirm specific intent of in-game systems is nigh impossible.

Apparently the executive, leadership, or marketing departments don't want anything remotely like an accurate, honest, or concise statement of intent with regards to what their game actually is, because it means they will be held to it. In particular, if the designers, producer, and architects come up with that statement of intent, then marketing can't insist on features that directly oppose it, if it's public.
Evidently, it's far easier to keep those goals hidden so they remain flexible. In this way, Marketing can erode the logic, optimism, and good will that went into the initial design, all in the name of monetizing the customer experience. Yes, having it public would be a protection if you really want to stick to your design, but it's never used that way.

At least, that's how it's played out in many other persistent multi-player online games. It remains to be seen how Portalarium handles it. Given there's no comprehensive FAQ at the moment (Nine answers, none of which enumerate decisions already made, is not comprehensive), avoiding all the important issues, it's not a good start. I understand the RTX demo is taking priority this week, but it's been almost 3 months, not a few weeks, since Kickstarter finished.

It is possible to take all of this community energy and focus it, and it's not being focused, today. Specific weekly threads & polls, started by developers and pruned/collated daily by the moderators are a logical minimum for the dev+ forums, and yet, nothing so far. Anyway, I'm derailing, so I'll stop there.