Do You Believe Challenge Is The Core Of Video-Games?

[invictius]

Anyone else noticed games in the last 10 years becoming adverse to letting you feel lost?  Can you imagine an e3 level in a game today?  There would be checkpoints on the hud every two seconds.

[Lila Feuer]

 

12 minutes ago, invictius said:

Anyone else noticed games in the last 10 years becoming adverse to letting you feel lost?

 

The Virgin Alien World Order versus the Chad Ion Fury.

[Coopersville]

A series of interesting decisions, as Sid Meier put it. 

[Hellektronic]

Nah, gameplay is. Fun, addictive gameplay. Good mechanics. Stuff like that is integral.

Games that focus too hard on challenge are crap.

[Optimus]

It's all in people's personal taste. I do love the Dark Souls series and later FromSoft games, but for me it's because of the atmosphere, sense of exploration and non linearity. Everybody talks about difficulty in this game and some people might even play only for the boss fights and forget the rest. And those are core things of FromSoft games but the least attractive for me. But at the same time I am glad it's not the exactly opposite of this, extreme handholding.

 

Meanwhile in all kinds of games, I like more if the game has such atmosphere and world or level design that attracts me, even if it was a walking simulator. I prefer the adventurous Doom levels than the slaughtermaps. I've played and finished broken games because the world exploration and immersion/atmosphere lured me in till the end.

[Lila Feuer]

Yeah, that's the thing, the combat is a big part of Souls games and it's more than serviceable, but it isn't amazing combat, these games' worlds however are amazing and just going by what I've seen of the other games since I've only got experience with DS1 is they're pretty much all 10/10s, except DS2, and even then their "worst" game is still realistically an 8/10. However that rating might still differ if you're talking about the original version or the SOTFS version, since they handle things like pacing and combat flow very differently and I see a divide between fans of which one is the superior experience. Not a lot of LPs of DS2 by people I like watching so I've only seen a big chunk of the original version, which apparently can't be bought separately anymore unless you get the series in a bundle on Steam.

[ChopBlock223]

Yes.

[Gmg]

Yes, for me, there should be something to do in video games, a goal, something to remember, something exciting that makes the person use all their skills. Otherwise a very easy game would be unimportant and boring in the long run.

[Csucskos]

I've been thinking about this. And for me the main defining trait of a "game" is the reduced risk.

 

I believe your question was far less philosophical, but I tried to get to the game-ness idea. To encompass every game, this was my best try. It could have been the set rules people agree on or the challenge it provides but the distinction between a game and a non-game I think is the comparatively low risk. (You can parkour on rooftops or steal cars and massacre or build giant block structures in games, without the real-world problems associated with them)

 

The main "issue" with this challenge-based definition is for example the relaxation game genre or whatever Journey is. But maybe you argue that those aren't even games. I dunno, I'm not totally satisfied with my own approach, probably could be criticized but I do think challenge is not essential for games.

[MrFroz]

The Wolf Among Us is one of my most favorite games of all time and it isn't challenging at all. However I admit I wouldn't like all games to be like that one or Life is Strange or Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy, as much as I enjoy them. I just sometimes can't stand the constant in-your-face pressure of doing things right in order to do well in a game (especially multi-player ones) so I tend to be inevitably drawn to games where challenge is close to null, like the ones I've mentioned.

Edited November 15, 2023 by MrFroz