It might jump into a movie, or a character generation screen, a tutorial, or straight into the game. Even the simple question of "I wonder what happens when I click 'new game'?" can have surprising answers. Your understanding of how it works is likely limited to maybe some reviews, a trailer, or perhaps a "what is X?" video.Īt this point everything you see is a problem and everything you try is new. When you start a game, it is completely new. What you are describing seems to be a fundamental shift in the way you view and play the game, and I think the clue in making games that avoid it, is in trying to understand the shift, so I'm hoping to explain it in this post.Īnd that fundamental shift is going from solving problems to executing solutions. I just hope it gives you some good ideas. I apologize beforehand for the book I have written. So, when designing a game, how can you avoid that this will happen? Is it possible to hide the meta game to such an extent that the player no longer feels it, even when playing the game for long. I want to feel like playing a game, like exploring. Some players want to play the meta game! But for others, including me, it gets boring. For some players, this is where the game gets really cool.
Heck, I think I could even write an AI that does more than 95% of the things I do, since everything has become so mechanic. I know where exactly to place the next city and which units to build. I have a more or less complete ordering among the technologies. I feel like building a mathematically simulation of a city and just responding to optimize all parameters for this simulation.Ī super nice game to explore in the beginning! So many technologies, just wow! In the end: I know exactly which technology to develop when. I no longer feel like building a real city. In the end, you know exactly what they need, so it becomes more or less a burden: E.g., for each new residential district, I need a police station, a fire station, garbage incineration plant, crematory, a hospital, I connect everything to the highway, add a subway station and add bus lines. In the beginning, it is fun to master what your people need. I build a fleet and capture the enemy or keep on playing until my island is full". Cool! Once you know the meta game the whole game becomes a "Oh, I need these 10 resources in these proportions, then the people are happy.
In the beginning, you build an island and have to master more and more challenges to keep you citizens happy. You execute a well-thought-out choreography, which you perfected by executing it 100 or more times. You no longer play the game, you just play the meta game. You know basically exactly at which time you will be able to buy which item and you execute this. After being "pro" in DotA, you basically only play the meta game anymore: You pick exactly the hero that can counter the enemy and play exactly a perfect meta game for your hero (e.g., go to jungle until you are fat, time creep spawns to stack, and so on). You learn new heros, you are happy when you are able to buy an expensive item and so on. Here are a few examples from different genres to show what I mean:ĭotA: In the beginning, DotA is super fun, although you totally suck at it. Once you know the meta game by heart, you basically stop playing the game and instead only play the meta game anymore. What I mean is that the longer you play, the more you know the meta game. The longer you play a game, the more you get lost in and bored by the meta game. Yesterday, I noticed something that I had never noticed consciously before, but which had "ruined" more or less all games that I have ever played: Answers without enough detail may be edited or deleted. Want to improve this post? Provide detailed answers to this question, including citations and an explanation of why your answer is correct.
0 kommentar(er)
