Folderoltasticness

I have trouble beating games. Not in that I’m not good enough to beat them - I certainly put enough hours on them, if nothing else - but because of other reasons. One is my magpie-like desire to always try more and more new games without yet finishing old ones - the other, I think, is this weird fear of ending a particular experience. Nothing to be afraid of - not like I wouldn’t replay it, I can say to myself: but I don’t. I’ll restart games I haven’t beaten many times - but when I do beat something, I usually pack it away and move on, even if I honestly do want to go through it again. I’m struck by a desire to go back and play Fallout 2, to play Vampire: Bloodlines and see what life is like as a male Malkavian (who is cheated from hell to breakfast - another thing I never do anymore). Childlike, I don’t want things to end, so I go back and start it all over again.

Sure, this can be positive, in an academic sense: I can get a better sense of what I like, and what works, and why. But its drawbacks are obvious. Live in the now, woman, and finish what you start! And when you try something new, get something really new on your plate, like an RTS. Expand your horizons already!

On the other hand, there are those games that I don’t finish simply because they’ve lost me by the end. Fun becomes a slog, or somehow shot in the nut. I love Psychonauts like CRAZY, but don’t get me started on the last level. It is horribleness. And I still grieve for not having finished it. That’s yet another game I’m going to restart and finally beat one of these days.

How do you get a player to finish the game? To keep them going throughout so they never feel a disconnect from events? To prevent any kind of “this is the last area” telegraphing? Or is that practice more beneficial because it lets players ready themselves fully for what’s to come? I suppose that changes by genre, but I have to wonder how much that contributes to people ceasing play. Probably not as much as a dramatic shift in gameplay type (I shake my fist at you, Meat Circus!) , and for genres like RPGs it probably does way more good than harm (although how does one balance for the player tendency to save all those Megalixirs for the very end?)… but I have to wonder.

And I need to beat Psychonauts. Mrrrr.

Tags: game design

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 1:50 am and is filed under game design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.