What Makes Video Games Fun?

A lot of "hardcore gamers" (regardless of whether they identify themselves as such) will tell you that the video game industry is in sad shape. It's not just because of the past decade's unfortunate shift toward increasingly more intrusive digital rights management, or the recent trend of releasing "extra" downloadable content on day one to encourage thoughtless and irresponsible pre-orders, or the deliberate efforts to use both DRM and DLC to destroy the used game market. Rather, it's because they think that too many of the games being released today are crap.

And they're not just talking about shovelware that nobody buys. This is popular crap. So what's up with all the hate? Well, it should be no surprise that the games which tend to attract the most violently negative attention are always the popular ones. After all, if you want to complain about a genre, a feature, a console, or a developer, you pick a popular game as an example, and then you claim that the chosen game means the downfall of gaming as we know it. This has been happening for a long time. But in the past few years, I've been reluctant to shrug it off as the usual fanboyism, hipsterism, and attention-seeking antics of a vocal minority. It's more likely indicative of something else.

As I see it, this backlash is due to recent changes in the industry which aren't entirely imaginary. The industry is, in fact, changing, and not just in response to the emergence of nearly ubiquitous high-speed internet service, which facilitates digital distribution and piracy alike. Video games have changed also because of their growing audience. Thanks to cell phones, social networking sites, and a few other things which should never have games on them, games have crossed farther into the mainstream than ever before. Meanwhile, those who played video games back when it was an obscure hobby reserved only for children and computer geeks have grown up, and some of them are still playing. It's only understandable that some of these old-schoolers would be a bit shocked by the current state of things.

So, what is the current state of things?

It's complicated, and there are a lot of little topics I'd like to bring up — e.g., how girls went from "eww, you play video games, you're such a nerd" to "hey, I can be a gamer too" and "tee hee, I'm such a nerd" — but most of these things are too far off-topic and will have to wait for some other week. Simply put, if I can allow myself to get to the point, casual games and social networking have taken over. It's not hard to see that this is an expected (and perhaps necessary) consequence of video games getting a slice of that mainstream pie.

Games directed at casual players get a lot of hate, particularly from the more "hardcore" gamers, many of whom grew up when video games were considerably less forgiving than the ones made today. For these players, the whole point of a game is to provide a challenge. Winning should be a struggle; that's what makes it so satisfying. This is why they fail to understand the casual audience. More importantly, this is why they're angered not only by strictly casual games but also by the perceived "casualization" of modern games as a whole.

Are the majority of today's video games a lot easier than the ones of my childhood? You bet. But is this really a terrible thing? Not necessarily. Difficult games still exist, and we should keep in mind that a lot of older games were only hard because of their lack of a save feature. (Wouldn't a lot of modern games be damn near impossible to beat if saving weren't an option?) Other old games were stupidly hard because of poor design, and still others were intentionally made difficult because they were short and would have been beaten too quickly if they weren't frustratingly hard to finish. (Truly master Super Mario Bros. and you can beat it in less than five minutes; without using warp zones, it can still be done in less than half an hour.) Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, playtime can be extended in ways that don't involve dying repeatedly, and games can be entertaining for reasons other than sheer difficulty.

So now we get to ask an interesting question. What actually makes video games fun? Some say it's the challenge, while others will say it's the story/characters/immersion (for single-player games) or the social experience (for multiplayer games). Still others, I suspect, would say they just like to blow things up. In reality, for most people, it's a combination of all of the above.

How much, in particular, should difficulty matter? From the developer's point of view, a game should be difficult enough to entertain the experienced players — to let them know that winning takes effort so that winning feels good — but easy enough to avoid alienating the casual players who might not even bother to finish a game if it frustrates them at all. Personally, I think most developers have done a pretty good job of accomplishing this. Say what you will about the harm caused by pandering to the casual audience, but most games worth playing have multiple difficulty levels, the easiest of which is usually tame enough for "casuals" and the hardest of which is usually a challenge for anyone who never played the game before. Nobody should be disappointed unless a developer makes a serious miscalculation.

This is why I was surprised to see such a negative reaction to this article on Kotaku a little more than a week ago, in which Luke Plunkett gives a fairly reasonable rebuttal to Assassin's Creed III lead designer Alex Hutchinson's (rather preposterous) claim that "easy mode often ruins games." (It's kind of funny because Assassin's Creed, a game with only one difficulty, isn't that hard, and the same is true of all the sequels I've played.) I'm not a big fan of Kotaku, nor am I a fan of Luke Plunkett, but I have to agree with him here. At least, I agree with his headline. A game can't be ruined by a difficulty setting.

I'm willing to say that the "easy mode" of a game can often be the worst version of that game, as Hutchinson claims, but the inclusion of an easy mode surely doesn't spoil the whole game unless it's the only mode available. Don't like easy mode? Play on hard. If the harder settings are still too easy, or if they do nothing but make the game more tedious, you've picked a bad game. If the harder settings are locked until the easier ones are completed, you better hope the easier settings are hard enough to keep you entertained for a single playthrough; otherwise, you've picked a bad game. Bad game design happens, but if you're blaming it solely on the inclusion of an "easy" mode, you're probably overlooking a deeper problem.

Still, I won't say I agree with Plunkett completely, since he has entirely different reasons for disagreeing with Hutchinson's argument. Specifically, he makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't care about difficulty at all, and that he plays story-driven games only for the story. He probably wouldn't mind if a game like Assassin's Creed III consisted of no interaction besides "press X to continue." And if you're like this, you probably should ask yourself why you're playing games at all, rather than watching movies or reading books. If, on the other hand, you can appreciate the unique things that games have to offer, instead of just complaining that everything is too hard, then your idea of "fun" is just as valid as that of the hardcore gamer dude who plays everything on the hardest setting and skips all the cutscenes.

So where do I stand?

Let's just say I was more than a little annoyed by the fact that it's literally impossible to lose in the 2008 version of Prince of Persia. I won't go so far as to say that the protagonist of a game needs to be able to die, and "losing" is hardly a setback in any game with a save option (assuming you use it often enough), but being automatically revived after every fall in PoP 2008 seemed like a step down from the rewind system in The Sands of Time, which actually required some minimal skill and had limits. If there's no consequence for falling off a cliff, the sense of danger and suspense is gone and the game becomes only tedious where it might otherwise have been exciting.

On the other hand, you know I'm a sucker for story-driven games, and the need for a genuine challenge can be subverted by decision-making and role-playing elements. Since Choose Your Own Adventure books were terrible and there's no equivalent in the movie world, I think it's pretty safe to say that the existing technology used for video games is the ideal medium for straight-up interactive fiction. I see no reason not to take advantage of this. The problem is that what might be described most accurately as interactive fiction, and not as a traditional video game, will nevertheless remain stuck under the category of video games. This tends to generate all the wrong expectations. Story-driven titles are often criticized for having too much "story" and not enough "game" (even if the developer's primary objective, admittedly, was to tell a story).

Regardless of how far a developer decides to take the storytelling aspect of a product, and regardless of what you call it, the fact is that difficulty (and, indeed, gameplay itself) often matters less when story matters more, and if you're looking for a serious challenge, you should probably stay away from plot-driven games, even ones like Assassin's Creed. They make it difficult enough that any given mission might take two or three attempts, but they know they're not serving the hardcore crowd exclusively. Sometimes, though, I think the hardcore crowd still hasn't caught on.

Five Great Games I'll Never Play

So many video games have been made over the past few decades that no single person could ever hope to play them all from beginning to end. This isn't an exaggeration; it's pretty clear that there just aren't enough hours in a lifetime, especially when you consider that a third of a life is spent sleeping while another third is typically spent on other irritating obligations such as a full time job. I'll let you do the rest of the math, since I'm not exactly sure how to estimate the average length of a video game or the total number of video games ever published, but I'm certain that you'd have to dedicate your life to video games in order to experience everything this medium has to offer.

Of course, no single person would really want to play all these games, either, since no one likes every genre and a lot of games are just crap. The list gets a lot shorter when you limit yourself to games which are generally considered to be worth playing, and there's an even shorter list of games that are so highly regarded and well known that they're almost considered mandatory.

I have to admit, however, that I've missed out on a lot of supposedly great classics. I grew up with Super Mario Bros. and Doom, and I've played my fair share of Zelda games, but there are a number of immensely popular games that I've never played, and most likely never will. For your reading pleasure, I present the first five such video game franchises that came to mind, listed in reverse order for dramatic effect.

5: Metal Gear Solid

I grew up with two brothers, and at some point my mother must have lost her mind, because by the time the Sega Dreamcast came out, we each had our own console. Of course, though we weren't sharing them like we did with the old SNES, it would have been silly to keep more than one of the same console in the house, so after my older brother got his own PlayStation, I got a Nintendo 64. He got Metal Gear Solid, and I got Ocarina of Time. Fair enough, right?

I watched him play the game for a while. It was pretty entertaining to watch, although I couldn't tell if it was really fun to play because he was the kind of person who would constantly get mad as hell at any game that presented any sort of challenge, which is probably why he hardly plays video games at all anymore. (That, and having a life.) I was really only interested in the story, even if it was hard to follow, but I never had a chance to play through the game myself.

Every time a new Metal Gear game is released, I think, "wow, that looks pretty cool, I should play it." But with a story-driven series like Metal Gear, I could never bring myself to play the latest installment without playing through all the ones that came before it (useless non-canonical spin-offs, if any exist, excluded). At this point, I'm so many games behind that I don't think I could possibly catch up. Even if I wanted to try, doing so would be quite an investment, since I don't even own a PlayStation 3. (The alternative is to watch a few dozen hours of "Let's Play" videos on YouTube, which would be fine, since the later Metal Gear games have such a high cutscene-to-gameplay ratio that they're practically movies anyway.)

Update: I must have psychic powers or something, because a new Metal Gear game was announced just after I wrote this stupid post. Too spooky.

4: Final Fantasy

I have my doubts about whether it's possible to enjoy Final Fantasy without liking anime, and my history with anime was short and complicated. I thought Japanese animation was awesome when I watched Princess Mononoke and Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist, but when I saw what typical modern anime was like, I was filled with shame and disgust.

Okay, so maybe it isn't quite fair to say that this has anything to do with Final Fantasy, but there's also the fact that I'm sickened by turn-based combat.

The Final Fantasy franchise is so famous and influential that I almost feel like I can't call myself a gamer without having played at least a couple of games in the series. Then again, I don't call myself a gamer because "gamer" is a stupid word, and on the few occasions when I actually watched my Playstation-owning older brother play Final Fantasy VII, I was bored to tears.

And don't get me started on the character design.

3: World of Warcraft

I never liked MMORPGs, and I've always refused to play anything that requires a monthly subscription fee (which is why I don't own an Xbox 360). It's probably no surprise, therefore, that I never bothered to play World of Warcraft, and that I fully intend to die without ever having played it, especially now that the newest expansion looks like an homage to Kung Fu Panda, or a strange attempt to grab the attention of the furry crowd, or both. (Okay, so the Warcraft franchise never took itself that seriously, but really, this is too much.)

I wouldn't say that World of Warcraft is a classic; it's not quite old enough for that. But it is — or was, during the height of its popularity — extremely important in the gaming world. I am, though, a bit surprised that the game ever became as popular as it did, considering its connection to a series of RTS games that the vast majority of WoW subscribers have almost certainly never played. Brand recognition wasn't a factor, for them; the game must have earned its popularity by being fun, or something. I can't say I understand it, but WoW just managed to nail the perfect combination of whatever things make MMORPGs fun for those who don't despise them.

2: Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike, the popular Half-Life modification turned stand-alone game, seems like a pretty big deal. However, at the time of its release, I hadn't graduated from console games to PC games, and the only "modern" shooters I can remember having played at length are GoldenEye 007 and its spiritual successor Perfect Dark. I never even played a first-person shooter online until my brother bought an Xbox and a copy of Halo and needed a fourth player to beat some racist kids at CTF via GameSpy Arcade.

Also, I'm ashamed to admit it, but it wasn't until 2005 (when I bought the PC version of F.E.A.R.) that I realized how much easier it is to play first-person shooters with a keyboard and mouse. The downside is that I haven't been able to go back to console shooters ever since. Awkwardly aiming with my thumbs just feels so wrong, and I don't understand how I ever managed to enjoy it.

The result of all this is that I missed out on a lot of competitive online shooters, Counter-Strike included. After the most recent winter sale on Steam, I did end up with a free copy of Counter-Strike: Source in my inventory, but I'm probably going to send it to someone else instead of playing it myself. I'm sure the game is fun, and that it rightfully earned its place in gaming history, but it's... well, it's old.

Don't get me wrong; I can appreciate old games. But Counter-Strike is a competitive and exclusively online multiplayer game. Forget the fact that I prefer single-player games and care little for competitive FPS — when I say that Counter-Strike is old, I mean that its online community, while still active, is almost entirely composed of people who have been playing for hundreds (if not thousands) of hours and already know exactly what they're doing. Considering this and the game's competitive nature, I suspect the players in the average Counter-Strike server would be less welcoming to newcomers than the other guys playing another game that came out last month.

Starting Counter-Strike or Counter-Strike: Source now would probably be like joining a random DotA server with no prior knowledge of how the ARTS genre works. (In case you're not getting the joke here, I'll just point out that ARTS players are widely known for being obnoxious jerks who talk trash more than they actually play and who frequently ban people from their servers not for cheating but simply for being insufficiently skilled at the game in question. I even considered putting DotA on this list, as well, since I have no interest in ever playing a game in which being a newbie is a bannable offense, but then I'd have to admit that DotA is "great" in some way, and I cannot.)

If I wanted to break into the Counter-Strike scene, I'd probably be better off buying Global Offensive... but, again, I still prefer single-player games and care little for competitive FPS. Haters gonna hate, I guess.

1: Sonic the Hedgehog

My first video game console was a Nintendo Entertainment System. (I was actually born just a few years after the console came out and, by the time I played it, the Super Nintendo had already been released in North America, but my parents were thrifty. I'm sure they saved some money by getting an old console, and I was too young to know I was playing with outdated technology, so everyone was happy.) Although I did, eventually, inherit a Sega Genesis from a member of my extended family, this wasn't until years later, and I only ever played the games that I got with the console. Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't one of them.

At this point, I could have gone and bought the game or one of its sequels, but I wasn't interested in collecting old games at the time, and I had no feelings of nostalgia for the spiky Sega mascot. Running fast never seemed like a very cool super-power anyway. To this day, I've never played a Sonic game, with the exception of Sonic Adventure, and that was only for a few dull minutes.

I can't really say I have anything against the Sonic games, since I've never played them. I am, though, a little freaked out by the fanbase with which I'd be associating myself if I actually decided to put the Sonic series on my to-do list. At some point over the past 21 years, the Sonic franchise began to accumulate one of the worst followings in all of video game history.

It's almost difficult to describe what makes Sonic fans so horrifying. While the most hardcore fans of any video game series tend to be a bit kooky, Sonic fans set themselves apart from the rest with some of the worst fan-art and fan-fiction ever created — loads of it — complete with innumerable attempts at "original characters" which essentially amount to badly drawn re-colorings of the original Sonic design. I learned to avoid sites like deviantART because of this stuff.

Almost all fan-art is horrible, and fan-fiction of all kinds is so uniformly bad that I wish copyright holders (particularly of Twilight, Harry Potter, Sonic and every anime) would try a bit harder to crack down on unauthorized use of their intellectual property. At the very least, perhaps this would put an end to the delusion that fan-art is actual art and that a work of fan-fiction will ever be recognized as actual literature. (Please don't use Fifty Shades of Grey as a counter-example; erotic fiction is trash, and by the time it was published, the novel had no doubt shed all connection to Twilight, which is also trash.) Anyone who uploads poorly drawn cartoons of "[insert name here] the Hedgehog" to deviantART, or writes erotic fan-fiction based on Sonic or any other video game involving anthropomorphic animals, deserves to be sued into bankruptcy.

I know that playing the game would not mean participating in this foolishness, but I just can't do it. Playing Sonic the Hedgehog after witnessing what goes on in the terrifying underworld of Sonic fandom would be like watching Signs after seeing a video of Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix viciously beating a small child to death with a couple of crowbars. (Disclaimer: this never actually happened.)