Geekcentricity’s Gaming Guide – Video Version

You’ve been naughty.  I thought we had an agreement.  In my last post, I said that I was going to show you mine, but first you had to show me yours.  Well, nobody bared their dirty little naked video game secrets for me.  What am I supposed to do, just show you mine without your reciprocation?  What do you think I am?  An exhibitionist?  Easy?

Okay.  You’re right.  I am easy.  But you’ve still been naughty.  You all deserve to be spanked.  Except you.  Yeah, that’s right.  YOU. You still deserve it, but you’d enjoy it too much.  Everyone else, line up and prepare for your punishment.

Since I can’t virtually spank anyone (I don’t even have a copy of Record of Agarest War for XBOX 360 to pretend with either), the only punishment I have available is to go ahead and share my little manifesto on what I look for in a video game.

The other day I was browsing my feed reader and came across an excellent post on Kotaku by Luke Plunkett called “What Are You Looking For In A Video Game?” Working in the video game industry (and I use a loose definition of the term) for the past few years, I have often thought about this question.  I’m pretty selective in my game purchases.  When I purchase a game, I usually don’t run home, play it all the way through in one sitting and then rush back to the store to trade it in on something shiny and new.  I usually purchase games for the long haul.  I make a commitment.  It’s rare that I ever trade a game in.  If it’s not something I’m going to want to keep, then I usually don’t make the purchase.  That’s what rental is for.  Of course, I’m a collector.  If I love a movie, I buy the DVD.  I have a huge book collection.  I have close to a thousand audio CD’s.  Hell, I even own a ton of LP’s on vinyl and almost as many audio cassettes (thought my 8-track collection disappeared somewhere along the way).  No, if I am going to drop $60 or so on a game, it had better be worth keeping.

My preferences in video games may not be anything like yours, but I have standards.  Sometimes I lower them to get what I want, but hey, who doesn’t, right?  So, if you want to know what I look for in a video game, then you have come to the right place.  Using Luke’s post as a guide (and some gratuitous alliteration, here is my:

Geekcentricity’s Gaming Guide – Video Version

Story Is King - I’m not saying that the game has to have the equivalent of a Pulitzer or Hugo award quality story, but I like the events of the game to be basically story-driven.  I know that it’s been debated whether or not games can tell an effective story, and Chuck Wendig has several excellent posts on his blog about this very topic (here, here, here, and here).  If you’re interested in the topic, I highly recommend reading them.  Regardless, I like to feel that there is a story driving the action and that I am advancing that story as I play the game.  Also, the story must be interesting/intriguing to me.  An example of this is Grand Theft Auto IV.  Now, a GTA game, or most “sandbox” games for that matter, doesn’t usually have a strong story to drive it.  This one, and the subsequent Lost & Damned and Ballad of Gay Tony expansions, were exceptions.  From the first trailer, where we learn about our protagonist, Niko Bellic, the poor immigrant who came to our country trying to escape his sordid past and make a better future only to find that this new land of opportunity was just as soaked in blood, corruption and violence as the world he left behind, I was hooked.  Sure, that story has been done countless times in almost every medium imaginable, but there’s a reason for that.  I love books and movies, and I’m okay if a game plays like a movie with the player getting to make some of the decisions that affect the direction of the story.  Which brings me to…

Decisions That Matter - I like it when the choices I make have some impact on the direction of the story.  I don’t care if you have the most well-crafted story ever presented in video game form; if you don’t let the player (me) affect that story with the decisions I make in the game, your not going to hold my interest.  A few years ago, I was really looking forward to the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.  I love mob stories.  I’m a huge fan of the Godfather movies, along with Reservoir Dogs and other “crimeland cinema.”  The story behind Kane & Lynch is a good one, I just got the feeling when I was playing that the writers thought it was so good that they didn’t want me to ruin it.  In other words, I don’t just want to press buttons because that’s what I’m supposed to do when my button pressing doesn’t affect the outcome (except potentially causing my character’s death).

Contextual Prompts Kill Me - I am definitely not a fan of gratuitous contextual prompts.  To me, these are a metagame conceit.  They kill my suspension of disbelief.  I don’t have great hand-eye coordination or reflexes.  I don’t want to have a “press A 16 times in rapid succession then press B and hold it for 3 seconds” pissing contest with a machine.  Why am I pressing “A” all in this context when for the rest of the game, that button does something else?  Make the controls consistent and not a county fair midway contest.  Resident Evil 5, while a good game overall, was full of pointless contextual prompt pissing contests that pulled me out of the engaging story and reminded me that I was holding a controller.  Instead, keep me in the story and let me use the same controls I learned at the beginning of the game.  Even though I’m a huge fan of survival horror (and horror in general) Resident Evil 5 got traded in as soon as I finished it (and I had the collector’s edition).  I almost never do that.  I just hated replaying the same 10 minute scene a dozen times just because I couldn’t get the button sequence straight.  Leading me right into…

Accessibility - Like I said, I don’t have great hand-eye coordination or reflexes.  Blame my mother for smoking when she was pregnant if you want, just don’t make a game unplayable to me because of it.  When I read a book, the author doesn’t make me do strength tests to see if I’m worthy of getting to the ending (unless we’re talking about Stephen King’s The Stand: Complete & Uncut Edition).  When I watch a movie, I don’t have to press random buttons on the remote control to get to the next scene.  The “Play” button always does the same thing.  Don’t make me learn complex button sequences (see above).  Don’t make me feel stupid and uncoordinated by forcing me to repeat large sections of the game ad nauseam until my eyes glaze over and I start to drool on my controller.  Let me get immersed into the game and keep it moving forward. the aforementioned Kane & Lynch and Resident Evil 5 are offenders here, while Bioshock is a great example of how to keep me immersed in the story by keeping the game accessible.  Accessibility also goes for the supplemental materials that are packaged with, or available for, a game.  I want a clear, well written instruction manual.  I want the option of a quality strategy guide (I like the printed book better than having to stop playing, get up and walk to the computer, find the information I need, then go back to the 360 and start playing again) with maps and clear, concise descriptions and bulleted lists of things like achievemens and such.

Social Experience If Appropriate - Sometimes I purchase a game so that I can enjoy playing online with my friends.  Like it or not, gaming has become a social medium.  Back in my old life (and profession), I used to play the occasional round of golf for the social connections that came with chasing a small, round, white object across acres of chemically treated grass, braving snakes and sometimes even large alligators (because my golf balls were always equipped with homing devices that sought out water, woods, and even sand).  Now, in some circumstances, video games serve the same function for me as a round of golf did then (and a video game is cheaper than a single round of golf).  So, I do own some games just for purely social reasons.  One of the best social games I’ve played is Call of Duty: World at War.  Besides having Kiefer Sutherland as one of its voice actors, it allows players on XBOX Live that are in a party together to stay in party chat.  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t allow this, so it isn’t as good as a social experience.  Party chat allows me to talk to my friends and saves me from having to listen to all of the 8 year old kids curse like salty sailors while they teabag each other.  Just as importantly, don’t try to shoehorn a social experience into a game that doesn’t lend itself to that.  Some games just don’t need a social element.  The original Bioshock is a work of art and a complete game, without a multiplayer option.  Same for Fallout 3.  Have you ever played the multiplayer on Bioshock 2?  This is a game that didn’t need a social element.  Don’t force it.  So many games are trying to be Call of Duty to capture a segment of  that multiplayer audience.  There are enough Call of Duty clones out there already, so stick to what your game does best.  And yes, Dead Space 2 design team, I’m talking to you.

Quality Acting  - The acting, voice or motion capture, doesn’t have to be Oscar quality, but it shouldn’t look like something from the big screen on MST3K (somebody seriously needs to make a show like that for video games).  Bad acting is bad acting no matter the medium.  Good acting, like Mark Hamill as the Joker in Batman: Arkham Asylum, can take a good game and turn it into a great game.  Like I said before, just being chastised by Jack Bauer, I mean Kiefer Sutherland,  in Call of Duty: World at War, made me want to do better, so that I could hear him say, “Nice work, Marines!”  Even animation should be considered along with the acting.  Don’t have the character make inane and inappropriate hand gestures while talking, or give her a flirtatious, inviting facial expression while she’s telling me about the giant creatures who kidnapped her child.

Beauty Is Only Pixel Deep, But It’s Important - I want to play games that look good.  If I want to play something that looks like it was made 20 years ago, I’ll pull out my NES.  There are some games being made today with incredible visual realism.  LA Noir looks like it’s going to be a revolutionary game in this aspect (especially if Red Dead Redemption is indicative of where Rockstar is going graphically).  Good graphics are, to me, as important as good controls.  Graphics problems (among other things) killed Alone In the Dark and made The Saboteur less than it could have been.  On the other hand, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a beautiful, nearly photorealistic game.  Color is an important consideration here.  Fallout 3 used some green hues to give the world that post-apocalyptic look, but looking at that green-tinted scenery for hours on end made me feel nauseous.  Try changing your HUD color to blue to save your eyes on that one (I’m glad the player gets that option in Fallout 3).

Controls That Make Sense - If you’ve ever played the Saw game, you probably found it next to impossible to shoot with any accuracy (unfortunately, Alan Wake is proving fairly difficult in this regard as well).  Give me a control scheme that makes sense and stick with it.  The Medal of Honor games had a great control scheme.  I like the controls in them better than in the Call of Duty games.  The designers of both franchises understand that you need to be consistent though.

If I Wanted To Ride the Rails, I’d Take the Train - I love traveling by train.  Actually, it’s my preferred method of travel.  I don’t have to drive, but I do have the time to relax en route to my destination (airplanes just get me there too fast) and the freedom to get up and move around.  I just don’t like games that treat me like I’m on a railroad.  I don’t want to be given only one path between point A and point B.  Scene blocks are the bane of my existence.  It really bothers me when I’m walking down a street in a game and I suddenly come to a jumbled stack of debris that blocks my path.  I know… My beloved Silent Hill games are egregious offenders in this category.  I believe that even a survival horror game can be made with a wider path, if not an open-world environment.  Kane & Lynch (yes, I keep picking on this title) was a game that punished the player for trying to take an alternate path between objectives.  If you tried to deviate even a little, the game forced you back onto the tracks.  Dragon Age: Origins, for all of its visual beauty, was also a bit on the restrictive side in this regard.  On the other end of the spectrum, I rarely felt boxed in on Bioshock.  Also, Rockstar is the king of open-world games.  They give me choices and let me forge my own way through the landscape.  Also, Fallout 3 has such a huge world that just exploring it can take dozens of hours.

Time is Money - Time and money are both things I never seem to have enough of.  When I was a teenager, my friends and I used to have games of Risk that lasted for weeks (our parents loved having the board set up on a table in the middle of the living room for long periods of time).  We used to play Dungeons & Dragons almost every day (sometimes all day… sometimes all day & all night and all day the next day).  I no longer have the luxury of time.  I work a more than full time job.  I have a family (my wife & dog count as a family).  I have household responsibilities and recently started a small business.  I also have my writing projects.  Every now and then, I even need to sleep.  I don’t have anywhere near as much time for games as I would like.  Even though I love huge, immersive open-world games with hundreds of hours of content (Fallout 3, Fable II and GTA IV, I’m staring at YOU), I rarely have the time to make a sizable dent in them.  So, those games take me years to finish.  Yes.  You read that correctly.  Not months.  Years.  Hell, I’m a fast reader.  I can read a 300 page book in about 6 hours.  Still, because of the size and scope of it, Stephen King’s The Stand: Complete & Uncut Edition (one of my favorite books) took me about 3 months to read (so maybe King did give me an endurance test on that one).  I even have to plan my schedule carefully to fit in a 2 hour movie (don’t even get me started on fitting in a trip to the time sink known as Wal-Mart – I have a theory that time passes differently there than in the outside world), and once I get behind on a tv series, it takes me forever to catch up (Supernatural, I promise I’ll be catching up soon).  For these reasons, I like my games to be built with modern time commitments in mind.  An ideal game, for me, would be about 6-8 hours long OR divided into segments of manageable length.  I finished Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in a single sitting.  So far, Alan Wake is working well in that respect.  It’s constructed in an episodic format, like a television series, with episodes that are self-contained enough that I can stop playing after I finish one and not feel like I’ve lost all momentum in the story if I don’t get to play again for a few days.  For all its faults, Alone In the Dark was built in similar fashion.  Even GTA IV gives me short story arcs/missions so that I can do the same thing.  On the other hand, Fable II is a game I look at on the shelf and am not sure when I’ll be able to get back to it.  I don’t remember where I was in the story and quickly lost all momentum after not playing it for a while.  The time I spend gaming is a valuable investment and I want to spend it wisely.

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So, there you have it.  My gaming manifesto.  I realize that some of these points fly in the face of conventional thoughts about video games.  So what?  It’s my list.  You’re welcome, in fact I encourage you, to make your own list.

I’ve shown you mine.  It’s hanging out here for the whole world to see.  I even wrote it while on some heavy pain medication (I rarely take anything stronger than OTC Ibuprofen, so this has been adventure).  Now it’s your turn.  Show me yours.  What do you look for in a video game?