Variety, Social Aspects More Important To Game Success Than Graphics, Plot 236
proslack writes "In a study presented at the Human-Computer Interaction conference in Cambridge, England, British researchers Beale and Bond found that plot and graphics are not critical to the success of video games; price and the inclusion of social aspects (e.g. multiplayer or chat) were found to be more important."
An unfinished version of the paper (PDF) is available from the researchers' web site. They said, "One of the most unexpected findings was that gameplay was not featured as one of the most important categories to fulfill," though they acknowledge that variety and cohesion were measured separately from gameplay, which past studies have not done.
Re:Makes sense (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite example of this is Castle Crashers right now.
I'm lame, and I didn't discover it until about a month ago, but I'll be damned if it's not my favorite game right now. Flash style animation, simple mechanic, funny elements... That's all I really need.
how to you measure such things? (Score:2, Interesting)
Look there are good movies with car chases, a rouge cop and one liners, and there are bad movies with such things. Any kind of list of 'qualities' is useless because it's not what it has it's /how it has them/. I think these researchers time would be better spent dusting books at the library of congress personally. I'm sure you could study a selection of successful literature, come up with a list of "whats most important in a work"
and not only realize it doesn't apply to 90% of the masterpieces out there but also is completely useless in predicting future successes. Honestly this is just a few steps better then voodoo predictions.
Re:Plot... I will miss you (Score:3, Interesting)
Games could always get away without having a decent plot, just as they can today, so I don't think much has changed there. I mean, you can't possibly say with a straight face that Doom, or Age of Empires, or Super Mario Bros had great plots, and those were all classic games.
I also wouldn't say that there's a lack of plot in games today. Lots of games are still about telling a great story (RPGs, Heavy Rain, the Halo series, Bioshock) just as much as they are about fun gameplay. There are still both games with and without great plot, just as there were in years gone by.
Re:Nahh (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a new dream though. It isn't as big as the old dream, but it could be potentially more fun. Game Master driven CRPGS. I know they have them already, but I'd want to do one well. Theoretically, you can get a better experience through a computer than Pencil and Paper. And with computer you can play with people who all aren't in the same physical location. This dream isn't big enough to pursue however. I have so many things on my plate that I want to do.
Games list? MUD's. (Score:2, Interesting)
idle gossip (Score:5, Interesting)
The PBS special, titled "The Brain's Big Bang", suggested gossip accounts for 2/3 of our speech activity. The episode went on to offer the now widely touted conjecture that social networking may have been one of the prime movers behind development of our comparatively big brains. Idle conjecture can take it to a simpler, more fundamental level. Apoptosis or programmed cell death is thought to be initiated by lack of inter cellular communication. Cells programme themselves to die when they no longer receive communications requiring them to live. It's easy to extrapolate from those findings to an individual's need to socially interact.
Re:Plot... I will miss you (Score:5, Interesting)
I played WoW for the arenas and always laughed to myself at the nerds who cared about the backstory of Archimonde and blah blah blah. The plot in these games is just a device to move the game forward. A boss that respawns every week and exists in infinitely many instances does not make for an interesting plot. When I want good stories, I read books.
Re:Maybe true for the teeny-boppers (Score:3, Interesting)
Older, but only sightly. Too old, and you may realize we already have a way to get a good plot, and they're called "books". No, all it matters to me is gameplay and yes, the "social aspect" you deride so much. Give me a fun game, and an easy way to find others who play it, and I'm all set.
That's why my favorite RPG is Guild Wars, the plot may be an endless stream of cliches and the graphics may not be anywhere near as good as those of Mass Effect or the latest Final Fantasy, but the battle system is fun as hell and, being halfway between a "regular" RPG and a MMO, the social aspect is second to none.
DOS based games (Score:5, Interesting)
I got old MS-DOS formatted floppy disks that have my old DOS games on it. I am finding new use with them via DOSBox [dosbox.com].
Modern games, mostly Windows based DirectX memory eating and bloated but full of 3D graphics and surround sound audio aren't as good to play as the old DOS games. The old DOS games had a limited memory system and most were written in assembly or C and had to fit in under 12M of RAM using XMS or EMS etc RAM that extended over the 640K of DOS. They didn't have gigabyte hard drives back then and had to fit games on 120M hard drives or lower. They only had 640x480 VGA graphics and Sound Blaster 16 Pro audio.
How many remember Syndicate, XCOM, Dune II, Master of Orion 1 and 2, Master of Magic, Bard's Tale (EGA graphics and no sound card support but the Bard's Tale Construction set fixed that with VGA and Sound Blaster support), and other classic DOS games?
I heard a rumor that the classic DOS games are coming back via online services for $5 each because modern games don't have that enjoyability that the old 1990's DOS games had, plus people are learning how to run old games via DOSBOX or emulators that run DOS operating systems. The online services allows a DOSBox type DOS emulator/environment to run the DOS video game in it.
Almost every gaming company is trying to get the best graphics and sound effects, and it seems like they followed the Doom first person shooter model too closely with variations and modifications to it and forgot to make it entertaining and mean something via those social aspects of it. Not just chatting with other players, but the social aspects of going up against a computer controlled AI opponent(s). One of the few modern games that does that is Civilization IV, but it is basically the same game since Civilization II (or the original Civilization for DOS and the SNES) with more graphics and sounds added to it with movies and animation and then some bonus features but still plays the same as the original pretty much. Send settlers to build cities, take your civilization from the stone age to modern times without an enemy civilization taking yours out and develop technology for stronger military units and improvements to cities and world wonders. But in order to bring it to video game console units they had to dumb it down to Civilization Revolutions.
People want a game that is challenging, but they can set the level of difficulty. Sometimes the turns based game is better than the first person shooter realtime game that eats up lots of RAM and hard drive space for all of the animation and sound. Think of Tetris and other innovative games that did something different from all of the rest, and didn't need the animation graphics and sound effects to win over gamers. Just have an easy to use interface that doesn't require a user manual to be read in order to play it. Some of the best video games the player just clicked the start button and then just joined in the game learning as they went along. Which is what saved games are for, if you mess up, load a saved game before you messed up so you can avoid it.
Re:Makes sense (Score:2, Interesting)
at which point the social aspects of the game will be very diminished, which is an interestinng downside to this new trend of social gaming.
Or you could look at it another way - once the game is no longer being hyped by advertisers, most of those who remain will be real fans of the game (and thus usually people who don't need help or beg for sh*t etc), or people introduced to the game by those already fans (thus won't be needing help from you either), or those doing the same thing as you (who I guess would at least *tend* to be more intelligent, though of course not all bargain hunters are Einstein).. So theoretically it can be a positive.
Exactly (Score:2, Interesting)
While game makers might like the idea, I don't. Give me just games which I can play whenever I want without needing Internet connection. And don't worry, in the rare cases when I want to play online I'll do it, just don't try killing the offline gaming.
Re:Quake, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps my memory is failing me, but what had better graphics than Quake when it was released?
Re:Doubt it... (Score:3, Interesting)
You place multiplayer capabilities at #374? Seriously?
Given the lame state of games on most servers, I don't place multiplayer very high either.
See The More Things Change [penny-arcade.com] for an example among many...