AJ wrote:

Djornson wrote:

AJ wrote:

I, for instance, have zero interest in almost all games that are just a challenge with nothing more.

AJ wrote:

Geometry Wars is extremely good, mechanically. As there's no content progression, I fire it up for a quick blast every couple of months and that's it.

Not quite zero interest then? 

As Tempy says, hard thing to discuss because there is no definition of what is experience and what is game. 

I, for instance, would argue DOOM is game only, there is no experience, no emotion, nothing to learn, just entertainment.

Note the almost. Unless it's going to do something new, I wouldn't even look at another twin stick shooter.

Doom is providing cool things to look at and, with its story, a semblance of intrigue.

Tempy is spot on, though; there's really nowhere for this conversion to go beyond defining terms and some people arguing something is pointless because they aren't interested in it. But then, that's the case with a lot of discussions and people still enjoy them.

Yeah i'm not saying those discussion can't be productive for individuals, and it's certainly interesting to compare and contrast opinions.

People will side with specific definitions, and it'll be interesting to see why people discount or approve certain things, and how they're qualifying that.

Online/Offline was good. I miss it.

I'm a fan of pure gameplay and wouldn't want anything else in some games (who would ask for Resogun to be turned into an experience?).

But a blend of experience and gameplay can also work and add to the overall, err... experience of playing the thing. Dark Souls is a good example - whether the lore or the use of scenic views to convey a sense of the world, none of which detracts from what you're doing. With other games, like Bioshock Infinite, the experience of the story doesn't gel with the gameplay, and you end up with two disjointed parts. Or, in something like new Tomb Raider, the need to develop the character or create cinematic action sequences hobbles the gameplay with scripted events to a degree. In those cases, I'd rather have the gameplay of the old Tomb Raider or a more straightforward FPS.

What I'm also not into at all (I may have mentioned this before) is the sort of pure experience games such as Rapture and Gone Home (the only ones I've played TBH). Both are contrived and dull and I don't see what it adds to the situation that I'm moving through them and activating the scripted events rather than just watching them. I did love Journey, but as AJ says there is stuff to do in that as you go through if you want. Lots of little challenges you can set yourself which actually work with the experience rather than against it.

TL;DR - I always need some gameplay, but experience is also important as long as it complements the gameplay.

Different tact: Movies have zero gameplay, and we're ok with those. So struggling with something that's 90% movie 10% game is either a problem of expectation or an inability for anything meaningful mid-spectrum (at today's quality standards).

I'd argue a bit of both - expecting "games" to be the same is a nonsense, and you need to be expecting something mechanically sparse if our end playing Virginia. But most 90%/10% games above also only offer about 10% "movie" too, so you're only getting what feels like 20% of a complete package.

(With apologies for the nonsense math.)

For me, the big change has been VR. Still cant say I would be onbaord for long stretches but having tried a few things on my mates ps4 - namely the Star Wars game and resi demo - while both work as games the main draw is the experience. The Batman game is also limited but there is no denying there is fun to be had. I'd now be willing to sacrifice quite a lot of gameplay for an immersive experience - discussing it with said friend, I would love a cliffhanger game. As someone who experiences vertigo when 2 feet off the ground, I'll never be able to risk mountain climbing so I'd be curious if VR allows me to experience some of the thrills but with zero risk (well, I could still fall over I suppose)

Generally, I enjoy an immersive story (and not necessarily a good one, most games don't manage that) but I've always find I need to enjoy the game part. So the Arkham Batman games, Spec Ops, Wolfenstien all get thumbs up because they marry generally good game mechanics to generally good story. But If I don't click with the game, its all for nothing as I discovered with Bioshock infinite. The world seemed so interesting to begin with and its lovely to look at but the generally empty gameplay only resulted in me seeing the cracks in the façade of the story and noticing how empty the gameworld was as well, along with how silly the plot was.

The Last Guardian is a poor example to use here, as almost everything that is game about it detracts from the experience, unless you're willing to turn a blind eye. Even better if both eyes are blind and spinning in their sockets.

Just take the camera, it has to show your character at all times as you're in direct control of him, but that sees it end up stuck in walls or showing extreme close ups or Trico's arse and nothing else. If TLG was an animated movie you'd lose that completely, and have an advantage of the camera being positioned by a director to best show characters, environment etc and get far better shots than the in game camera call allow.

With Destiny, I argued that the story got in the way of the game. It was pants, but more than that you had scripted unskippable cut scenes involving characters you didn't care about which made little sense. They were poor first time round, but by the time you'd heard it for the tenth time they were miserable. Better off without them in my opinion, those that want to fill in the blanks could do so with the lore that was available through the grimoires.

So I think it's possible for both to exist and complement each other to make the game better overall, and I'll think on a few examples of that later (Dark Souls springs to mind), but if you don't implement either the game part or the experience part properly you'll detract from the other.

Andy, do some of the side quests in Deus Ex approach what you're getting at? Like saving some people from getting hauled off to the gulag but only because you snuck through places to find gear and info to help them?

All its missing is a bit better writing and more complicated action to get stuff done, but it ticks both boxes.

It's academic I guess if you've played it. It's a side quest which is optional, not always discovered by the player and it has a story thread along the lines of papers please only without repercussions for the player character.

Ideally they should be integrated, not one stuck on top of the other.

Integrated yes, but - in my view - gameplay should always come first. Take Halo for example. The experience was being a Spartan in huge environments. The gameplay was that core loop of weapon juggling and battling the intelligent AI.

You've kind of contradicted yourself there. I wish I was more awake to talk about this, but it'll have to wait.

Narrative

Or not. I don't know why I'm still here.

Well said davy.

You experience a football match as a spectator - you can't really influence. You play the game as a player. Maybe that helps my way of thinking.