There can be an interesting disparity between the way a game is designed to be played and the way it is eventually interpreted by its players. There are a number of reasons for this – bad design, bugs, small misses in QA. This creates situations which are worth looking at.
The inspiration for this article came from Final Fantasy VIII. Let’s get one thing clear, until recently I really did not like this game. I found the gameplay to be boring, repetitive and easy. Monsters levelling with you was on my “crimes against gaming” list. All this, while one of my friends found it to be the best gaming experience of his teenage years.
Okay, there’s no accounting for taste and all that; but this really was polar opposites. We trolled each other about it for a while, eventually I decided I wanted to try it out again, see who was right. Turns out … well we both were.
See, the first time I played, I knew nothing about the game. Sure I understood the systems (although I was too stupid to work out the card game) and knew what was at my disposal, but young as I was I simply exploited the most obviously powerful one available. This being the Guardian Forces, the games version of summoned beings that do a large amount of damage; have a ridiculously long and cool animation and are buffable via a simple spamming of the square button. So, although I enjoyed it when I was younger, I was rather unimpressed that large portions of the game could essentially be completed by pressing one button. A lot.
So I come back to the game after several years and decide I’m going to follow a pair of walkthroughs (one detailing how to play the card game properly, another for the rest of the game) and try it his way. This involves using the ability to junction magic to certain stats and skills to become very powerful with physical attacks and that magic. However, this time around I went too far that way. I spent 30 hours just on the first disk, using the card game to gain access to massively overpowered magic for my stage in the game; using various exploits and abilities to gather the right kind of experience points to buff my characters – to the point where only physical attacks were needed to one- or two-shot any boss.
Two different playstyles, the two extreme points of the triangle that was intended – a mixture of GFs, magic and physicals. One; I’m still enjoying, being able to utterly avoid random battles and simply enjoy the story. I have a guide that tells me where to go for optionals and what the best way to do things are. Was the game designed to be played that way? God knows some parts of JRPGs seem to be deliberately constructed to only be doable with a pre-written guide. The other way, which is much more likely to be how new players go, was entirely dull. The easiest to access, most powerful method that is also very dull and, if what I hear is true, results in the game being uncompletable due to the power of GFs dropping off rapidly.
I never intend to try playing the way it was designed, or trying to do so without a guide. It wouldn’t be as fun. Is this bad design or are the players in the wrong?
Another example of something along these lines is Team Fortress 2. I don’t think that anyone would argue that the original intention for the game was for it to become as popular as it is in the pro scene. It was a pub game, teamwork was helpful and encouraged by game mechanics but not needed on the coordination levels of pro gamers. But, it being a Valve game it was picked up and ran with in the pro scene.
This has been a bit of a success story (and a credit to the development skill of Valve) – the most damaging classes take the most skill to use properly; every class is useful in at least some situations; frag videos are at least as exciting as those from other games.
Valve took it and ran with it, creating systems and balancing based on the pro communities suggestions. This is one of the great things about PC Gaming – the community and the developers have, for years, been able to respond to the demands of different sections of the playerbase easily. What other examples can you ladies and gentlemen think of? Perhaps you’ve done it yourself, created a trend?
