What makes a game great?
When I was in sixth grade, a friend of mine - Racheal - told me her criteria for judging whether a movie was great or not. It was really simple - if she found herself still thinking about it the next day, then it was great. A similar approach could be made with books or TV shows. If she found herself still thinking about a book a couple of days after finishing it, it was great.

A fascinating little tidbit of wisdom from a twelve-year-old. And a pretty useful rule of thumb I still use many years later. I'd like to apply it to games as well. But then you run into problems.

In conventional media, the object is really presented to the audience in a single form. The level of interactivity is very limited, but the presentation is definitely modified by each audience member's mood, familiarity with the topic, the periodicity (how much they read in one sitting), and so forth. In the past, Aint It Cool News made a point of presenting each movie review from the staff with a full accounting of their experience of going to the movie, including the events leading to them being in the theater. If their experience was tainted by someone in the row in front of them who kept coughing through the whole film, they wanted to record that so the readers could understand possible biases.

With games, it's a whole new dimension of interaction. To some degree, the player gets out of it what he puts into it. Games become a filtered mirror that may reflect their own experiences, interests, energy, and personality. How do you judge THAT?

For me, for example, Wing Commander I (and the expansions) is one of the greatest games of all time, because of where I was in my life when I was playing it. I was living with my fiancee's parents in California, but SHE had gone back to Utah to attend school for part of that summer. So here I was in an unfamiliar town where I didn't really know anyone, separated from my wife-to-be, and as a good Mormon boy I wasn't the kind to hang out at the bar after work with my coworkers. I got home at around 5:45 in the evening, and had about five hours to kill before going back to sleep. Of the options I had available to me to battle boredom, I ended up spending a LOT of time playing Wing Commander.

I mean, I studied that game. I think I could have gotten a degree in Wing Commander. I pretty much memorized the stats of every missile and ship in the game that came with the documentation. I could tell you the speed of the various missiles, the armor levels on the different sides of the capital ships, and so forth. I played through the game several times (deliberately failing in some cases to see the 'losing' campaign missions), practically memorized the scripts, and won the big award that came from finishing a perfect campaign.

Yeah, I thought about the game a little bit. Still do, fifteen years later. That may make it great to me, and the game certainly had enough popularity and a following that most people would admit that it was one of the great computer games in our hobby's short history. But could I have put as much energy into something considered more mediocre by the test of time? Say - I don't know - RISE OF THE TRIAD, Apogee's answer to Doom? I think I could have. In fact, I know I could have - I put a ton of effort into a crappy little RPG at one point called "Twilight 2000" - a game which crashed repeatedly right before (I think) the final boss battle. Something I don't think anyone could call great (though one reviewer, noting its incredible shortcomings in spite of what seemed to be a solid premise and game system, called it "Two Thirds of a Great Game.") And I do sometimes wonder what the final battle against Baron Czerny would have been like...

I really did love Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, in spite of its shortcomings. It passed the "thinking about it afterwards" test, and I thoroughly enjoyed the multiplayer game with friends for a couple of months, until its limitations became too frustrating. I dug the storyline, especially the first half in Vienna and Prague, WAY too much. But I don't know of any critics who would call it a great game.

I suspect that Dance Dance Revolution should be considered a "great" game. I don't know why it wouldn't. But I sure don't THINK about it much. It doesn't leave an impression on me or anything. But I sure have fun playing it - and that's the whole point of games, right? - and it also forces me to get exercise as a major added bonus. At least when I'm not still recovering from a sprained ankle.

I can name some objective and subjective elements that can be used to gauge the quality of a game. And of course, many critics would be very nervous about labeling a game as "great" until it has stood the test of time. But is there a simple little rule-of-thumb like my friend Racheal suggested that could be applied to games?

Or does it even matter?

(EDIT: I noticed today that there's a big difference between the subject line - what MAKES a game great - and the actualy topic - how to recognize a great game. Both are good questions. And WAY bigger than could be summed up in a blog entry. I'm just asking questions, I don't have answers...)

Labels: Game Design, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:42 PM (Permalink)