Discuss. 
I read it and I agree.
RDR2 is the prettiest and worst designed game Iâve seen. There is no decisions for you to make. The game plays itself. Itâs an impressive theme park ride but not a game.
It seems like most the AAA games Iâve played lately are like that though. Theyâre just haphazardly copying novel mechanics from the last big hit.
A favorite quote by Stavros Melissinos: âA writer who does nothing but write is like the moon, which gives off some light, but borrowed from the sun.â
This is what is happening. Company who is making games solely with intent to produce profit can only borrow light from others. WIth slavish effort they can create something impressive, but nothing lasting and meaningful.
It will stay like this because games is big business now. Every once in awhile a work created with passion will cause a stir, then all the bottom feeders will come in after and scrape every morsel they can.
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Fair enough, but what can we as game designers do to make sure we donât fall into the same trap? âDonât suckâ is sound but not very helpful advice.
The writer raised an interesting point about making sure your chores have meaningful rewards. If thereâs crafting, side quests should provide some juicy ingredients. If your game uses gear, I guess it could provide good gear. Money might work but only if your game doesnât have a major inflation problem (as almost all games do). Something really unique, like getting your own house you can stay in, or furnishings/decorations for it, might be best.
I think quests that have some interesting story can work too, whether they are part of the main story or a side plot. I recall actually caring about a few of the side-quest stories in Oblivion. But itâs a tricky business⌠I think many gamers click through dialog as quickly as they can, and really donât care about your exposition. To work the stories need to be genuinely interesting, not âmy farm is being raided by boars, please kill 5X of them so I can get back to workâ or âmy love has spurned me, bring me 8X rare flowers so I can win her back.â
Basically I think itâs all about accomplishment (oops, Iâm on that again!). The author of this opinion piece hates his RDR2 chores because they donât seem to accomplish anything. Gimme some new ability, or some noticeable improvement in my living situation, and Iâll go to bed feeling like it was time well spent.
agree with all ^^^
i only pointed out what I thought was wrong. You explained what would be more right.
Iâll add one thing. The best kind of accomplishment (for me anyway) is one that you identify yourself, you make a plan to achieve it, you carry out the plan, face some unforseen problem, and then in the end you get the reward you set out to achieve.
That is where RDR2 lost me. I remember that I saw you could craft some bear outfit. I thought, well hunting bears sounds really cool. I wanna hunt bears. So i spent a few hours hunting bears. But the actual gameplay involved in hunting bears was boring, repetitive, and mindless. Zero challenge, only a test of patience. Then when I finally got the items to make the outfit, I realized that it did nothing meaningful. And it looked silly. So, so much for all of that.
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I think the problem with these games is that they try to maximize player freedom in a way that clashes with the concept of a ârealisticâ game. Itâs fine to enable players to do anything they want in minecraft, but when you have a setting like that, with a realistic presentation of characters and civilization, the implicit idea is that the player will encounter a similar realism in the way that the game world reacts to their actions.
Instead of focusing on adding meaningful structure to the game world, such as the way that characters in the game treat the player on the basis of their actions, the game focuses on enabling the player to do more numerous mundane things, and abandons the deeper elements of the game to conform to some superficial rule-set such as a progression/XP mechanic. The result is that the game is so whiz-bang-realistic that you can wash your face and wipe your a$$, but when you shoot someone in the head everyone forgets about it 5 seconds later.
It appears to me that the âsacredâ rule of maximizing player freedom has been so overdone that it has deteriorated into freedom from consequence, which renders everything meaningless. It seems that the only time that the game will force a player to do something is to essentially force them to participate in some additional game mechanic that they would otherwise not be particularly interested in, rather than constrain the range or outcome of a playerâs actions in a way that makes it meaningful.
Again, this is a problem that I think is particularly related to realistic games, where the visual realism carries with it a symbolism of a world that is structured and full of realistic rules, but when the player digs deeper they find only a few superficial progression systems, and all the visual realism does is make the game seem more disappointing.
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I didnât play RDR2, but Iâve played other open-world games, hardly any of which Iâve completed in the last decade because I get bored. For example, Skyrim and Fallout 4 open with some introduction to the story, you get a sense that who you are and what you do is supposed to matter in terms of some other event(s) going on in the game world, but then you spend countless in-game days/months doing all kinds of things that donât impact that main story line at all. There is no urgency. The world is a dream in which nothing happens unless youâre there to experience or drive it.
The original Fallout gave you something like 100 in-game days to complete the game due to the state of the world when you start it. By contrast, Skyrim has a civil war going on, though absolutely nothing happens with regard to that civil war unless you make it happen - no villages change hands, no major events, nothing. Even Fallout 3 - dad disappeared to go take care of something that was a big deal, so I guess Iâm going to spend six game months doing everything but go look for him.
They like to tout how much area the playable game world covers, and bigger is celebrated as better, but man I feel like thereâs just so much filler thrown in. Iâd like to see them focus more on depth, rather than breadth.
I think the sense of having a living game world/universe works better in 4X strategy games because the world is changing whether you want it to or not. You have the urgency to be involved and do meaningful things because you might actually lose the game if you donât care.
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This! I donât like quests like this. I couldnât get into the original Borderlands game because the first quests were similar to this. Time-consuming grinding that I donât find interesting or exciting. MMOs are rife with this but at least you can group up and make it more interesting with other people.
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I kind of think that the âissuesâ with RDR2 are that itâs a niche game that happens to also be a blockbuster.
Iâve only played a comparatively small amount of the game, but I definitely agree it has its issues. The standard whole-world-waits-for-the-player thing is one of them, volatile difficulty is another, and Iâll take the articleâs word on resource imbalances because thatâs a pretty common issue. However, the mundane tasks arenât one of them⌠to me.
I see RDR2 as a Period Drama in video game format. Itâs not so much about what happens as it is about the vibe and atmosphere of the time itâs set in. I donât think they pad out horse rides because theyâre eeking out as long a run time as they can, I think theyâre trying to give you the feeling of plodding through the wilderness on a horse. I think they get you to do all those mundane tasks because, despite what we see in action-oriented spachetti westerns, being a cowboy isnât all shootouts and quick draw duels and horse chases. Most of itâs just living, and even when youâre on the run most of itâs at a snailâs pace compared to what weâre used to today.
That article compares RDR2 to Fortnite and all but says that Fortnite is superior because it better addresses short attention spans. I primarily refute that aspect of the article, because being slow isnât worse, itâs just different. While I do enjoy fast paced games I donât need every single game I play to be fast paced, and I enjoy playing slow games too. Acting as if a game is inferior because of a deliberately slow of pace is folly. Some people enjoy that, and itâs good to make games for those people, too.
Shenmue wasnât some warning against the tedium of simulating life, as the author says. Itâs a game that did something unique, and did it well. It just didnât do it for everybody, and nor are those games supposedly following in its footsteps. And thereâs nothing wrong with that.
Thereâs something else in that article that I think is worth raising:
The idea of a game is that itâs meant to be entertaining in and of itself. If playing a game âfeel[s ] like workâ and youâre bothered that youâre not being âcompensated for [your] effortâ then the game clearly doesnât work for you. Thatâs cool, there are plenty of well regarded games I donât like either⌠so I donât play them.
Furthermore, getting more game is 100% my favorite reward for doing stuff in a game. As long as Iâm enjoying it then finding side quests, new levels, challenges, whatever⌠yes please! Playing the game is why Iâm there, so if youâre going to give me more then awesome. And the moment Iâve had enough and donât want more⌠cool, Iâll stop.
I think this criticism in the article is misplaced. The issue isnât a lack of compensation or meaningful incentive. Itâs that the mechanics are only skin deep. In Fortnite the rewards in and of themselves arenât what make the âchoresâ fun, itâs that the chores themselves are meaningful decisions: What chores do you do? Where do you do them? How well / quickly can you do them? (Iâm guessing. Iâve never played Fortnite.) Itâs all tied into a dynamic, competitive risk-reward model that, in what Iâve played, simply doesnât exist in RDR2, presumably because it just doesnât fit the experience they were trying to make.
Not every game needs to make the player feel good by making a big deal of showering them with shiny, made up rewards. That works well for some games, but I think itâs unhealthy to rely on it as a default for all things in all games.
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I think you raise a lot of interesting points, but Iâm going to pick on this one a little bit:
I dunno about the author of the original article, but I wasnât thinking about shallow rewards of the Candy-Crush sugary praise sort (âAwesome! Amazing! Hereâs some stars and fireworks!â). I was thinking about rewards in terms of things that actually matter, i.e. increase your capabilities in some way. Like in Tron Evolution (my favorite underrated game), where a quest might give you some entirely new attack or a previously unheard-of ability to wall-run or whatever. Or in virtually any of the LEGO games, where side quests at least provide pips (currency) which can be spent not only for cosmetic upgrades (which are fluffy), but also to unlock new abilities or even new playable characters with different abilities, and with those, you can reach areas of the game that were unreachable before (which ties into your âmore gameâ point).
On the other hand, I totally dig your point that a game can be intentionally slow-paced and about the atmosphere, and this may be just what some players are in the mood for. Or that seemingly shallow/pointless quests are just fine if you just enjoy being in the world and need something to do. But on the gripping hand, Iâm totally with @BrainwavesToBinary about games that open with some incredibly pressing crises, and then expect you to ignore it for months while you wander around doing odd jobs.
Iâll tell you what, all of this great discussion has fed my urge to make an RPG to a level it hasnât been in a very long time (if ever). (Itâs possible that has also been fed by playing Ni no Kuni, which is better than any other RPG Iâve played.) My dream RPG would attempt to feature the following:
- any unfolding world crisis proceeds to unfold, whether you participate or not
- âŚbut your participation can impact how that unfolds and what the resulting world looks like
- quests are relatively few, but have deep stories that really affect their characterâs lives
- if you kill somebody, other characters around you react appropriately (if this is even possible⌠Ni no Kuni manages to be a fun game without any murder at all, if you can imagine that)
- to provide plenty of gameplay despite relatively few quests, a deep economic system will allow for plenty of self-directed trading/crafting to build wealth (or other measure of success)
- any wealth you build can be spent on meaningful things, like your own private house/estate
Of course I realize that (1) this would be a huge project, and (2) even if executed perfectly, it wouldnât be for everyone. But it seems like it would be a quite different game than most RPGs, even though it would look similar on the surface, and I find that interesting.
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I agree with this, I think the idea that receiving a âphysicalâ reward at the end makes the player feel satisfied with mundane quests and mechanics is a very superficial reading. Thereâs no excuse for something fundamentally boring being in a game, and thereâs nothing that can redeem it afterward. Itâs either fun in the context of itself and what came before it, or it doesnât belong.
I think the only reason why those things are there is because players demand bigger and more interactive games, but designers translate that into some boring mechanic with an ad-hoc connection to whatever superficial progression/economic systems they are working on. The result is more work and less play, but itâs bigger.
Iâm a bit disappointed to see that games that are essentially economic transactions of player time for something, no matter what that something is, are getting such a grip on things (and killing franchises that previously werenât constructed that way). It doesnât have to include microtransactions to be simply poor value - even games that simply use large amounts of grind to flesh out the content are dragging down the quality tremendously. Games are not played for an economic reward, they are played for fun and meaning, and nothing in a game should ever sell itself on the basis of a transaction of time for something afterward, least of all the ability to continue playing.
I think the best example of âside questsâ done well is the Mass Effect sidekick-focused missions, where something that was essentially irrelevant to the main path through the game, rather than being meaningless, was (at least for me) equally or even more meaningful than the main quest itself, because the designers took the time to integrate something you cared about (isnât that what the whole point is?) into the content. Even better than this would be to integrate the entire game world into any quest (which I think is the point youâre making).
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One point I wanted to make is that itâs possible to inject huge amounts of âreactionâ to the player through dialogue, cutscenes or written information in a way that doesnât force you to create very complex mechanics to make the world change (most of which the player probably wonât notice).
For example, if you shoot some random person in the head, just hearing an NPC mutter to another later on âisnât that the person who randomly killed someone the other day? Must be a lunatic.â Or even a positive reaction, it doesnât matter. The result is that the playerâs imagination is set off about who they are and how they are seen by the game world.
The reason I say this is because itâs often hard, it seems to me, to create really effective built-in mechanics that are efficient at conveying a message to the player. For example, if someone chased the player down and shot them, either the player will die (and feel annoyed that an action in the game is a âdead endâ, or contradicts other things they are âallowedâ to do) or the player will be forced to multiply the original anomaly by continuing to shoot people (which they might do anyway) until the game canât possibly react in a reasonable manner.
Based on my own experience, I think players subconsciously translate virtual actions into a sort of equivalence value that allows even a small reaction value to fit and be satisfying. The same way a player would say âI fell fifteen feet and now the game wants me to lie in hospital for half an hour with a broken leg? Thatâs ridiculous!â they also might say âOK I shot someone randomly and now people are âsuspiciousâ of me? Actually thatâs a strong reaction, I wonder whatâs going on there?â and the NPC behaviour doesnât actually need to really change to make the reaction felt.
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Thereâs always a tension between freedom and maintaining the game. Shopkeepers in many games are usually the toughest badasses in the game â far stronger than any boss â because the designers simply donât want you to kill them (but are trying to give you the illusion of freedom by letting you try). That always struck me as odd; if this fruit merchant is so tough, why doesnât the king send him out to slay the big bad?
But I get it: if you can kill the shopkeeper and loot his store, it rapidly becomes a very different game. But perhaps this is just another view on the âsandboxâ vs. âstory-drivenâ tension. In a sandbox RPG, it would be very interesting to try and give merchants and guards ordinary amounts of strength, and if you kill them, have natural consequences (witnesses flee in terror and summon more guards, who hunt you for the rest of your days, etc.). Of course this only plays out ârealisticallyâ if you donât end up with superhuman hero powers, and that also breaks standard RPG tropes that players expect and appreciate.
But if your game is story-driven, rather than sandbox, then actions that would break the game (or are blatantly out of character) shouldnât even be an option. This is how Ni no Kuni works. But there the illusion of freedom is very thin; you know youâre playing out a very particular story, and that itâs going to play out in more or less the same way for everybody who finishes it. Thatâs fine if you buy into it, but does feel limiting sometimes.
âŚGame design is hard. 
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The problem with RDR2âs chores is that they had no payoff.
In real life if I sweep the floor, then my house is clean and i feel better and I work better. And wife is happy. meaningful payoff.
In RDR2 most of the chores you do just end and there is no payoff. And there isnât any satisfaction in the chores themselves because the controls are bad and the whole game is basically contextual animations that happen on cue. Very little player input besides deciding where to go.
To put it simply, the loop that happens in my mind while playing RDR2 is this:
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Invent a goal to accomplish - coincides with some immersive fantasy i want to believe
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goal aim is to make some noticeable difference in the play experience
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Time investment to attain goal
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goal achieved makes no noticeable difference
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dissappointment
when the time investment to reach dissappointing goal outcome is in the hours, refund please.
In a way I think itâs not just whether itâs a sandbox, but also whether the game presents in a realistic way (the art of Red Dead is a story in itself). All that detail to create immersion is ridiculed by the playerâs ability to do random crazy stuff.
I think toon/stylized characters and settings work well for games that want to add more un-managed player freedom, with the (obviously limited) resources for the game world to react often used for something very funny or memorable which makes it worthwhile for the player even if not totally realistic.
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Spending five minutes on a time investment of boredom is enough to lose me. A time investment doesnât make me value the reward any more, although a fun challenge would.
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I remembered liking the first Red Dead and I was pretty hyped for the second, so I gave it as much patience as I could. But yeah, typically if i am playing something without any preconceptions about it, if Iâm turned off in 10 minutes I just refund.
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So then⌠what kind of payoff would make sweeping a floor in RDR2 ok?
I can imagine sweeping a floor being engaging if thereâs some mechanical interest to it. Maybe I have to balance doing a thorough job against being finished before someone arrives. Or maybe I need to get a bunch of âchoresâ done and need to prioritise, knowing I donât have time to do everyhing and trying to achieve some desirable outcome.
Or if sweeping a floor is a part of evoking a feel or atmosphere then I could be ok with that, too, as long as the overall context is engaging.
But if a game literally wants me to do stuff I donât like, just so I can keep playing to also do more stuff I donât like⌠I donât care what the payoff is. Iâm outta there. Iâm not wasting any of my precious game playing time on that.
If you ignore the rewards then are the quests in Tron Evolution engaging? By which I mean, would you play the quests even if they werenât linked to these rewards?
Thatâs actually a misleading question, because the point Iâm driving at is that these things canât be looked at in isolation.
Linking actions and ârewardsâ makes a lot of sense in many games. However, when the author of the article talks about making rewards âmeaningfulâ his examples both directly tie the action taken into the greater context of a gameâs mechanics.
When chopping down a tree vs. digging up some rocks (or whatever) the interesting part isnât necessarily the action of chopping or digging. (In many games thatâs boiled down to a âhold E to chopâ and thatâs not being complained about here, as far as I understand.) And chopping or digging doesnât suddenly become fun if an arbitrary number changes as a result. (I know âIdle Gamesâ shoot this in the head. I honestly have no answer to that.) What does make getting wood in Fortnite engaging is that youâre not just collecting wood. Youâre exchanging one resource (time) for another (wood) in order to achieve some objective (build a fort) which is a part of a longer term prusuit (win the game). In other words, the chopping is just one part of a larger, integrated activity.
In this case the author isnât into the larger, integrated activity, so I canât see how any rewards given could be âmeaningfulâ to them.
I think the game Jalopy is a good example of this kind of thing. You limp a busted old car from petrol station to petrol station, hoping to find valuable stuff on the roadside as you journey from A to B. The car is falling apart, so you constantly need to stop and repair it, and buy spare parts by selling random things you find along the way. Thatâs it. I donât think you can even lose. I distinctly remember my wife being pleased to find a crate of sardine cans (or similar) by the side of the road, and the only value was that she could exchange them for spare parts to keep limping the jalopy along.
The reward only has value in the context of the game, so if youâre not enjoying the game then the reward can not have value.
Generally yes â they are good (correctly balanced for me) twitch challenges with plenty of variety, so yeah, they are fun to play (and generate a sense of accomplishment) in their own right. Having meaningful rewards (powering up your character) just makes the satisfaction of beating them so much deeper.
Iâm doing a second playthrough of Subnautica currently. I started it because Iâm so unenthusiastic about all the other games on my list and I tremendously enjoyed my first playthrough of it. I have to say it still holds my interest really well, more than I expected. Arguably the game is a nonstop grind and chore if you want to apply an uncharitable interpretation of the core loop, but everything is thematically logical and supporting the survival fantasy that youâre living in this game, and all the grind unlocks new gear that unlocks new fun things to do, places to explore, or ways to creatively express yourself in the gameworld through the available mechanics. There is little to no hand holding, you have a very small number of overarching end-goals to persue and strive towards (winning the game by escaping from the planet), and you feel like you have a whole lot of agency in picking your own personal sidequest goals based on the priorities you want to give to getting certain gear, wheras most of the modern games have little to no agency, so that they can shove more linear narrative and scripted sequences (that look good in trailers) down your throat and arenât too hard for casuals âensure a smooth playing experienceâ.
I think the issue isnât in having âroutine tasksâ, itâs when you donât make the âroutine tasksâ the fun part of the game (or at least design it so that the chores/grind are easily done on the side while persuing the most fun parts, like e.g. exploring new areas in Subnautica), that players get annoyed. I really liked RDR 1, but from what I hear RDR 2 doesnât hold the appeal to me that I had hoped for it to have, because of this lack of agancy that comes from the mandatory chores. I was so certain Iâll play it before it got released, but I no longer am so sure of it to be honest.
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