I don't know. I think the answer really lies in the middle. Sure, most of us aren't still playing tic-tac-toe and hopscotch at the moment, but will I feasibly play them in the near future? Yea, actually. I don't think complexity is necessary for long-term enjoyment at all. The super-simple games (as mentioned above) have stayed with us just as long as the complex ones (perhaps chess, for example).
This can be transferred into electronic games, as well. Tetris and Mario are going to be around forever just like the Mass Effect trilogy or The Last of Us. Simple and complex. I think different people are drawn to different poles at different times in their life, even.
I know I'm more of a "fun" kind of gamer, preferring straightforward stuff like Spyro instead of Shenmue. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a "complex" game from time to time. The Last of Us is one of my favorite games I've ever played. I also really got into the first Dragon Age game. And I'm a hopeless WoW addict (which I consider a combination of fun and complex).
@JaxonH Once again, we're not actually really disagreeing
I certainly don't like the notion that a review should be a super-subjective fun factor, but I'll also note that when I reviewed the scores were, literally, a 0-100 meter, rating fun. It even had text under the percentile saying how fun it was! It was a fun scoring system
But there's a catch to that rating system. Virtually nothing can ever score below 75% under such a system. So it's one of those "always positive" scoring systems NL is accused of. If it's bad, broken, low budget, shoddily designed, annoying slog fest, it can score below, but virtually everything else is at absolute worst 75 or better. Because it's at least fairly fun to it's target group.
But that gets into my overall dislike of SCORING in reviews at all. People view metacritic as though it's linear plot of the absolute value of a game. An 80 is barely worth looking at, in their mind, if there are hundreds of games from 81-100, as though it's a sequential order of games from best to worst. Metacritic is grotesque in part because of how its used.
OTOH a thumbs up or thumbs down lacks nuance. Siskel & Ebert made that system famous, but it really doesn't tell you how many shades of gray there are between two similar products if they're both thumbs up (Horizon and BotW for example would both have the same score....in the same overall genre yet aren't necessarily equal.)
You can do a 5-star system like hotels..but in the gaming world 3-4 stars would be denounced as bad because expectations have now been set badly. If you use that system, a 3 would mean an average decent game. In Metacritic that would be scoring it 50% and therefore a disaster of a shovelware game weighing down the metrics.
Which comes back to the wheel of fun. It's an arbitrary subjective score that uses the full 100 scale, but really only uses the top 25%, effectively using the first 50% to offset the broken industry/metacritic bias to grade on a curve.
What you described is more or less what I actually DID! But I'm the first to admit the serious flaws in a numeric scoring for that. It could rightly be criticized as being a soft review. The secret sauce is the score truly is more or less arbitrary and gives most games a fair shake, the REAL opinion is in the pages and pages of text that most people never actually seem to read in their race to the score. So they get their score, and Everything Is Awesome. Because they didn't bother to read what the actual evaluation said.
I recognize that method quite well when I see NL doing it without doing it as openly
Aside, though, one place I will still disagree is genre crossing. Comparing a falling block puzzle game and an open world action adventure numerically just can't work. It depends on how the reader rates each genre. Some people loathe open word games and love puzzle/board games, so the best puzzle game would always rate higher to them than the best open world game, etc. So the comparisons can only apply within the same genres.
(Also, the Anker charged up fast after all! It was weird, it started with 3 lights, got to 5 lights over like 2 hours, but then in the following 2.5 hours the remaining 5 lights filled up and it finished. So far, liking it but havent used it for Switch yet.)
It really isn't if you know complexity and depth are two completely different things.
Thanks, man. But I'll stick with my opinion. It's interesting to talk about. Also, please keep your veiled insults due to personal insecurities to yourself.
@rallydefault Do stick to it, I'll do the same. I wouldn't want to waste my time discussing something that's entirely off-base, but I won't tell you what to do.
@Ralizah
Perhaps, but I think once you start quantifying a game's value solely on the sum of its components, you lose even more.
@NEStalgia
Keep in mind, I'm speaking of a hypothetical, non biased score. Now, that may not be achievable, but the concept proves out in theory.
If you start with the observation that you will never enjoy 2 games equally the same (No matter how small the differences, the exact level of enjoyment will never repeat), then you must conclude no two experiences will ever be enjoyed the same by anyone. And once you've reached that conclusion, it's only natural to deduce that no two games can be equally fun. And once you've deduced that, well... that means there's a quantifiable difference between games. Perhaps we'll never be able to accurately measure it, but it's there.
@MarcelRguez
We're not talking calculus here. This is 3rd grade illustrations to help clearly illustrate what words struggle to convey.
Your immature insults are not appreciated.
All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans
God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John
@JaxonH The moment you post The simplest way to express fun as a function of complexity is with a quadratic. But complexity clearly has an impact on fun... or at least, maximum potential fun without a whiff of tongue-in-cheek attitude is the moment I stop taking whatever point you are trying to make seriously. Trying to visually represent concepts as arbitrary and subjective as 'fun' and 'complexity' through quantifiable means is just too ridiculous for me not to make fun of, I'm sorry.
There is an interesting underlying topic here, but come on:
The increase in potential fun is exponential though, and beyond a certain point you get overlap, where simple games can be more fun than more complex games. But there is a limit and as complexity approaches that limit, there is an inflection point beyond which intensity of enjoyment increases at a decreasing rate, and before it intensity of enjoyment increases at an increasing rate. And then theres a point where it actually starts decreasing because the game is too complex to enjoy
Disregarding the fact that without applying this to any concrete examples you might as well not be saying anything at all, you have to admit that if you take a step back, the whole use of sentences you'd find in a scientific report is a tad bit clashing with the topic at hand. What's the data behind your statements? Do you have any studies at hand, or are you trying to pass off what you're saying as scientific knowledge with all those declarative, impersonal sentences?
Point out wherever I insulted you (or @rallydefault, for that matter). I only called the topic asinine, uninteresting and wrongly focused. Same way you said my insults (whatever those might be) are immature, not that I am.
@JaxonH I think, rather than trying to quantify something unquantifiable like "fun factor," you should focus on the things that lead to a game resonating with people: quality of the writing, game design, art design, music, controls, etc. I'm not saying these individual components lead to a "fun" game, but that "fun" games emerge when superior components are properly integrated. A fun game is sort of like a cake: its tastiness isn't the result of any one ingredient, but is an emergent property of how well all those ingredients are mixed together and cooked. A whole that is far more than the sum of its parts.
@Octane It'll be cheaper on the eShop, won't it? The physical version is a special edition, so the base version can be sold at a cheaper price digitally.
@Octane I'll try to take it either way. Content for the physical version is quite good. I'm interested in the soundtrack CD most of all (i love when someone put it in a limited/physical edition). If i can't manage to find it (or have money at release to take it, and this has better chances to happen lol) i'll just go digital, that should be half price based on Wii U one. Either way i'll be more than fine!
@JaxonH Hypothetical maybe, but it's still biased by who's in the sample group. That would be an interesting Metacritic competitor idea, to use ONLY player ratings, basically. But it certainly doesn't work with actual author-based reviews if it's more of a statistical overview. And of course getting a quality sample set on the internet would be a very unfun task. Heck, I'd take your system over Metacritic any day. It would be an improvement. But I'm not sure it would be a tremendous improvement. "Fun factor" would come down to "ask users to rate this game between 0-100" which even Metacritic effectively already has with the customer reviews.
But I'm still not sure that result should be used as a plot of all games in linear order of goodness. Plenty of games can have the exact same fun factor for a given person. I can think of dozens that are all equally a 9/10 in my mind. But it depends on the day. That's where I think statistics, be it your system, or Metacritic's review aggregates just don't work. Getting a score of what a bunch of other people thought of a game isn't too helpful. The point of a review should be to really tell you what you're going to experience in a game and, hopefully, convey it to you in a way that tells you if it's something that's going to personally appeal to your taste or now. One would expect people are reading reviews to determine "does this sound like a game I want to play? Are the things I'm unsure of going to frustrate me? What things might be annoying that I didn't know about?" Sadly most in the post Metacritic world go to reviews to see "I will form my opinion of this game based on what a bunch of other people's opinions are without even reading why they have the opinion they do....just give me a number!"
@Ralizah With the Naughty Dog examples, I think that's a good example to use for what I'm saying. They ARE more or less interactive movies more than they are games. And there's nothing wrong with that. The "fun factor" is entirely depending on who you are, what mood you're in, and what you expect from the game. For some people 300 hours of Disgaea 5 might be a lot more perfect a game and much more fun. Other people might glaze over at the first explanation of Mon-Toss and really just want to settle in with a nice fun story and entertaining dialogue and that's a fun evening. Both can be a 9 to different people.
I still think it's enough time to go over all the upcoming titles and cram a surprise or two in there. One for Switch and one for 3DS, maybe.
Also, if Pikmin 4 is a thing, I can't see Nintendo promoting two games of that series at once. Hey, Pikmin! doesn't come out until July 27th, I think, so I doubt we'll see Pikmin 4 before then.
Forums
Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread
Posts 14,281 to 14,300 of 69,996
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic