Interesting Article

[Domarius]

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050809/eilers_01.shtml

I like this bit

At a GDC panel discussion in 2003, former Williams programmer Eugene Jarvis (creator of Robotron and Defender) revealed a shocking fact: many of the games we remember best from the Classic era were crafted according to the so-called “Ninety-second rule.” According to this rubric, for an arcade game to be profitable during those competitive times a quarter had to drop into the machine every ninety seconds, on average; in other words, to do its “job” properly, the game was purposefully designed to kill off the player in under two minutes, which averages out to a mere thirty seconds per “life.”

 

So they actually mathematically planned it so that it was practically impossible to survive longer than two minutes, by factoring in the probability of getting hit, with human response times, player movement speed, and number of bullets heading toward you.

 

This article is about how older gamers, the one who can afford the expensive hardware, have less time for games so they need to be able to be played in smaller chunks and be easier to play.

This article actually discusses issues we've cofronted as a team during out discussions, and I find it really interesting. It even discusses the "save point" issue.

 

I can answer the author's dillemma with one phrase though;

"That's what the easy difficulty setting is for."

[SneaksieDave]

Heh, too bad they didn't count on this type of player:

 

http://www.gamespot.com/arcade/action/mspa...ws_6130815.html

[oDDity]

I knew this already, and told you as much in a previous post when you were talking about the difficulty of Ghosts and Ghouls or Ghosts and Goblins, which were ported from arcade games.

It's quite obvious that they would do this to maximise the income from their arcade mahinces, and quite obviosu to anyone who regularly played arcade games in the 80's.

Hardly a 'shocking fact'

Didn't stop me from learning how to complete Wonderboy with one life though)

[Renzatic]

I could get through Ghouls 'n Ghosts without dying...I was a damn master at that game.

 

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts though, which was never released in the arcades, is about impossible to play through without dying at least 20 times.

[sparhawk]

What's the conclusion of this article? To dumb down games again to please the 10 Mio download crow? At least it says the same thing about savepoints why exactly I don't like them.

[Domarius]

Yes I wasn't happy with the overall objective of the article either, which is why I say "choose the easy setting".

 

At least it says the same thing about savepoints why exactly I don't like them.

And they also said the reasons why I like save points too But then they countered it with "but its only more immersive the first 8 times, then you know everything and are playing already knowing what's going to happen" but my counterargument for that is, this obviously isn't the game for you if you end up trying so often, or you should lower the difficulty setting. Or the level has been made badly, which is not the fault of the save point concept.

 

I knew this already, and told you as much in a previous post when you were talking about the difficulty of Ghosts and Ghouls or Ghosts and Goblins, which were ported from arcade games.

Yes, you did mention that Odd. But that quote wasn't the only thing about the article, it's everything else in it that I thought was interesting.

 

Heh, too bad they didn't count on this type of player:

 

http://www.gamespot.com/arcade/action/mspa...ws_6130815.html

Yes, and thats another good point the article makes. In employing the 90 second rule tactic, they alienated most of the population, and have forever given video games a "geeky" stigma, of which they only now seem to be slowly recovering from.

[sparhawk]

And they also said the reasons why I like save points too   But then they countered it with "but its only more immersive the first 8 times, then you know everything and are playing already knowing what's going to happen" but my counterargument for that is, this obviously isn't the game for you if you end up trying so often, or you should lower the difficulty setting.  Or the level has been made badly, which is not the fault of the save point concept.

 

I don't think this is teh case. If you have to reload so many times why should you lower the difficulty? In Guild Wars I entered a map many times with bots to see how I get along and testing which is the best strategy to get to the goal. I can't lower the difficutly, so do you mean that I shouldn't be playing it at all? Of course I can take the easy route and get some human party members and let them do the work, but it's much more satisfying to make it through with what is there.