I play games for amusement, for relaxation, for making my brain play around with ideas. I don’t play games to become frustrated or caught in the intricate spreadsheet that some clever game designer came up with.

I absolutely cannot agree more, and I wish I could wallpaper the offices of all the Earth’s game designers with the above quote. When I was younger and had a better trigger finger and more energy, I was a pretty avid gamer, but nowadays I always abandon games because the mechanics keep getting in the way of the message or story. If I wanted to juggle six things at once while pressing buttons at the speed of thought, I wouldn’t pay for video games–I’d go back to working retail during the holidays. :P

You guys rock. Keep doing what you’re doing, so maybe the other guys can catch up to you someday. :)

–E.G.

I hear you. :) One of my mantras is that, if the player stops playing the game but didn’t /want/ to stop, you’ve probably failed them. I also find it discouraging that how you experience a game is partially dependant upon previous games you have played (and therefore ‘know this sort of thing’), and partially upon being savvy enough to know of things like youtube and gamefaqs as means to overcome the annoying parts of games. Players should be on an equal footing when it comes to games.

I don’t know. Sometimes I want a challenge, sometimes I just want to wander around.

A lot of people have little interest in beating arbitrary challenges some game designer throws at them and just want chill out and wander around some cool virtual world.

On the other hand some people feel cheated if a game doesn’t challenge them.

I guess as a game designer you can either ignore one of those expectations or try to satisfy both. I always thought sandbox games like GTA did a good job of balancing the two. I know people who’ve played plenty of GTA but have never bothered with the story.

Challenging games are the norm (a legacy of the arcade days maybe) and they’re what most players expect. Games like the one you’re developing, and Nintendo’s recent successes, kind of prove that there are at least some people who are interested in non-challenging games.

A game reccomendation for you, Michael, if you haven’t played it already: Rule of Rose.

I looked up a playthrough and, even with the commentator going on and kinda killing the mood, it was still incredibly emotionally impactful. It’s going to seriously strike me dead when I get around to playing it myself. Anyway, it seems like it has plenty of replay value; it doesn’t really make sense the first time through, but with the end bits there to tie it together, one might understand things that were too confusing before.

It’s been banned in some places…I hope you can get your hands on it.

It’s not actually been banned here in Belgium. But some ignorant Italian politician made some noise about it at the time and Sony chickened out from publishing it in Europe. I downloaded a torrent of the game but I can’t make it work in our Playstation. Book burning in Europe. Will it ever stop?