Fun-ness

[Joseph Duchesne]

So, after making a few games of- how should I say it, limited fun-ness, I have realized that although I have few limitations in the technical aspects of game making- I know the languages I need to know, I can make graphics that look fairly decent, etc., I really am not the best at making fun games. Each year I enter contests such as 3DU and uDG, and place somewhere, usually not last, sometimes fairly highly up, but rarely near the top and the end result is never something that I really enjoy or am particularly proud of.

So, my questions to the successful shareware developers here (ones who have made more money than me at game dev, which would be >$5.50 USD- one license for my first game and a .50c donation for a text based MMORPG I made in grade 10):

1.. So you have a clean slate, an empty .c file, a brand new project folder or whatever you start with and what do you do, start to finish, summarized heavily, to create a fun game?
2. Are the game that you are most proud of the ones that you enjoyed the most?
3. Is there any way to break away from that first 95% of the game is 50% of the work deathtrap?

And anyone who has made popular freeware, feel free to answer as well. I'm all ears.

[Zwilnik]

1. Write games that you want to play and have confidence in from day one. Ideally, you should be able to 'dry run' the game and either play it on paper or mentally play it through. It's also worth trying the two day rule. If you can prototype the game in a weekend and it's playable (and fun) there's a good chance it's a good one.

2. Generally yes, although after debugging them for 3 months non-stop I might not have played them for a while after finishing them :)

3. Yes. Good testers. Ones that can report bugs properly and still enjoy playing the game. Apart from helping you track down and splat the annoying stuff that makes you feel the game isn't finished, they'll also help keep you enthused about the project.

[BeyondCloister]

Not specific answers to your questions, but some items from my never completed book. My track record is a couple of PDA shareware games I released at the turn of the century.

A game has to have something in it that makes the player want to keep coming back. A lot of time and effort has been wasted if the game is put down after only having been played a couple of times and never looked at again. The key elements that make someone keep coming back for more are:

A target to beat
A high score, a quickest time, a new level to reach, an opponent to conquer.

Variety
The game has to keep changing, even if the changes are only small. No-one is going to want to have to do the same thing over and over again for 50 levels. Change the level layout, the starting positions, the intelligence of the opponents, the number of opponents, etc. Even just changing the graphics occasionally adds freshness to a game. How many times have you played just one more to see what the next level looks like?

Easy to learn
Make the actual game play very easy to learn. You want a player to be able to pick up your game and play it straight away after only a quick explanation of the rules. Make solving the puzzles or beating the opponents the challenge, not working out how to play the thing!

[unknown]

1. Write games that you want to play and have confidence in from day one. Ideally, you should be able to 'dry run' the game and either play it on paper or mentally play it through. It's also worth trying the two day rule. If you can prototype the game in a weekend and it's playable (and fun) there's a good chance it's a good one.

How do you come up with ideas like this?

[BeyondCloister]

How do you come up with ideas like this?

I find it is a case of the ideas finding me. Sometimes overhearing a conversation triggers off an idea or seeing something in the street. Playing games can also trigger ideas. I'm sure you have played something and thought "what if it did this instead?". Take that what if as a starting point and move on from there. If the process works correctly you could end up with a game idea that is nothing to do with the game you were playing.

[ThemsAllTook]

Fantastic suggestions so far. The only thing I have to add is the usefulness of watching over someone's shoulder. If you have a working version or prototype of your game, sitting someone down in front of it and watching what they do, what they enjoy, and what frustrates them is tremendously informative. The only problem is that they'll frequently get hung up on unfinished features or a not-fully-polished UI, so this may be something you'd want to do late in the development process.

I also had something interesting revealed to me recently: If people aren't having fun with your game, it may be possible to make it more fun without having to change gameplay at all. memset 0x801 was essentially a remake of a classic game, and I wanted to keep the same game mechanics as the original. After adding some features like online high scores, more variety in the graphics/sound/music, and a more polished and intuitive UI, I found that players were enjoying the game much more even though I left the core gameplay as it was.

[BeyondCloister]

The past contains a wealth of game ideas to plunder. There are about 30 years of games to seek inspiration from. Don't just go for the obvious ones as there have been lots of quirky ideas which have unexpectedly worked.

[funkboy]

If game ideas seem difficult to come up with, an idea is to look for market presence, especially on the Mac. There are many games or game types that simply do not exist for the Mac, and identifying those areas will certainly garner you some interest from game players.

3. Is there any way to break away from that first 95% of the game is 50% of the work deathtrap?
Do you view the 1.0 release as the first 95, 99, or even 100% of the game?

If so, it is impossible to break away from this 'death trap.' Supporting the game beyond the initial release, and responding to customer's issues, ideas, complaints, etc., is a unique advantage internet-distributed games have.

And as mentioned earlier, the appropriate polish can transform a mediocre game into a very fun, impressive game. Polish polish polish - which often comes after a 1.0 release, or in that last 5% of the game! Stick with it and keep polishing your game if you think it's fun after reading all of the aforementioned excellent guidance.

[KittyMac]

1) Partner with someone (named Matt) who has a knack for coming up with fun game ideas :p

2) Nope. I've never been a big classic board games player, but I'm most proud of the work I did on the BBBG.

3) I agree with Zwilnik about testers, but I'll extend it to enthusiastic partners as well. If you have a publisher/partner who is actively trying out your builds and providing you with daily feedback, the motivation to keep going is much stronger.

[BeyondCloister]

3) I agree with Zwilnik about testers, but I'll extend it to enthusiastic partners as well. If you have a publisher/partner who is actively trying out your builds and providing you with daily feedback, the motivation to keep going is much stronger.

I cannot agree enough about this one.

For a long time while working on a product I had constant feedback and bug reports from a dedicated tester. Having that friendly battle of trying to get their list down to zero as they keep adding new items is a great motivator.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances out with my control, I no longer have this luxury and the motivation has taken a massive hit.

[diordna]

I'll be your partner Andrew :)

Anyway, I do agree with what Andrew said. Good ideas often just sort of arrive. You can also generate ideas almost procedurally. You may or may not remember Whizbang, an entry I did for one of those crazy 24-hour contests, with this little robot hopping around circles. It was super fun (at least, I thought so...) and I might make it again, but more like a platformer, with scrolling. Anyway, the procedure for that was trying to think of a sort of world that people aren't used to traversing. So I started with primitives, and came up with a world full of circles, and those circles are the only platforms, and you have to have good control to bounce between them and still shoot. It had almost FPS-like controls, so it was easy to learn, but it was still a totally new game.

Also think about what people like to do. (Shoot stuff, make things work/fit, etc.)

[MattDiamond]

1) Partner with someone (named Matt) who has a knack for coming up with fun game ideas :p


Thanks, R, gave me a lift.

I suspect most of my games aren't REALLY fun in their initial state, but I think they are amusing and some demonstrate potential to be fun. Given time, tweaking, and lots of feedback, some of them might become truly fun. [Edit: to clarify, not saying they aren't fun fun, but they are not yet compellingly fun to most people the way a polished game like Wingnuts or Fizzball is.]

I think I tend to try and shove my ideas down the player's throats, not unveiling the game until I think it's close to being finished. That is probably a mistake. How does Blizzard do it? Blizzard develops their game, and then spends many months, a year, just tweaking it to make it more fun. If you aren't cloning a game that is already tried and true, the advice I hear is to develop something playable quickly, then play it and get feedback, and tweak the gameplay for as long as possible. If it doesn't come together, start over or throw it out (e.g. Warcraft Adventures; Starcraft Ghost.)

The Sims started life as an architecture sandbox; the sim-people were almost an afterthought, needed to test the workability of the homes the player designed. But they were more fun, so they became the central part of the game.

Once you have an idea there are techniques to make your game more appealing. I don't pretend to know much about this, but one I've read about and noticed in many games: find ways to reward player progress, and give them hints of things to come, dangled just out of reach. In Myst, you could see things in the distance that you would get to much later. In Wingnuts 2, you get to fly a souped up plane for a few minutes at the beginning before it is cruelly taken away from you. Many games feature a world map that you can gauge progress on. Etc. Notice these tricks when you see them in other people's games. In the absence of subtler goals, at least add a high score list so the player can try to beat their own score or their friend's.

Richard Rouse and Chris Crawford have interesting books with ideas for generating game ideas and developing them into games. I'm sure there are other books people can recommend. Ernest Adams writes a good column in Gamasutra.

Ideas: I keep scribbles and notes of ideas I've had. Some are from back when I was a teenager! Many are unworkable as games, or noone would play them if I made them (text adventure, anyone?) But I keep them anyway. The game I just did for 3DU is based on an idea I scribbled on a piece of paper over 5 years ago. I just let it sit until I was reminded of it recently and realized how feasible it was. (Boy, it's sure nice to actually cross something off my list!)

A recent thought I had: writers have exercises that they perform to hone their craft and to get themselves out of ruts. For example, reduce something you already wrote by 50%. Write something without using any adjectives. That kind of thing... I wonder if there are exercises for a game designer? For example, try switching the player and computer roles in an old game design. Plan a game that uses only one button.

This discussion is great, BTW. It's giving me ideas already. I hope more people jump in.

[BeyondCloister]

Many are unworkable as games, or noone would play them if I made them (text adventure, anyone?)

Yes please. Nothing wrong with a good text adventure. People still read books and people read text on computer screens so no reason why a good text adventure would not work. Just because a certain percentage of people would not have the patience or attention span for a text adventure don't write the rest of us off.

Think of the extra benefits a modern take on text adventure games could bring:

* Multiple dictionaries - the player could be able to get the text in their language using localisation techniques.

* Computers can now talk the descriptions decently if the player wants.

* It would be much easier putting together the content nowadays with text editors that provide spell checking.

* Fast advanced parsers.

* As the adverts are fond of saying - and many many more! This is just a quick post so not going to spend hours listing them all. You can take this as one of those ideas jumping off points.

There may even be the added advantage of teaching the kids (and more scarily some adults) how to spell and use grammar correctly ;)

[AndyKorth]

This is an excellent discussion. Personally, I really recommend reading the Theory of Fun book:

http://www.theoryoffun.com/

I bought this for our library, if you can get a hold of it, I highly recommend it. It's basically a discussion of what makes a game (in general, but aimed towards computer-y games) fun. It talks about achievement, solving puzzles, and a lot of the excellent ideas that have already been mentioned.

[Zwilnik]

How do you come up with ideas like this?

One of our methods, when we're in need of emergency inspiration is a variation of David Bowie's word scramble idea for songwriting.

Essentially.

1) Make a fairly decent random number generator, either as an app or throwing D10 that'll let you generate a 3 digit number.

2) Pop down to your local library

3) find the first book with that dewie decimal code or nearest to it.

4) use the subject matter of the book (or even the picture on the cover) to kick start the inspiration process.

There's lots of other variants of this idea. For instance, I've written an app before that generates nonsense words from 2 character phonemes to trigger ideas, or one that picked random words from a dictionary file.

A lot of ideas though start with "I'd really like to do something along the lines of __insert game you've liked here__ but with explosions".

[BeyondCloister]

A lot of ideas though start with "I'd really like to do something along the lines of __insert game you've liked here__ but with explosions".

You've just triggered an idea in my mind with that sentence and it is so out there that I wanted to share it as an example of how one thing leads to another:

"I'd really like to do something along the lines of Scrabble but with explosions"

Scrabble was the first thing that jumped into my mind when thinking of another game.

The process for coming up with a new starting point is just that simple!

[Zwilnik]

You've just triggered an idea in my mind with that sentence and it is so out there that I wanted to share it as an example of how one thing leads to another:

"I'd really like to do something along the lines of Scrabble but with explosions"



That would rock! BATTLE SCRABBLE!

"That's 26 tons of TNT on a triple explosion score!"

[imikedaman]

1.. So you have a clean slate, an empty .c file, a brand new project folder or whatever you start with and what do you do, start to finish, summarized heavily, to create a fun game?
I design the entire game on paper first, including storyline, the characters, and every little detail of the gameplay. Absolutely no coding is done until I'm satisfied with the gameplay.
3. Is there any way to break away from that first 95% of the game is 50% of the work deathtrap?
Well sure, but you'll be stuck with an unpolished game that will be a chore to play for many. The extra 50% of the work comes from thorough beta testing and play/usability testing, plus a lot of polish.

[OneSadCookie]

or one that picked random words from a dictionary file.

I did this for unknown just the other day...

ruby -e 'list = File.read("/usr/share/dict/words").split; puts list[rand(list.size)]'

'course, then you're left wondering what "Strobilomyces" means... and the Mac OS X dictionary with definitions in it doesn't have a clue... Wikipedia knows, though ;)

[igame3d]

A while back I bought A Theory of Fun for Game Design (http://www.theoryoffun.com/),
nice book, good to flip through now and then and be reminded of
something so obvious about playing games that you miss it most of the time.

I hope you aren't discouraged by the "unfunness" of your games Joseph,
you have been learning to code through the process, sacrifices have to be made
somewhere and now you have made mistakes to learn from, as everyone must.

Matt mentioned the exercises writers use to develop their talents.
I just bought a book full of them The Writer's Idea Book by Jack Heffron (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=stripbooks&field-keywords=the%20writer's%20idea%20book&results-process=default&dispatch=search/ref=pd_sl_aw_tops-1_stripbooks_4408072_2&results-process=default?tag2=amd-google-20).
Its over two hundred pages of homework assignments in writing:
"write about your first experience with death", "write about the waitress", etc etc.

Writing is writing, and its like riding a bike, always wear a helmet.

The first step in designing a great game is planning, and part of that involves
getting the idea out of your head and on paper, database, web, instant message, whatever.

Have a Look at these design documents (http://www.ihfsoft.com/designdocuments.htm#designdocumenttemplate). Artists are trained to sketch many thumbnails, then roughs,
before even starting their final illustrations.

Game designers likewise should be sketching out game ideas, before they start to crank out the code.
Brainstorming sessions are great for cutting
through the mental fog and getting to the meat of good game ideas.
We had a "crazy game idea" thread ages ago that should be revived with themes weekly for that purpose of pure "BS".

Ok here is the game you should go make today: Game Design Document MadLibs.
You can't go wrong with that, its a tool, its a game, its fun for all ages.
It will eventually help you solve the "fun" problem with a huge database of silliness.

Reminds me of something I recently read, when designing characters think
of verbs not adjectives, what does the character do? Then how they do it.
Relevant since every game must have a player and if you design
for them, then the game should be fun.

[Najdorf]

I usually start with the game mechanics and then try to fit in a setting. Though its hard to find a "cool" setting after. Nxt time i'll start with the cool setting ;)

Coolness of the setting accounts for a LOT, especially the first impression. (i.e. you are a 3 legged ninja that has super powers blablabla... is better than match 3 colors)

If you got some awesome mechanics without a cool setting, you still might not give enough emotions to the player.

[EvolPenguin]

Try discussing crazy ideas with a friend, and expounding on them. It works really well to bounce off ideas and think of fun things.

Alex

[wyrmmage]

I recently read the book 'Virtual World Design' by Richard Bartle (he designed and coded the first Virtual World, MUD1 and he's still designing games today :) ); it was a really great book, and even though it is mostly about MMOs, it still has some good general advice about game design and, perhaps more importantly, how player's react and think about things in games.
If you can, join a programming or game design group, even if it is on the internet. I'm still a sophmore in high-school, and I take a web-design class out at a building away from the school. So far this year, all we have done is learn fifteen HTML tags XD, but what I love about being out at the building is all of the nerdy people; they're really fun to hang out with and, even though they don't program (or perhaps especially because they don't program), they help me refine or come up with game ideas. If you can't find a group of people like that to hang out with, try hanging out with a pencil-and-paper or table-top roleplaying group...I guarantee that you will come up with some interesting new rpg game ideas!
Just normal fictional books are also a great source of ideas for me, fantasy in particular :)
-wyrmmage

[Justin Brimm]

...is all of the nerdy people; they're really fun to hang out with and, even though they don't program (or perhaps especially because they don't program), they help me refine or come up with game ideas. If you can't find a group of people like that to hang out with, try hanging out with a pencil-and-paper or table-top roleplaying group...I guarantee that you will come up with some interesting new rpg game ideas!
-wyrmmage

There's one major caveat with this, and that is that gamers of all types usually have no idea what makes a good game. It sounds stupid and completely wrong but really, it's true. A lot of gamers have many ideas about what they want to stuff into a game and when it comes down to it, many times it doesn't make for a fun or good game.

[wyrmmage]

heh, that is certainly true...I have seen enough moronic posts on certain MMORPG's forums saying something to the effect of "d00d, flyng c4rs w05ld b 4w3s0m3!!11!!" under the 'ideas' section >.< Even if a gamer's plan for a game isn't a great one, you can still sometimes salvage the core idea or some other aspect of the game and improve upon that, then it just becomes a matter of sifting out the good ideas from the bad ones and not always listening to your player's ideas, like some games do...*cough*runescape*cough* ;)
-wyrmmage

[JustinFic]

How do you come up with ideas like this?

Here's an idea that, even if it doesn't lead to a game design, makes for some wicked fun brainstorming sessions. I forgot where I found this- either here, Gamasutra, or one of those game design books, but it's too cool not to share (possibly again):

Step 1) Get colored index cards, at least 4 different colors.
Step 2) Each index card will have a different concept written on it, each color being a different category. One category is nouns: "Ninjas", "Robots", "Pirates" or the like. Second category is modifiers: "Big", "Microscopic", "Invisible", "Mutated", whatever you can think of. Third category is settings: examples being Space, Underwater, etc, and fourth category is Game Mechanics: "FPS", "RTS", "2D", "3D", "Sprite-based", "Non-violent", and so on.
Step 3) Write out as many of each category as you can think of: at least 25 of each should work. Only write the terms on one side.
Step 4) Shuffle and deal out 10 cards to yourself, or 10 cards to each person brainstorming.
Step 5) Try to incorporate all 10 cards into a game design.
Step 6) Repeat as many times as desired.

One really cool design that came out of this was:
2D, sprite based platformer, involving microscopic ninjas fighting an alien race inside the human body.

And to get more ideas out of it, all you have to do is add more index cards to your deck. You can make the individual terms as absurd, juvenile, esoteric as you want- tailor it to your own style and what you like in games.

[StealthyCoin]

How do you come up with ideas like this?

History channel :D. Or something related.

[MattDiamond]

There's one major caveat with this, and that is that gamers of all types usually have no idea what makes a good game.

Chris Crawford has an interesting discussion about that in his book, Crawford on Game Design (recommended). Many suggestions you get are just plain wrong and don't belong in your game.

Being polite about that can waste a lot of time. I actually save all the suggestions I get, just so I can tell people that I do so, but only 25% of them actually make sense for my game, 50% would make sense but in some other game that I'm not currently writing, and 25% don't make much sense. :-) [Edit: I should point out, that some ideas that didn't make sense to me initially turned out to be useful later on. So I'm not saying I instantly know what makes sense and what doesn't.]

The difficult thing is that you DO need feedback to find out what isn't working in your game. I imagine that this is why the experts often recommend observing users with your game, rather than soliciting feedback. Users might not be able to tell you what is broken, or their suggestions may not make sense, but as you watch them struggle or lose interest you may see what's going on without needing them to come up with their own recommendations for fixing it.

[djork]

Fun is the cycle of effort and reward. Let the player expend a little effort and get some staisfaction. The faster that cycle goes, the more fun it can be. It's so hard to concretely define...

A great example of a game that perfected this is Halo. It's 30 seconds of fun over and over again. Approach a group of enemies, and hear their war crys. Spray them with asssault rifle bullets. Hit B and the butt of your rifle smashes an alien skull. Fire the shotgun and send a grunt flying. Toss a sticky grenade and watch it blow up. Then it's all settled down and you feel triumphant.

That sort of experience is extremely satisfying because it couples challenge with reward: you have to defeat the enemies, and when you do it's extremely engaging and satisfying.

Why? The intense music, the crunch of the melee attack, the roar of the guns, the screams of the enemies, the panic of the grenade timer, the urgency of combat in general.

Lots of fun there.

[PowerMacX]

Fun is the cycle of effort and reward. Let the player expend a little effort and get some staisfaction. The faster that cycle goes, the more fun it can be. It's so hard to concretely define...

A great example of a game that perfected this is Halo. It's 30 seconds of fun over and over again. Approach a group of enemies, and hear their war crys. Spray them with asssault rifle bullets. Hit B and the butt of your rifle smashes an alien skull. Fire the shotgun and send a grunt flying. Toss a sticky grenade and watch it blow up. Then it's all settled down and you feel triumphant.

That sort of experience is extremely satisfying because it couples challenge with reward: you have to defeat the enemies, and when you do it's extremely engaging and satisfying.

Why? The intense music, the crunch of the melee attack, the roar of the guns, the screams of the enemies, the panic of the grenade timer, the urgency of combat in general.

Lots of fun there.

:blink:

You know, when you write it down it sounds so... wrong! :p

[Shivers]

:blink:

You know, when you write it down it sounds so... wrong! :p

I don't think that's a bad thing, though. To replicate that phenomenon is the holy grail of designing anything "fun".

[Yoggy]

Interesting thread.

I agree with djork's post mostly although I think that at least for me the fun is not quite as connected to the theme of the game. I think for example halo would be almost as fun without the aliens, blood, sci fi environments etc.

In my opinion even if you turned all of the graphics and sounds of halo into some completely different theme for example nintendo's cartoony mario style or even colored pieces of paper, it would still be fun. You just have to imagine a first person fire flower with the same spitting viciousness of the assault rifle.


As far as coming up with game ideas, seriously consider just running with some crazy thing you came up with while joking with your friends or while sleep deprived / intoxicated somehow. (Though I do not necessarily recommend use of drugs :P)

I thought it would be fun and challenging to create a game with nothing but particle effects, which was an idea that (along with several sillier ideas) spawned off of the single idea of "The axil of terrror", an overly silly spin off of "the axis of evil" that originated as a 4am mispronunciation while playing xbox at a friend's.

The result, mixed with a healthy dose of hard core FPS challenge was Megapixel.

I hope at least and I think several people agree with me that megapixel is a fun game. I think it was made fun by me taking inspiration coming from great existing games like halo and using it as a guide while tweaking all of the guns and enemies. I think all in all I spent most of my time tweaking content and testing over and over.

[AnotherJake]

I don't really get the whole Halo fascination with fun-ness. It seems like everyone I know either loves it or hates it. The *only* thing I've ever liked about Halo is the single player campaign. There's a story and a point to it, not just killing for a frag. Everyone else I know who loves the game only cares about the multiplayer. They all think I'm a freak, but I think multiplayer Halo sucks. In fact, I am borderline against multiplayer Gears of War too for the same reasons. Those two games focus on a certain rhythm in multiplayer which requires people to pump massive amounts of rounds into opponents for a kill. I know that this will sound somewhat hypocritical, but I much prefer a few shots for a kill over massive lead pumping to do the job in a video game... and here's the hypocritical part -- it just seems to me to be so much more violent to spray massive amounts of lead into an opponent than to just pull the trigger once, accurately and briefly to get it over with. I can't really place a finger on it, but games like Rainbow Six Vegas and Call of Duty seem less aggressive and much more tactical because of this. I say it is hypocritical on my part because you shouldn't see a kill as more violent than any other, but at the same time I'm not afraid to say that there's a difference when it comes to the business of `killing' in a video game. I just don't find the `feeling of killing' in Halo appealing vs. the `feeling of killing' in single shot games like Call of Duty. I can't believe I just said that. Maybe people shouldn't be playing those games after all... :shock:

I forgot to add that I've had many discussions with players on Xbox Live who moved over to Rainbow Six Vegas and were very surprised by how nice everyone was there compared to Gears of War. There seems to be nothing but trash talking in Halo and Gears of War. It's like those flavors of `shoot em dead' multiplayer games tend to bring out the worst in people. Again, I know this sounds terribly hypocritical, but there does seem to be a difference. Of course, then there's Splinter Cell Double Agent which isn't like either of them and the players in that game are the rudest of all that I've ever met, but I digress...

[Yoggy]

I have never really played a multiplayer game that is more "single shot" based like I guess rainbow six and splinter cell. Except for america's army which I didn't like much, mainly because a) The whole idea of a game as a recruiting tool seems weird to me and b) the actual multiplayer sort of left me feeling frustrated. I didn't like walking around endlessly and then also being constantly sniped from endless different locations and most often dying before I knew I was even in a fight. Any time I did manage to shoot someone it was because they walked right in front of me stupidly without knowing I was there. Maybe I am just not strategic enough, but I really like games like halo more because of all the different possible outcomes of any given fight, more than I saw you before you saw me, therefore I have shot you and you lost.

I guess I don't really ever think about killing people while playing shooters. I think when I play I focus on the structure of the interaction instead of the content. But over all I agree that halo has a more brutal structure to its multiplayer than some other games. Personally I find it more enjoyable.

[AnotherJake]

...Except for america's army which I didn't like much, mainly because a) The whole idea of a game as a recruiting tool seems weird to me...
Me too. I didn't really think too much about it before, but now I feel strongly that they should abandon the idea completely and deliberately distance themselves from it. And I want to say this next thought carefully because I do not want to start a political discussion or offend anybody... But... because of the many online conversations I've had with my foreign brethren over the years I've been able to see some different angles about how our country (the US) has been being perceived lately. I think that America's Army somehow helps promote a distorted image that our country is some sort of war-mongering cockroach society on the planet, bent on invading and dominating everything. While I am very proud of our country and our defenders, I am definitely very disappointed with the way we've been being represented. I think that America's Army does not help our image as a country nor as gamers. Games used as political tools are NOT FUN.

Maybe I am just not strategic enough, but I really like games like halo more because of all the different possible outcomes of any given fight, more than I saw you before you saw me, therefore I have shot you and you lost.
Whereas from my point of view, games like Halo are exactly that -- I see you first or you see me first and that's that. I get very frustrated with that style of gameplay. I respect that there are two very large and distinct camps on these two styles of multiplayer FPSs though.

I guess I don't really ever think about killing people while playing shooters.
I don't either, I was just getting creeped out about my own words being attached to such concepts. It reminds me of an interview I once saw with Quintin Terratino about Kill Bill. Basically it came down to him saying, violence in movies is fun. Violence in real life is not fun. They're two different things. I agree with that, but it's still creepy sometimes to identify parallels.

[ccccc]

I can't recommend A Theory Of fun more ;).
I don't really think it matters if a game is violent, I mean its fun because your learning the game, learning that patterns of enemy placement ect., that doesn't mean you should make a game about sticking people with knives though....

[ERaZer]

that doesn't mean you should make a game about sticking people with knives though....

Why not? If you make it a FPS, it will be quite different, having to sneak around to come close to your enemy so they cant spot you and run away or perhaps shoot you. I think it could be fun.

I have ever since Marathon Infinity was released wanted to do an assasin FPS style game, where you got hired by people to pull of certain murders and you got information about your target and his whereabouts etc and had to figure out the best way to kill him (and according to the terms of your client). I think such a game could be really fun, I started making a TC for Marathon Infinity for it, which actually was pretty cool, but with todays technology you could make something much more along my original vision. Sure, there are games that are similair or have similair objectives in them, but I would like something more openended and a lot of other stuff that differ from what I've played.

Would it be violent? Yes, but but the point would be to try to find out the best ways to pull of murders without getting caught or killed etc. Could you make it seem less violent? Sure, you could make everything in a weird alien world where things are colourful etc, but I dont think it would be as fun.