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| Profrektius said: (1) If I buy a book, movie, painting, song, there is no specific way that I have to consume it. I can skip straight to the end if I want, I can listen on double the speed, I can choose which order I want to read the chapters. If I don't like a part I can skip it and move on. This is not the case with video games. Most video games are extremely restrictive, and severely limit you. Video games don't trust the consumer enough and hence restrict you in consuming the content to only a one specfic way they designed. (2) There should be more options in our games for example, but not limited to. Framerate or resulution preference. Motion blur toggle. Customizable controls. Cheat codes that can be used at any time. Many difficulties, and even customizable difficulties for different parts of the game. Full chapter select unlocked right from the start of the game. Skippable combat sections. Skippable puzzles. Skippable gameplay segments. Optional hints in the puzzles. Optional hits in general. Skippable cutscenes. Fast forwardable cutscenes. Fast forwardable dialogue. Skippable dialogue. Optional manual save slots. Developer mode. I believe all the above things and many more to give freedom to consume the game as a person wants to should be available in all games, at least in the single player portion of it. (3) The thing I find the most perplexing is that some people are actually against giving more options, because "that was not the way it was meant to played". Yet if someone is willing to pay for it, how does it hurt your enjoyment, knowing that someone might play a game by just no-clipping through everything, skipping to the final boss, and beating it with cheats? I don't understand why some people are so set on keeping these limitations, especially other than the old "it's the way it's meant to played", "don't like it, play something else.". (4) So where do you stand? Are more options bad and ruin the developers intent? Or do you believe games should give consumers more options to how to consume their games? Or do you have some completely different view? |
(1) Sorry, what? The options you named on books or movies are terrible. Games have right out the box way more options. I can decide not to get into the next fight/puzzle whatever but stay a little. I can talk to NPC or not. I can lose. Each game, even a visual novella or interactive movie have much more freedom than a movie or a book.
(2) Hmm, difficult. Customizable controls are good mostly. Framerate vs. resolution is on console much less a thing, because fixed hardware. Many difficulties work for most games - and most games already have them. For adventures usually difficulty settings make no sense, but otherwise the games often already have these options.
I'm more averse against things like full chapter select. Entertainement works on different levels. And it is entertaining to unlock things based on your success. So having everything unlocked from the beginning takes away fun. To illustrate my point: how about a game which has all achievements unlocked from the start? Or gives you the option of unlocking them by just clicking them?
Unskippable cutscenes on the other hand are a sin. People play a game a second or third time, so it makes sense to skip it. More save slots are usually a good thing, but there are games like rogue likes that win on the entertainement route by restricting saves. As I said, games are for entertainment, so everything that reduces that is bad in my book.
(3) I personally give shit how others play through, but as I wrote in the last paragraph, some options are actually hurting the entertainment factor. So I want the most entertainment out of the games. Options that don't hurt that - customizable controls, skippable cutscenes and so on - are a good thing.
(4) I see the point of developers to have their vision. But actually that is crap. They might have a fixed story in mind. But in a game a player can destroy that instantly. In games I often smile, then the NPC says: 'so hurry to defend us against the danger...' or something. I make a point of it, to go then sideways and do shit that isn't directed in the stories path. And usually I get away with it (I was surprised by Deus Ex: Human Revolution in this regard and noted it as a good thing, not only was the point of making haste pressed by the NPCs, it actually did change the game world). So developers have no way to ensure their vision anyways. So why not relax and have players who follow the path enjoy the artistical vision - and others not. Whatever.
P.S. Your poll is missing the 'depends'-option. Which I would choose.
