What do you like about gaming?

We've got the worst purchases of the year thread and the other things about gaming we hate thread, and they're both kinda bummer threads. How about a positive look at things?

What do you like about gaming? Why do you spend so much time, money, and energy on our shared hobby? It's not like there's nothing else you could be doing with your time. What do you love? What makes you happy? What are you rapturously pleased with?

I like beating up prostitutes to get my money back.

I've discovered lately that I really like gameplay. I know that sounds dumb, so I guess a better way of putting it: I rarely ever care about story. The game mechanics and systems underneath are why I play games.

Edit: I think this is also why I've been drawn to board games and why euro games, specifically, appealed a lot to me when I first discovered board gaming.

I'm the exact other end of the spectrum from SixteenBlue. I love a good story. While I can get off on well done mechanics and systems (and do find them interesting), what really makes me want to play are the stories.

I'm with lostlobster - I like a good story. Though with enough of a hook, gameplay-wise to keep me going. I don't enjoy excruciating challenge, if it keeps me from getting more story, be it written or emergent (CK2's emergent story-telling via leprous, plague-ridden hunchbacked sociopathic dwarf descendents being one of my GotY)

The fact that there is this range of interests in games is what makes things like that blasphemy thread so weird to me. You can't make a game that pleases everyone and it shouldn't be weird to say you don't like something that lots of other people like.

Tag.

lostlobster wrote:

I'm the exact other end of the spectrum from SixteenBlue. I love a good story. While I can get off on well done mechanics and systems (and do find them interesting), what really makes me want to play are the stories.

Can I be in the middle of the spectrum? I like mechanics and story. Namely the interactive/immersive fiction aspect for story, and just being given a system/world to play around in for mechanics. Which part I gravitate toward really depends on the game, but I can easily go from an RPG to a simple platforming game in a single evening without missing a beat.

I mentioned this in the blasphemy thread, but I like games for kids and young adults. Gaming is one of the best places to find all-ages entertainment. It's part of the reason I like Nintendo so much: they make games that appeal to a variety of age groups with a focus on games that can be played by families.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I mentioned this in the blasphemy thread, but I like games for kids and young adults. Gaming is one of the best places to find all-ages entertainment. It's part of the reason I like Nintendo so much: they make games that appeal to a variety of age groups with a focus on games that can be played by families.

Hmm....when you says "games for kids and young adults" do you mean games that they can enjoy or games specifically designed for kids and young adults. For example, the former would be something like Super Mario Galaxy and the latter would be more like LEGO Indiana Jones. Love the former, not so sure there's a lot for me in the latter.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I like beating up prostitutes to get my money back.

I like comments like this.

I like games with tough choices. (The Walking Dead, Witcher, Witcher 2, FTL, any rogue-like, XCOM)

SixteenBlue wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I mentioned this in the blasphemy thread, but I like games for kids and young adults. Gaming is one of the best places to find all-ages entertainment. It's part of the reason I like Nintendo so much: they make games that appeal to a variety of age groups with a focus on games that can be played by families.

Hmm....when you says "games for kids and young adults" do you mean games that they can enjoy or games specifically designed for kids and young adults. For example, the former would be something like Super Mario Galaxy and the latter would be more like LEGO Indiana Jones. Love the former, not so sure there's a lot for me in the latter.

Super Mario Galaxy wasn't specifically designed for kids and young adults? Nintendo is the Disney Pixar of the gaming world. They make games that can be enjoyable for all ages, but that doesn't mean they're not orienting them toward specific age groups.

A variety of gaming tastes.

Sorry for three posts so one-after-the-other like, but I also like my eagerness to try new things. I have played Hearts of Iron 3, Call of Duty, Hotline Miami, Peggle, GTA, Fallen London, Europa Universalis and lately, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. Glee.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I mentioned this in the blasphemy thread, but I like games for kids and young adults. Gaming is one of the best places to find all-ages entertainment. It's part of the reason I like Nintendo so much: they make games that appeal to a variety of age groups with a focus on games that can be played by families.

Hmm....when you says "games for kids and young adults" do you mean games that they can enjoy or games specifically designed for kids and young adults. For example, the former would be something like Super Mario Galaxy and the latter would be more like LEGO Indiana Jones. Love the former, not so sure there's a lot for me in the latter.

Super Mario Galaxy wasn't specifically designed for kids and young adults? Nintendo is the Disney Pixar of the gaming world. They make games that can be enjoyable for all ages, but that doesn't mean they're not orienting them toward specific age groups.

Yeah I've always thought of games like that as age-less, but you're probably right. In that case, it's kind of hard to delineate outside of Nintendo vs the rest, much like Pixar.

SixteenBlue wrote:

In that case, it's kind of hard to delineate outside of Nintendo vs the rest, much like Pixar.

Skylanders?

shoptroll wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

In that case, it's kind of hard to delineate outside of Nintendo vs the rest, much like Pixar.

Skylanders?

Right, that's why I said it's hard because that rule won't work. Never played Skylanders but I've heard good things.

In general terms, I like the fact that I can get lost in the world of the video game much easier and more quickly than books or movies, although I enjoy those too. It's an escape from my mundane, stressful life. I may be misusing the word, but I love a sense of agency in a game - my ability to interact and have an affect on the story. My current favourite example is Dishonored, which I find engrossing.

I like the interactivity, the immediacy, the precision when it's there. I like the connection between my mind and what happens on the screen. I like that the payoff can be immediate or slow-burnt or both. I'm mechanics-first, always, and that can be somewhat frustrating because they're often the hardest part of the game to express opinions about properly.

Thanks for this, Clock; I had to stop reading the other threads since the posts consisted of either denigrating games I love or championing ones I detest. The first few elicited a whimsical "you are dead to me" response, but it just became more and more depressing.

Paradoxically, then, the thing I love about gaming is the incredible range of gaming experiences. It's not that I really like a particular type of game so much as being able to easily change things up into an altogether different type of play. I sometimes lament that, unlike in the movies, game publishers only seem to be able to make adolescent-power-fantasy games, but this ignores the incredible breadth of mid- and small-market titles that seem to fill just about every niche imaginable. Then just when I make a statement like that, someone creates something completely unexpected and wonderful.

I do think I prefer story to gameplay, even if it's only the culmination of little emergent stories of one's own instead of a more linear narrative. I also really like being a participant in that story -- make the choices, having the conversations, performing the deeds -- though I suppose that's self-evident in gaming generally.

I also like my Steam pile, even though it will in all likelihood outlive me. =/

Edit: And I agree with just about everything in this thread. Well said, boys and girls.

I like great stories, fascinating characters, and cool environments. I like being thrilled, scared, and occasionally moved to tears. I like connecting with new people and just having fun. I like shooting crap in the face when I've had days like today. I like laughing, and will never regret for a moment the probably hundreds of virtual passerby I punched in the groin in Saints Row the Third, and it never stopped being funny. I like the fact that the interactivity of gaming makes it so much easier for me to willingly suspend my disbelief, and that keeps me coming back to this hobby. I like all the hours I've bonded with my children, and the fact that almost all of my long-running friendships developed while holding a gaming controller of some sort.

Archangel wrote:

Paradoxically, then, the thing I love about gaming is the incredible range of gaming experiences. It's not that I really like a particular type of game so much as being able to easily change things up into an altogether different type of play. I sometimes lament that, unlike in the movies, game publishers only seem to be able to make adolescent-power-fantasy games, but this ignores the incredible breadth of mid- and small-market titles that seem to fill just about every niche imaginable. Then just when I make a statement like that, someone creates something completely unexpected and wonderful.

That's one of my favorite things about gaming, too. Last night I swapped between Epic Mickey, Rhythm Heaven Fever, Monster Hunter Tri, and GoldenEye 007. All of those are completely different experiences both in the worlds they present and their methods of interaction.

Just today I was following the AC3 thread and it struck me that I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to wrap my head around designing an historically-inspired game environment that wasn't extremely cliche, broken and flat out wrong.

So I love (and am thankful for) massive teams of talented people spending years putting these things together so that I get to play them.

tl;dr: A rambling mastication, but basically it's the immersion of meaningful decision-making in interesting systems supported by complementary facades. Read the rest at your peril.

I almost wish there was some simple way to break down what I love about games, but when I consider my two most favourite games—the sprawling, invitingly immersive, and patience-testing Thief; and the laser-focused, nerve-destroying, eye-melting Burnout 3—I suppose there can't be. But that's a good thing in and of itself, right?

I love playing with systems. I love exploring the so-called possibility space of the model a game is presenting to the player. That's most obviously exemplified in complex emergent games where the intersections of actions are seemingly limitless and their consequences unpredictable—The Elder Scrolls, Far Cry 2, Thief (and one day I'll have a computer that can run STALKER). But every game is a model, simulating something, real or fantastic, broad in scope or deep in focus, so I'm basically repeating SixteenBlue. But hopefully expanding on what he said: being dropped in the middle of a matrix of mechanics and exploring what happens when I poke this or push that, and using that learning to solve the challenges. And then learning through the consequences what the game wants to say, whether there's a larger message (e.g. FC2: violent conflict is dehumanizing) or simply an appreciation of the simulation as a whole (e.g. Forza 4: controlling a car at the limits of grip in a full field like a gentleman is a demanding complex of nuanced tasks and awareness).

Uh, so since that basically describes every game by definition, what I also like about games is immersion (or at least, out of those games that seek to immerse the player in a theme). Simulation is one thing, but obviously an appealing subject is key to sparking engagement. I can be a silent thief, skulking through never-to-exist medieval mansions; a race car driver in full control of a complex machine—or nearly at the mercy of an insane boost-powered impossibility hurtling through traffic; or whatever else. To be transported to another realm with its unique suite of decisions and consequences.

One thing is certain though: immersion is not guaranteed by input/output. Depending on the simulation, elements like visual fidelity, audio use, or input are ancillary but aren't fundamental. Immersion cannot be fundamentally improved by more tech: graphics horsepower, 3D, stupid goggles. I disavow the bullsh*t Holodeck dream and all its nascent manifestations. The core of immersion is mechanics: the system, and what and how it models the subject. To defend that, I'll expand my love of games from just video games to board games too. Board games even more obviously live by their mechanics, which are totally transparent. With nothing like visual spectacle to distract from black box rules fudging or a lack of choice, they have to engage their players completely with meaningful decision-making. And that's the core of an interactive system like a game, and ultimately what immerses me. The turn-by-turn decisions in the dog-fighting board game Wings of War may be fewer than in the video game IL-2, but each decision is more significant because of the grosser model a board game has to be. But I'm just as immersed because I'm continually occupied with the decisions a fighter pilot would have to make. That is, the sensory immersion of the experience is ancillary to the mental immersion. But as much as I pooped on technology above, I genuinely mean ancillary: playing Thief in surround sound is ideal not because it immerses players in the virtual space, but because 3D sound propagation, as a core of the simulation, immerses players in the their decision-making. Games are about doing.

Any (board) game I've thought about designing (he says quixotically) has always started with the simulation of the subject that interested me: the model and what it privileges and rejects, and what that says about the subject. From that direction, I'm not big on abstract games (mechanics for the sake of mechanics), but always exploring a subject as a system.

In no respect do I really care for story in games. For games where I play an individual avatar in a concrete world, good world-building breathes life into the fantasy and helps with that escapist aspect of immersion (I also disavow "escapism" as a negative activity, since as I said above, properly immersive games are mentally demanding, a very real and beneficial quality), but being led through a predefined story is never the main draw. I like things like the little notes or books or architectural details in games like Thief or Skyrim or Half-Life 2 that give a sense of place and history to the game worlds, and can provide emotional heft to my decisions. But to return to emergence, no story a game can tell will be as compelling as the one I write myself with my decisions in the action space of the simulation. (Except ilomilo, which made me cry a little—but the climax of that story was directly built off the player's thorough experience with the mechanics!) (Bastion was good for that too, but it didn't make me cry, so -10 points.)

Any statement I've proclaimed here has a dozen exceptions—just admiring a beautiful game world is sometimes enough—so this isn't a bullet-proof thesis. But it's been a fun exploration! Thanks for reading, and there are no refunds.

I like immersing myself in a brand new world. I like pretending to be someone or something else. I like min-maxing and mastering game mechanics, but sometimes I also like trying an intentionally gimped playstyle, just to see if I can make it work. Sometimes I like exploiting broken or unbalanced game mechanics, but only in single player. I still like killing zombies, but I like being a zombie even more. I like physics puzzles. I like explosions. I like breeding pretty ponies. I like jumping around like an idiot and throwing things during dramatic scripted sequences. I like pouring myself a drink and playing online multiplayer with friends. I like hearing the stories that other people tell about their gaming experiences. I like making up my own goofy monologues for silent protagonists. I like the sense of progression you get from levelling up or unlocking things, as long as it's not overly tedious. I like that moment when you start up a new game for the very first time, and that other moment when you finish a really good game and just sit there watching the credits roll.

Fun. At the end of the day it comes down to fun. There is something cool about being able to race a really fast car, dive off off a 17th century church in Rome into a haystack, glide around the streets of Gotham looking for thugs to beat up or drive a tank on a battlefield nailing choppers with impossible shots.

I like that I feel games haven't peaked. Games I adore, and will be my cherished favorites, some of the best games I've ever played have come out in the last 5 years (many of them are getting put through the wringer in That Other Thread, but whatever). They do interesting, challenging things with theme, character, and narrative, and yet there's still improvement and refinement going on. They've been getting more interesting and challenging.

I like the part where you play games. That's pretty fun.

My favorite thing about gaming tends to be those occasions (now more rare than ever it seems) when my friends and I all end up into the same game's multiplayer in a big way and we all get on multiple nights a week just to hang out online and play.

This hasn't happened since the last Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter game, or maybe Rainbow Six Vegas 2, whichever of those came last. I can't remember.

Relaxing, gets you in the "zone", sometimes you learn things, cheaper than pretty much any other of my vices

I like emergent gameplay which uses the game in ways that might not be intended by the game's creators. If features/bugs can be exploited or combined in amusing ways, I'll figure out how.