You're Doing It Wrong

We spend a lot of time, appropriately, talking about the content we are provided from the multitude of authors within the video game space, measuring their relative merits and endlessly critiquing the shortcomings. This is, of course, as things should be, but there’s a stigma and even open hostility to turning the laser beam focus of criticism onto ourselves as receivers of content.

Let me show you. Pick the game you most recently played that you did not like, and imagine I’ve just said to you, “Well, maybe you played the game wrong.”

Did you feel that kick in your gut? That flood of whatever chemicals it is in your brain that triggers a defensive emotional response? It is a powerful toxin. I’ve felt it plenty of times, and allowed myself to be swallowed into a cathartic rictus of self-righteous indigence. Rarely are adverbs and adjectives more my friend than when someone has seemingly recklessly blamed me as a culprit in what I perceive as a bad game.

But, is it so wrong to ask this question? Is there no culpability in the way a game player chooses to experience a given game? In cases where I’ve initially rejected a game, only to come back later, approach it in a different way and discover that there was actually excellence where I’d first seen failure, who is responsible for my initial negative experience?

I have to admit, the more I think on the matter the more I see that there is an art to playing games, and how I choose to receive my content can play a major role in my enjoyment of the experience.

I did not care for The Witcher when I first played it. Naturally, it would be hard to argue that the reason I didn’t like the game all that much was because it was somehow objectively bad. For all the things you may or may not be able to say about The Witcher series, that it was just not a good game seems like a losing strategy. At this point I have two options, either I can assume there is no such thing as a “good” or “bad” game — which actually is an interesting enough angle perhaps worth exploring at a later date — or that somehow the way I received the game is impacting my experience.

It’s easiest to just say, “Well, I guess it’s not my style.” I don’t care at all for shellfish, for example, because I do not like things that are obviously disgusting. However, it seems that others find those “foods” to be delicacies and even a special treat to be savored, so it’s very hard for me to be faced with a plate full of shrimp or lobster tails and make the argument that the problem is with the cook. To be honest, I don’t even know how to frame a discussion about what actually defines poorly prepared shrimp, because from my seat it’s all just a bad idea to begin with.

As I have belabored to death, this is how I feel about a lot of Eastern-influenced games. Not just JRPGs, but basically everything from the Capcom and Atlus oeuvres. I can’t begin to comment on what’s good and what’s bad from that entire hemisphere, because I have no language for understanding the most basic building blocks that lay the foundation for these games.

Not so with The Witcher, though. This is a different beast altogether, which is why I was surprised not to enjoy it when so many other people did. But the more I talked to people who loved it, the more I realized that what they loved weren’t even the parts I was thinking about. I was complaining about difficulty, combat systems and a lack of direction, and they were talking about all the things I didn’t like as though they were exactly the positives of the game.

The thing is, when I went back later — looking at the game through the lens as they had described it — I had a different experience. I realized that I’d been trying to absorb this game as though it were a race to a conclusion, as though it were about achieving some kind of end state, when the whole point was experiencing a complex and challenging journey. I realized that, to be frank, I’d been playing the game all wrong.

Frankly, I think the best recent example of this was with Dragon Age II, which is a game I thought was absolutely phenomenal. Not flawless or without room for criticism, certainly, but both subjectively — and, I think, objectively — the positives of the game vastly outweighed the negatives. For some people, it was their shellfish, a repulsive thing for which they had no common ground. That said, I think a lot of people played the game all wrong, and as a result unintentionally sabotaged their own experiences.

It’s a dangerous statement, I realize, because ostensibly I’m saying that the reason a number of people — maybe you — didn’t like this game is not because it failed, but because they failed at the playing of it.

I suppose it doesn’t matter in the end. The results are the same both ways: Person X liked game Y, while person Z did not. There are no worlds at stake, no grand effect hanging in the balance. But, actually, I think if we can accept within ourselves that we have at least some ownership over the result of our experience, then we are better prepared to get more out of games. It’s hard, particularly in a medium where interactivity is the cornerstone, to cede power to an author to dictate the terms of how you are supposed to receive content, but in many cases by doing so, I think we may be better served in the long run.

Comments

Quintin_Stone wrote:

There's a conflict/synergy between a player's preconceptions and the game designer's skill at teaching you what kind of game it is. You can't play Mafia 2 like Grand Theft Auto, but many people went into the game thinking you could.

I know one that tripped up a lot of people was Alpha Protocol, which was terrible if you tried to play it as an FPS but really good if you played it like an RPG (which, to be fair, it did say "RPG" right on the cover).

Minarchist wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

There's a conflict/synergy between a player's preconceptions and the game designer's skill at teaching you what kind of game it is. You can't play Mafia 2 like Grand Theft Auto, but many people went into the game thinking you could.

I know one that tripped up a lot of people was Alpha Protocol, which was terrible if you tried to play it as an FPS but really good if you played it like an RPG (which, to be fair, it did say "RPG" right on the cover).

Releasing post ME2 was the real killer there.

If someone told me that I'm playing my Golf game wrong, I'd probably agree with them...

I must say... I've never actually finished a bioware game. I've started a lot of them. Started KOTOR once, started NWN three times, started Mass Effect 1 once, started Mass Effect 2 twice, and started Dragon Age 1 once... But have not ever actually seen the ending credits of any of them. I may be playing them wrong, I know I play Skyrim and other bethesda games wrong for sure. I'm a JRPG player, so all that freedom makes me go crazy on sidequests and it's very hard for me to push through the storyline when there's still sidequests to do. (Still, I've finished 3 bethesda games...)

I'm trying to finish Mass Effect 2 again now. Hopefully I'll enjoy it more as a soldier than as a biotic.

Excellent article and I know exactly what you mean by the confusion caused by a game you dislike being so popular. My shellfish is Dragon Age 2. I was so disappointed in that game that when anyone began to praise it I was very tempted to stick my fingers in my ears and petulantly scream la la la I can’t hear you.

As for playing it wrong. Maybe my mistake was I kept trying to play it like Dragon Age Origins. Was that wrong of me? So many people like this game that I’m forced to admit that maybe it was.

For me the strength of passion in wanting to think that the people who liked it were just plain wrong came from two sources. The love of the first game coupled with the fear that future RPG’s would follow the sequels example. Give me some time and distance, and maybe a first play through of Baldur’s Gate and I will come back to DA2 and try again.

I agree with Sean's point completely. If we are prepared to accept video games as a form of art, then we must recognize that like other forms of art, games are the medium through which game developers convey specific experiences to the players. As is always the case, successful communication depends on efforts from people on both ends of the process. The speaker is duty-bound to explain his points clearly. The listener, likewise, has a duty to understand the intent of the speaker.

To a large extent, success of communication is the standard by which the gaming community evaluates the quality of a game, but the burden of communication has always been placed on the developer. Has the developer communicated the intended experience to the player? Gamers, on the other hand, are rarely criticized on their efforts to understand the developers' intent. The gaming industry is a highly consumer-driven industry, after all, and that reality forces the developers to shoulder most of the burden in creating rewarding gaming experience.

But we should not let the business reality of the industry dictate our expectation. We should not expect that complicated ideas can be conveyed without efforts from the listener. It takes effort to appreciate great art. A great story teller may translate the essence of a classic Shakespeare play into digestible prose, but many valuable ideas will be lost in translation. In order to appreciate all the intricacies of Shakespeare's work, the listener must himself be equipped with significant amount of literary knowledge. If we want to encourage development of video game as a mature form of art, it may be time to place a higher burden on the players to reach out and actually understand the developers.

In connection with what I said about a creator presenting a game wrong, and with the current topic Dragon Age 2, I'd argue that Bioware should have presented that game differently. Rather than calling it Dragon Age 2, perhaps it would have been better for them to call it NAME OF THE GAME: A Dragon Age Story, or something like that. It is a vastly different experience than DA1, and so they could have presented in a way that divorced itself further from some of the baggage.

This would have made the participants of the thing approach the thing with a different mindset, and probably would have made some people who played it "wrong," play it "right."

D_Davis wrote:

In connection with what I said about a creator presenting a game wrong, and with the current topic Dragon Age 2, I'd argue that Bioware should have presented that game differently. Rather than calling it Dragon Age 2, perhaps it would have been better for them to call it NAME OF THE GAME: A Dragon Age Story, or something like that. It is a vastly different experience than DA1, and so they could have presented in a way that divorced itself further from some of the baggage.

This would have made the participants of the thing approach the thing with a different mindset, and probably would have made some people who played it "wrong," play it "right."

Except that so much of DA2 is connected to DA1 and the DA world they created. The baggage your talking about also includes a universe people got invested in (for better or worse).

Plus, calling it DA2 ensured them of sales and interest. If they had released the games as Generic Fantasy Game, people would've wondered why it wasn't set in the DA universe. Backlash would've happened either way.

LarryC wrote:

At the point where you're glossing over the best parts of a game just to harp on the things it's obvious not intending to do, I think it'd be safe to say that you're doing it wrong.

If there's really that level of ambiguity then the developers and publishers did something wrong. Remember Brutal Legend? I think once people found out it was an RTS it turned a lot of them off. I am normally one to like RTS games and I knew this was an RTS going in... and when I gave it a try I found I didn't like it at all. Was I playing it wrong or letting my expectations color my experience? Maybe this is the problem with genre-bending.

garion333 wrote:

Except that so much of DA2 is connected to DA1 and the DA world they created. The baggage your talking about also includes a universe people got invested in (for better or worse).

Plus, calling it DA2 ensured them of sales and interest. If they had released the games as Generic Fantasy Game, people would've wondered why it wasn't set in the DA universe. Backlash would've happened either way.

There's a way to set it in the DA world... without it being DA2. (Look at AC:B. It's not the end of the trilogy, it's an expansion on AC2. That's how they should have handled DA2, in my opinion, as well.

I don't enjoy watching professional football. Is that because I'm doing it wrong? I don't think so. I think it's because there is nothing of interest to me in watching grown men crash into each other and chase a ball around a field.

There is such a huge continuum of video game entertainment that there are certainly whole genres that won't appeal to me. I don't see that as a shortcoming on my part. I don't feel the need to call people wrong who enjoy these games that do nothing for me. Conversely, I will object when someone complains about a game I enjoy and calls it objectively bad. Anyone who tries to make sweeping objective statements about any taste-based medium is on thin ice anyways. Realistically, the best we can do is try to describe how we enjoy them and put them in the context of other things we enjoyed (or didn't).

There are so many games out there. I don't feel the need to punish myself by trying to enjoy things that just don't push my buttons. Life is too short to play games you don't like.

I would say that your experience with a game is always valid and if you didn't enjoy a game then "you played it wrong" isn't a reasonable response. However, if we're taking about game with mechanical gameplay systems then you need to understand those systems before you judge them.

To keep with the Mass Effect theme:
Not enjoying the overall experience of, or the combat in, ME2 having played it as a Soldier on Normal is a perfectly valid reaction and experience. Saying that the combat is bad in ME2 based on that experience is not valid. It's ME2's fault for not teaching and showing the full depth of its combat system to the player, it's not the player's fault for not finding it. It's okay to judge the game and the experience you had, no matter what.

When you spend your own hard-earned money on a game, you certainly have a right to your opinion of it, regardless. That said, I feel that the amount of money you spent on said game could easily have an influence on how harshly you judge it.

For example, I've bought plenty of games for $5 or less on Steam sales, knowing that I might not fully enjoy them, but was somewhat interested in them for one reason or another. So if I'm not enjoying myself after 30-60 minutes in a game that I spent a few dollars on, I don't care if I'm playing it "wrong" or not. I stop playing and move on to another game and never look back.

Conversely, if I'm going to spend $40 or more on a new(ish) game, I'm only doing so because I already know enough about the game to know that chances are high that I'm going to enjoy it.

Evo wrote:
LarryC wrote:

At the point where you're glossing over the best parts of a game just to harp on the things it's obvious not intending to do, I think it'd be safe to say that you're doing it wrong.

If there's really that level of ambiguity then the developers and publishers did something wrong. Remember Brutal Legend? I think once people found out it was an RTS it turned a lot of them off. I am normally one to like RTS games and I knew this was an RTS going in... and when I gave it a try I found I didn't like it at all. Was I playing it wrong or letting my expectations color my experience? Maybe this is the problem with genre-bending.

There is often no amount of ambiguity regarding a game's gameplay, and critics and gamers can still label it a bad experience from expecting the wrong thing. For instance, nearly very single demo or show of Amalur showed off the combat, items, crafting, or stealth gameplay. At no point did 38 Studios wax lyrical about sandbox gameplay. Yet Sessler still chooses to critique it on the basis of fundamental design choices rather than execution.

See the invisible walls? The exclamation points over people's heads? The obvious region-lock approach to environment? All of these scream "NOT a sandbox game!"

Along similar lines, the lack of guns and an aiming reticle clearly indicates that Super Mario Galaxy is not a third person shooter, so it's pointless to criticize it for not being that kind of game, even though it never actually tells you what kind of game it is. Not every game has to be Call of Duty, and not every game that isn't Call of Duty is a bad game even though some gamers can only appreciate a Call of Duty game and nothing else.

LarryC wrote:

There is often no amount of ambiguity regarding a game's gameplay, and critics and gamers can still label it a bad experience from expecting the wrong thing.

I keep going back to Braid's hidden stars, and how the obsessive collection of them was really a "You missed the point" moment for the whole experience.

But on the other hand, no amount of explanation can get me to believe that Asura's Wrath is a decent game. I can understand why others would enjoy it, but it's too far divorced from my own concept of a "game" to really qualify. I guess that goes back to the concept of me playing it for the mechanics of the thing, instead of playing it to see Biomechanical Buddhist gods go all Dragon Ball Z on each other.

LarryC wrote:

There is often no amount of ambiguity regarding a game's gameplay, and critics and gamers can still label it a bad experience from expecting the wrong thing.

I was guilty of this. Taking a deep breath and looking at it again I can now agree that it's not wrong to want a change from DA1 style combat. To have mobs spawn in your party does cause you to have to regroup and manage threat and it's perfectly legitimate.

I didn't like it at the time and insisted it was a flaw. Now I can apreciate that it was done to improve combat and avoid the player being able to win a fight by staying in the same place and spamming attack.

However I would still argue that having non magical bandits in a world where teleportation does not work literally appear out of thin air on top of your head is immersion breaking and just plain silly. So much so that it staggers me it got put into an AA title.

BadKen wrote:

I don't enjoy watching professional football. Is that because I'm doing it wrong? I don't think so. I think it's because there is nothing of interest to me in watching grown men crash into each other and chase a ball around a field.

There is such a huge continuum of video game entertainment that there are certainly whole genres that won't appeal to me. I don't see that as a shortcoming on my part. I don't feel the need to call people wrong who enjoy these games that do nothing for me. Conversely, I will object when someone complains about a game I enjoy and calls it objectively bad. Anyone who tries to make sweeping objective statements about any taste-based medium is on thin ice anyways. Realistically, the best we can do is try to describe how we enjoy them and put them in the context of other things we enjoyed (or didn't).

There are so many games out there. I don't feel the need to punish myself by trying to enjoy things that just don't push my buttons. Life is too short to play games you don't like.

I think you're misinterpreting what's being said. People aren't saying that you could be wrong for not enjoying a game at all, or for not liking a particular kind of game.

But it's possible to start a game and not immediately grasp what kind of gameplay it best supports. Like, if you try to play Splinter Cell as a run-and-gun Duke Nukem game. This will give a bad experience, because Splinter Cell was not built with that kind of play in mind. If Duke Nukem is the kind of game you're used to though, you might play SC thinking all FPS games involve spraying bullets and circle strafing. So it's contingent on SC to help you understand its gameplay doesn't work that way.

Now you may not like stealth games, which means you won't like Splinter Cell. However, you definitely won't like it if you try to play it like Duke Nukem.

BadKen wrote:

Conversely, I will object when someone complains about a game I enjoy and calls it objectively bad.

I think in the realm of gaming there may be some things that are objectively bad, but nearly all of them would fall into the category of game-breaking bugs.

For an extreme example, having a bug that wipes your save or causes controls to cut out intermittently is pretty much objectively bad. (I'm not talking about a game where wiping your save or messed-up controls are part of the experience.)

Outside of that sort of obvious error, I would agree with you.

A much more subjective example would be when something is removed from a game that might have been expected to be there. Then you get some say "Thank goodness they took that out. I used to hate that", while others cry "They took that out? But that's what made the game fun to play!"

Also this game looks great/looks awful often falls under different tastes in art style.

Evo wrote:
LarryC wrote:

At the point where you're glossing over the best parts of a game just to harp on the things it's obvious not intending to do, I think it'd be safe to say that you're doing it wrong.

If there's really that level of ambiguity then the developers and publishers did something wrong. Remember Brutal Legend? I think once people found out it was an RTS it turned a lot of them off. I am normally one to like RTS games and I knew this was an RTS going in... and when I gave it a try I found I didn't like it at all. Was I playing it wrong or letting my expectations color my experience? Maybe this is the problem with genre-bending.

The problem is Tim Schaffer kept trying to insist that it wasn't an RTS specifically so people wouldn't go in trying to play it like one. Maybe you can view it as a sort of beginner's RTS, but the idea wasn't for the player to hover above and meticulously command the units. The general idea was to build a minimum of one-per unit, then just send them at the enemy. If you play the A.I., that's pretty much what they do.

The difference is in being involved in the battle yourself. Each unit's uses and differences basically shine once you interact with them.

It's a bit more complex than that, but not by much. People were expecting a hack-and-slash game in a heavy metal world I guess.

Oddly enough, I was actually a bit afraid since I tend to suck balls at strategy games, but I went on to get through Brutal Legend on Brutal difficulty and it's now one of my favorite games evar (and not just because of the metal, though that certainly helps). So to me, yeah, that's a game people just play wrong because it turned out to be different than they expected (though personally, I didn't actually know what sort of gameplay to expect even after the demo).

Minarchist wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

There's a conflict/synergy between a player's preconceptions and the game designer's skill at teaching you what kind of game it is. You can't play Mafia 2 like Grand Theft Auto, but many people went into the game thinking you could.

I know one that tripped up a lot of people was Alpha Protocol, which was terrible if you tried to play it as an FPS but really good if you played it like an RPG (which, to be fair, it did say "RPG" right on the cover).

If you're playing Alpha Protocol specializing in any weapon but the pistol, chances are you're playing it wrong.

(I kid. The developers basically broke the game with the pistol until the very end, where you need specialization in anything BUT the pistol to survive, it feels).

As for the topic, I think I had this experience the first time I played the Too Human demo. I was mashing the analog stick each time I wanted to attack an enemy. At the very end of the demo a message popped up specifying that you DON'T do this. I played the demo a second time, merely pointing at enemies I wanted to chop up, and I had a much, MUCH better time of it.

So I played it wrong, and am convinced most other people did as well. It wasn't a great game, but Too Human certainly got the shaft.

Just another good example I think. Some say that in the new Silent Hill the combat is pretty terrible, but the developers made it that way to make you WANT to run from the enemies as much as possible.

Depending on your views on how a survival horror game should play that could go either way.

I think you need to get more specific before you can talk about "right" or "wrong".

Playing ME2 on normal is right for the person who wants to experience the story with some shooting. Playing on hardcore is right for the person who wants to experience the full depth and use of the combat system.

There is no one right way to play ME2, it all depends on what the player wants out of it.

I believe that, "What do I want to get out of my game playing?", and, "Did I choose the right game?", are both questions that come before, "Am I playing this game 'right'?"

There is no one right way to play ME2, it all depends on what the player wants out of it.

True, but I think there are clearly some wrong ways to play it.

If a game allows the player to embark on the "wrong" path or playing methodology is that not a symptom of game design rather than player mindset?

Kannon wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Except that so much of DA2 is connected to DA1 and the DA world they created. The baggage your talking about also includes a universe people got invested in (for better or worse).

Plus, calling it DA2 ensured them of sales and interest. If they had released the games as Generic Fantasy Game, people would've wondered why it wasn't set in the DA universe. Backlash would've happened either way.

There's a way to set it in the DA world... without it being DA2. (Look at AC:B. It's not the end of the trilogy, it's an expansion on AC2. That's how they should have handled DA2, in my opinion, as well.

They should have just called it Dragon Age. The Origins in the first game suggests that it's a prequel of sorts. Which, technically, it kind of is.

It's hard to find the balance point. We've all got stories of games that just didn't click.

I see this as more addressing the stuff like my coworker who hated Ninja Gaiden until I taught him how heal himself after he'd taken damage. It makes it possible to survive and he was much happier that way. Same thing happened when a friend played Final Fantasy X and hated the way the health system worked until I pointed out that you can use items/spells in between battles by going to the menu. He'd been trying to ironman his way from save point to save point.

Is it the game's fault that they didn't know that? I don't know. In the case of Ninja Gaiden, it was definitely obtuse and making it so the character could die in the "tutorial" section raises a nearly Vulcan brow all on it's own. That game was hard on purpose.

But anyone who's played even a few RPG's (particularly Square) knows about using stuff from the menus; it's a core RPG mechanic and I can see why a designer wouldn't even think of something like that. It'd be like including tutorials on pulling the trigger in an FPS.

krev82 wrote:

If a game allows the player to embark on the "wrong" path or playing methodology is that not a symptom of game design rather than player mindset?

No. It's too much to expect any game to be all things to all people.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
krev82 wrote:

If a game allows the player to embark on the "wrong" path or playing methodology is that not a symptom of game design rather than player mindset?

No. It's too much to expect any game to be all things to all people.

Right, and it's a positive thing for a developer to allow a player to play the game their way, even if it's not the 'best' way.

strangederby wrote:

Just another good example I think. Some say that in the new Silent Hill the combat is pretty terrible, but the developers made it that way to make you WANT to run from the enemies as much as possible.

Depending on your views on how a survival horror game should play that could go either way.

Is that why controls in Resident Evil games (except RE4 on Wii) always suck?

krev82 wrote:

If a game allows the player to embark on the "wrong" path or playing methodology is that not a symptom of game design rather than player mindset?

Yes or no.

There are really two schools of thought at play here. One says that it's a designer's job to create a system and then reward players for using it correctly and punish them for using it incorrectly so that players receive a certain desired experience. Then there's the school of thought that says that it's a designer's job to create a flexible system that allows players to solve problems in their own way and that it's less desirable to shepherd people toward a single, correct way of playing.

The two schools hate one another with a passion unmatched outside of certain political conflicts in the Middle East. Players often tend to unknowingly fall on either side of it and will scorn games that are made by or for the other side. Whenever the two meet, there will be blood.

Stele wrote:

Is that why controls in Resident Evil games (except RE4 on Wii) always suck? :D

No I said Survival Horror games.

(ducks)