Re: [GD-General] A portable preferences library

[Colin F. <cp...@ea...>]

2003 December 7th
Sunday

> I understand the need in a multiplayer game to keep people from cheating, 
> but I do not understand at all the opposition many game developers have to 
> single player games having editors.  It's not you against the players, it's 
> okay if he wins even if it isn't the way you intended.

I totally agree.

I also think that making it impossible to save the game state at arbitrary
times and places (which should almost always be technologically possible
without some wacky paradox) is just annoying.

For some people the game just isn't fun with the stock rules.  I gave up
playing Oni, and almost gave up before finishing GTA3, because of lengthly
missions that I would fail at almost the last moment -- only to be forced
to start from the very beginning again!  Imagine reading a novel, and on
page 200 you encounter an unfamiliar word that forces you to start reading
the novel from the very beginning.  After a while you would begin to hate
seeing the same stupid stuff over and over again, just to catch brief 
glimpses of the worthy challenges before being sent back to the beginning.

Funny anecdote:  I remember a guy who played Half-Life in "god mode" from
beginning to end.  His character was totally invulnerable -- but he'd 
still very carefully avoid threats and he'd get freaked out when his 
character was attacked by enemies.  This was shocking to me, because it
required convincing oneself that taking damageless damage was really bad.
But I realize that me and my desire to save games at arbitrary points is
just another "safety net" in a continuum of comfortable risk.

There are a few "one-shot kill" games, like Rogue Spear and maybe America's
Army.  If one's character is shot once (or, sometimes, twice), that player
must sit out the rest of the multiplayer match.  (Rogue Spear did allow 
the first few dead characters to assume control of any living non-player
characters remaining in the team's squad, but just consider the general
high stakes of games of this nature.)  Anyhow, for some people the high
stakes are obviously a thrill.  For some, no game is worth playing unless
the reward is fantastic (like being the only survivor in a one-shot kill
match).  A state lottery might have a pot of $100 million, and clearly
lots of people like the nature of that kind of "game" (crazy odds but
huge reward), but that same scenario can be a big turn-off for others.

Anyhow, I like the idea of tuning the rules and "laws of nature" in a
game, because it is just like adjusting the bass and treble on a 
stereo.  There is no good or bad way to play a game any more than
adjusting the sound of music to increase listening pleasure could be
considered "cheating".

If people want bragging rights (e.g., "I defeated the Britney Spears
Mech with my Paris Hilton Pokemon at the Pepsi-n*Sync MTV beach house."),
then the Educational Testing Service will have to offer standardized 
testing in video games, with standard equipment, because anyone who
*wants* to cheat in any single-player game on any system will find a way.
That would be awesome: sending colleges official video game scores.
Of course ETS would charge $4 for each addional score report, and your
bad video game scores would haunt you for five years!  There'd be 
video game prep courses, private tutors, and pressure from parents to
not flunk video games.  Every now and then there'd be the guy who 
got a perfect score, going on to play video games at the school of 
his choice -- probably going on to do something really video game-y
for society some day...

To summarize, I think that the observation that "It's not [game
developers] against the players [...]" is really great, because I
suspect a lot of development teams don't actually explicitly 
consider their relationship with players in this regard.  Maybe 
some developers vaguely think enforcing game conditions will permit
a standard that will make the game a meaningful basis of comparing
people (just like a standardized test), but I wonder how the team
would vote if the matter was raised explicitly at a meeting.

I think that simple observation could very well change the 
unspoken attitude of developers toward their anonymous end-users.
I think it could very well be a good core principle to remind
everyone of at, say, monthly milestone meetings, or whatever.
Well, it seems important to me, anyhow, now that I've seen the
idea spelled out.

--- Colin

cp...@ea...