tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post5784779573013035936..comments2022-03-27T14:08:29.525-07:00Comments on post-hype: VVVVVV's LessonChris Breaulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00146674404189934325noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-12315242393568356292011-07-21T14:19:04.986-07:002011-07-21T14:19:04.986-07:00(One other thing - I think the 'Easy Mode Unlo...(One other thing - I think the 'Easy Mode Unlocked' screen name is a joke referring to the fact that you pass all three VVV screens on the way to the beginning of the awxrion in the (relative) safety of a perfectly straight (though spike-lined) tunnel. But obviously it passes by so quickly that not every player is going to notice this.)asdasdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15459638043573476026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-24004876097765936062010-05-30T01:46:05.878-07:002010-05-30T01:46:05.878-07:00Nice one dude.It took me around 500 deaths to get ...Nice one dude.It took me around 500 deaths to get that trinket, but the feeling was really unique.And around the death numero 420 I noticed that the game's name is actually a abbreviation for Veni, Vidi, Vici, Vici, Vidi, Veni (or so I think) and the feeling was once again unique.<br />One of the greatest games that came from the depths of the indie mind..Запасътhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13704891495373757716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-56783580855859916302010-05-25T18:34:41.960-07:002010-05-25T18:34:41.960-07:00Good read. I think it's immeasurably difficult...Good read. I think it's immeasurably difficult for games designers to get the difficulty balance right, since there are so many factors. <br /><br />There's something to be said for your idea that games are more about patience than they are about skill. But there's no denying that when a person runs out of patience, then that's it - they are no longer enjoying the game. <br /><br />It's different for everyone but sometimes the relief of finally achieving victory over a task just wasn't worth all the frustration. It affects you like a particularly bad hangover. You should have good memories of when you were enjoying yourself, but you don't. You just feel irritable.Brendan Caldwellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02350413042543651151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-3832945091275165732010-05-25T14:58:48.360-07:002010-05-25T14:58:48.360-07:00@Chris/Kieron: I find 50% completion on even a sho...@Chris/Kieron: I find 50% completion on even a short game quite high. <br /><br />As a perennial non-completer of games I did a quick intra-personal study. I'm not particularly good at games, and as a game developer I'm expecting to see a lot of games in not much detail...<br /><br />I have 35 games on Steam, not including minor expansions.<br /><br />4 cannot be completed (multiplayer)<br />6 I don't want, but came with bundles<br /><br />Of the 25 remaining,<br /><br />7 have been completed* <br />4 have received significant play, but not to completion.<br />8 have received only cursory play.<br />6 have never even been played, or in some cases installed. <br /><br />These are not bad games - the 'not installed' category includes STALKER and Dawn of War II - I just haven't got round to them. Of the 18 uncompleted games there are 13 I'd like to complete, but haven't.<br /><br />This gives me a 20% completion rate, which is surprisingly high. <br /><br />My interest piqued, it's time for a quick flick through my CD wallets:<br /><br />XBox: 1 game completed out of 26 possible completions, and that's Psychonauts again.<br /><br />Dreamcast: gets 2 of 12 (Rez, Jet Set Radio)<br /><br />Playstation: 5 of 22 (Front Mission 3, Silent Hill, Command & Conquer, Incredible Crisis, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne). Hang on, that's quite a lot.<br /><br />Playstation 2: 4 of 51 (Detonator, Ico, Red Dead Revolver, Transformers)<br /><br />Wii: None of my Wii games can be completed. DOES THAT SAY SOMETHING? Hmmm...<br /><br />PC CDs: <br />19 of 148 (Lego Star Wars, Mass Effect, Deus Ex II, Rome: Total War, Max Payne, System Shock 2, Civ 2, Deus Ex, Colonization, Dark Forces, Hidden & Dangerous, Freespace, Gunman Chronicles, Mafia, Blade Runner, Call of Duty 4, Broken Sword 2, Planescape: Torment, Under a Killing Moon)<br /><br />What does this show? That I should probably buy a more modern console, and that someone's nicked my copy of Mechwarrior 2. No, hang on, that with 31 of 249 games complete I'm still only at at 87% non-completion. <br /><br />Egads! <br /><br />I expected my own figure to be around 97%. I buy games like they were sweeties, and have no intention of even trying to complete most of them and yet even then I can't manage to fail to complete a decent, respectable 90%. <br /><br />In conclusion: <br /><br />That 90%+ figure sounds like a load of old crap. <br /><br />Thank you, good night.<br /><br />(Actually I'm going to think on this further. Why these games? Why not the others? Why did I stop?)<br /><br />*Half Life & expansions; HL2; Portal; UFO multiple times; Psychonauts, but only because I'm not counting the Meat Circus.CdrJamesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01060044713087923928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-2354771951736289812010-05-24T20:01:58.013-07:002010-05-24T20:01:58.013-07:00@CdrJameson: If you don't like the genre, that...@CdrJameson: If you don't like the genre, that's fair enough. The bulk of the game is more doable than the vvv rooms (or the other optional challenges), but its challenge is more platforming than puzzle-platforming, so it fits your pattern. <br /><br />@Kieron Gillen: I believe Valve's figures, but I don't think 50% completion is that shocking a number, and Ep 1 is just one game. The "over 90% of gamers don't finish games" number cited by that GamePro column is the claim I'd really like to see a source for.Chris Breaulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00146674404189934325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-25696751032708281642010-05-24T13:34:54.192-07:002010-05-24T13:34:54.192-07:00Sadly, this is exactly what stopped me playing VVV...Sadly, this is exactly what stopped me playing VVVVVVV (and puts me off most platform games, sooner or later). Not my kind of challenge. I want something with a clever solution, not a trial-and-error solution. <br /><br />I see the platform. <br />I see what I have to do. <br />If I practice, I will be able to do it. <br />I will be able to say I have done it.<br /><br />I cannot be bothered.CdrJamesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01060044713087923928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-89572026212237037542010-05-24T10:36:48.979-07:002010-05-24T10:36:48.979-07:00By the way - that 50% quote is from a few places. ...By the way - that 50% quote is from a few places. One of the better ones was Valve saying that about 50% of the people who bought Episode 1 completed it. And, of course, it's only 4 hours long.<br /><br />KGKieronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10571108616860771780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-26207542762036696922010-05-23T16:05:26.610-07:002010-05-23T16:05:26.610-07:00I want to second Sagan's comment about gamers ...I want to second Sagan's comment about gamers not finishing games because they just don't like them.<br /><br />It's funny how developers always want to blame the gamers, "We can't make long games because gamers have short attention spans. We need to make easier games because gamers are lazy. We need to make dumber games because gamers are stupid."<br /><br />But they never seem to consider the possibility, "We need to make games that don't suck." Or, in the case of something like Half Life 2, "Even if we make a great game, not everyone is going to like it. We need to ditch the idea that one game can be a blockbuster that every single gamer will enjoy."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-412091550677848382010-05-23T12:47:36.492-07:002010-05-23T12:47:36.492-07:00@Scypher: Thanks for the awesome comment! I wasn&#...@Scypher: Thanks for the awesome comment! I wasn't thinking about puzzles at all when I wrote this, and I can only imagine how difficult it is to design them. If your test players can't handle the difficulty, maybe the solution is to prepare them more via the early, easy puzzles, which ease players into thinking the way your later puzzles require them to think? Doing more "foreshadowing" (or whatever you want to call it) seems preferable to me than directly watering down late puzzles. But again, I know nothing about designing puzzle games.<br /><br />@teoliit: Whoa, spikes as the title makes a lot of sense.<br /><br />I feel like there are two concerns getting confused here (as much my fault as Davison's). "How many people buy the game" and "how many people finish it" are separate issues. Nobody has actually provided the data to substantiate the claim that "fewer people finish harder games"; furthermore, nobody has connected it to sales, which is really what matters when your games are getting expensive.<br /><br />You may be right that designers want everyone who plays their game to finish it. I think it would be better if their main concern was making a good game, though. I don't mean to say that "all good games are hard," like the joke at the start of the post. However, I feel like some recent games lose credibility by being too easy, and too concerned with staying in the player's comfort zone. <br /><br />I don't believe VVVVVV is a title that restricts its audience because of its difficulty. It's true that it's an indie game and it hasn't penetrated the mainstream. It didn't have an advertising campaign and you can't play it on the Wii or XBLA. But there's nothing about the content that makes it "niche." The checkpoints are frequent enough that anyone with patience can complete the main story, and I think its approach actually teaches people to be more open to gaming challenges. (Even if they don't beat the Veni Vidi Vici! rooms.)<br /><br />Demon's Souls is a very hard game that sold well (for its budget) with little to no advertising. I'm not saying that a game that is AS hard as DS could outsell MW2, but I think a pretty hard game with AAA presentation (I hate that phrase) could sell millions. If Uncharted 2 had featured harder, more elaborate puzzles and climbing sections, I think it might have still sold as well as it did and been a better game. (As it stands, the climbing and puzzling in that game is just busywork.) That's just my guess, though. <br /><br />I think difficulty is a device that developers should be willing to use. Difficult games go against current industry trends, so they're a risk. If developers want to make better games, they should consider taking that risk.<br /><br />@Thiago: I wonder when Cavanagh decided to add that brilliant checkpoint system -- whether it was part of his original idea, or if he put it in when he realized that the game he was making was really hard. Gillen pegged the game perfectly by describing its "fairness." Its clarity and precision are really worlds apart from something like the grenade spam you describe, which is just Bullshit Hard.<br /><br />I think it's a matter of bad design (in CoD4's case) rather than being too hard, though. There should be a way to beat a section of a game that isn't just dumb luck, some element to figure out or a task to improve at.Chris Breaulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00146674404189934325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-34276788862491603382010-05-23T07:58:44.621-07:002010-05-23T07:58:44.621-07:00The biggest merit of VVVVVV, in my opinion, is tha...The biggest merit of VVVVVV, in my opinion, is that all the challenges are self-contained. Having Veni Vidi Vici in another game where every time you fail, you have to replay the previous 5 minutes of the game would be incredibly frustrating for me.<br /><br />For example, I played the Call of Duty 4 campaign on Veteran difficulty because that's what the game suggested to me after running the training course. It was fine until one of the flashback missions, where the enemies throw incredible amounts of grenades at you. After surviving and carefully pushing forward for 10 or more minutes, I'd eventually get killed and have to repeat those 10 minutes all over again.<br /><br />Even though it didn't take nearly as many tries as VVV, it was a very, very frustrating experience. VVVVVV, on the other hand, never made me feel that way at all. I would play another VVVVVV, but I'd probably tone down the difficulty if I were to play another Call of Duty.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08892859025338802461noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-35186487502497075642010-05-23T03:35:29.556-07:002010-05-23T03:35:29.556-07:00I think in a lot of people's cases the title s...I think in a lot of people's cases the title stands for Veni Vici Veni Vici ... Veni Vidi ;)Itantorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05259034687198965387noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-23481165981775150952010-05-23T03:20:18.306-07:002010-05-23T03:20:18.306-07:00"VVVVVV" refers to the spikes in the gam..."VVVVVV" refers to the spikes in the game IIRC.<br /><br />"3. I heard the "90% of people only play the first few hours of a game" line at least 5 years ago, and I never saw a citation for it then, either. But, assuming it's true, it's not a new issue."<br /><br />Maybe not a new issue but it's becoming a bigger issue since, first of all, games are much more expensive to make, and secondly, game developers are becoming more aware of it and are just now getting ways of substantiating it.<br /><br />If you make a game you want people who play it to finish it.<br /><br />I like VVVVVV too but it has nothing to do with the GamePro article. VVVVVV is a very niche game for a completely different audience than the one they're talking about. Playing games for the challenge can be fun but the kinds of games that facilitate that are becoming less relevant. Demon Souls sold 0.5M copies? Great, but it's still just an exception. It's not the model for what most people are looking for in a game and anecdotally a lot of people are finishing that game either.teoliithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09701332051722924024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-52192473682871493622010-05-21T15:21:41.469-07:002010-05-21T15:21:41.469-07:00I agree that games need difficulty, and I agree th...I agree that games need difficulty, and I agree that John Davison's post is mostly wrong.<br />But I only want games to be as difficult as VVVVVV's main rooms, not the optional ones. I gave up on Veni Vidi Vici after a minute, because while I could see that I was getting better, and that I would eventually beat it, I also realized that it would take me probably an hour. And I just didn't want to do that. At the end I had 14 out of the 20 shiny things. And out of those that I missed I only gave up on three. The others I didn't find. So yeah, challenge is cool, but keep the extremes away from me.<br /><br />As for John's post: I think he is misreading the stats. When it turns out that a lot of people don't play a game for more than a couple of hours, the more probable explanation is, that they didn't like the game. If you look at the Steam stats, you simply can't explain the drop of players at the beginning of HL2:Episode 2 with the game being too long or too hard.<br /><br />I'm probably going to do a proper response to him some day...Saganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06986759826187610389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-58141155607544766102010-05-21T01:40:34.971-07:002010-05-21T01:40:34.971-07:00Good read, but one should be also aware of the neg...Good read, but one should be also aware of the negative sides of high difficulty - nice take on the subject: http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-trial-and-error-will-doom-games.html though the problems described in that link don't apply to games like VVVVVV...Nickless_Onehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01962776496920355384noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403386358986154242.post-82012752290798475752010-05-20T19:31:36.054-07:002010-05-20T19:31:36.054-07:00Funny that I read this only 10 minutes after sendi...Funny that I read this only 10 minutes after sending a message to my partner about our options for easy mode and skippable levels for our small game in production.<br /><br />Although, our game falls plainly into the puzzle-platformer genre, not the twitch-platformer genre, so the difficulty is less about 'executing what you already know' and more about 'knowing what you must execute.' (Though both involve a lot of trial & error and patience, like you mentioned.)<br /><br />The last option I wrote to him was that we could keep our game the way it is and have players "rough it out" but that "I think that's dangerous in a puzzle game."<br /><br />I'd like to know if you have any thoughts on difficulty in puzzle platformers, which can be just as punishing as twitch platformers, but have many more variables and input options (with twitch platformers, most of that is "where to jump" & "when to jump"). Puzzle platformers can run into Infinite Frustration Zones where some players have no idea where to begin (or, sometimes, no idea what they're doing wrong), even when well designed; and I'm worried about how to mitigate that in my game without diluting the puzzles themselves.<br /><br />In any case, I really enjoyed this article. I was up way late last night playing Bit.Trip Runner, doing what you describe: trying to conquer the frustratingly difficult because I knew that, in the end, it all came down to memory and patience; like Contra, like Mega Man, like VVVVVV, like all the platformers I've played before it. And, you're right, it is satisfying.<br /><br />It's true that real men play Wizardry, though. ;)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com