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Posted: 11/5/2006 10:58 AM
Post subject: Beating Games versus Playing Games
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EscapePlan9
Joined: 12/29/2005
Posts: 119
I've noticed that with my past couple years of video gaming, I've been concentrating much more on "beating" the game than actually "playing" the game. I attribute the problem primarily to the influence of emulators, save-states, speed-runs, and TAS runs. When I was growing up video games were a significant part of the free time in my life. I only played the games on the consoles then (NES/SNES), but sometime around when I bought PS1 I learned about emulation. At first I was just thinking, "Cool! I can play all these games for free again!" and didn't know anything about save-states. I played through the games just for fun. Sometime after reading about speed-runs, learning how TAS runs were made, and attempting my own TAS, I used save-states more and more during my gaming. It became a natural habit for me to save before any difficult part in a level and jam the "load state" hotkey everytime I fucked up. This only hurt my gaming! I didn't enjoy playing the games as much anymore. My only goal was to finish the game. I didn't care about searching around for secret items, collecting coins, wandering around talking with people trying to find where to go next, or having the stamina and reflexes to complete a stage without using the save-states (video gaming skills yo). I over-relied on save-states and strategy guide. (I also over-used my fast-forward key to skip through dialogue and story, which is somewhat related.) What I did to fix my bad habit? I disabled my F keys while playing (via a button on my keyboard). Now I very rarely use save-states and find myself enjoying the games again. For instance, compare beating the Ninja Gaidens with save-states to not using save-states. With frequent save-state usage, the game is very simple. I forgot how frustrating the game can be, and more importantly, I forgot how satisfying playing through the game without tool-assists was. BTW, Ninja Gaiden 2's story is sooo lame compared to the first one.
Posted: 11/5/2006 11:21 AM
Post subject: Re: Beating Games versus Playing Games
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xebra
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
EscapePlan9 wrote:
I attribute the problem primarily to the influence of emulators, save-states, speed-runs, and TAS runs.
Perhaps misplaced sentiments ... it seems more likely you focus on beating instead of playing simply because you are getting older. As we age, the exigencies of life and society at large pressure us into becoming more goal oriented people. How many of us take the time to "just play" any more?
Posted: 11/5/2006 12:05 PM
(Edited: 11/5/2006 12:11 PM)
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EscapePlan9
Joined: 12/29/2005
Posts: 119
Well that's another factor, yes. And an important one. But my point still stands that emulators save-state abilities have probably contributed to the shift in the way many people (especially those interested in TAS) approach video games - in some ways for the worse (like I mentioned here), but in some ways better too. I find it easier to steer away from a goal-directed approach in life through an alteration of consciousness - meditation for the sober crew.
Posted: 11/5/2006 12:11 PM
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xebra
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
*Yawn*
Posted: 11/5/2006 12:13 PM
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EscapePlan9
Joined: 12/29/2005
Posts: 119
Now my entirely unreasonable sleeping schedule on weekends on the other hand has nothing to do with emulators.
Posted: 11/5/2006 12:14 PM
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xebra
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
But it did before.
Posted: 11/5/2006 12:38 PM
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Dromiceius
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
I can sort of relate to the feeling that save-states cheapen the experience... but in practice, they save us from having to redo tedious things. An RPG, for instance, if you die in a sneak attack and have to re-play the last 15 minutes... who has the time for that? Most of my actual playing is in MAME, where I can just mash the "add credit" button... and continue playing Final Fight with Guy and Haggar simultaneously, at 100% speed. Now that is my idea of fun. Even when doing that in zsnes or snes9x, the thought of reloading doesn't even cross my mind because the challenge is so intense that my head hurts afterward. So, my theory is that we become too sophisticated as gamers for the old classics to really hold our attention like they did when we were younger, and that's why it becomes so goal-oriented.
Posted: 11/5/2006 2:04 PM
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feitclub
Former player
Joined: 3/13/2004
Posts: 1118
Location: Kansai, JAPAN
I think I play games to win because, in most cases, completing tasks in a game produces the most satisfaction. Without a goal, I find that games offer me very little in the way of fun. I can't tell if that's me or the game though. Case in point, the game I've been playing most recently is Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. It's a fun game, but I blazed through it and now I've "accomplished" everything there is to accomplish, save for collecting 100 of every monster. But without an in-game reward for doing so, I feel very little motivation to do that.
Do Not Talk About Feitclub http://www.feitclub.com
Posted: 11/5/2006 3:57 PM
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JXQ
Experienced player (750)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
NES TAS of 2008 Speedy TAS of 2008 SNES TASer of 2007 TAS of 2007 SNES TAS of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
Growing up, I played games to beat them (I even kept a list of games that I had beaten!). The inherent challenge was to rent it on Friday and see if I could beat it by the time I returned it. Since finding this website, I've been able to seperate playing the game from beating the game almost completely. My realtime skills don't get the workout they once did, but I'm still able to compete with, for example, F-Zero records I set when I was in my teens. Using an emulator automatically puts me in TAS mode, unless I deliberately want to play a game like Super Demo World. That's how I tend to "beat" games now. But if I pop in a console game now, I play around with no real intent of doing anything spectacular, and turn it off whenever I tire of it. (Super Mario Kart!) So you might say I'm experiencing the opposite of EscapePlan9.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 11/5/2006 4:43 PM
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Blublu
Player (67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjaví­k, Ísland
Yeah, I did this when I played all the Megaman games on the SNES. I tried to limit my save-state abuse, but I couldn't beat some bosses without using save states in the actual boss fight. Yeah, I suck. And I didn't get any better at it because I just save-stated my way through. On a somewhat related note, and please forgive me if I stray off-topic, this is also the curse of the save-anywhere feature of most modern PC games today. People have different views about it, but the correct opinion (mine) is that it should NOT be possible to save anywhere. But save-points should still not be far between. I think you should be able to lose a maximum of 5-10 minutes of play with one death. Doukutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) has the absolute perfect amount of save points, for example. Another game that did it right is Aliens Vs. Predator (1). You can't save at all in that game, you have to get through the whole level without dying, but it's OK because the levels aren't very long. But I think the developers caved in and released a patch that adds save-anywhere into the game. Or was that AvP2? The game should not be so hard that you have to retry every room 20 times to get it right. Or if there is a hard part ahead, include a save-point just before it and the difficulty should be skill-based (like Cave Story), not luck-based (like many FPSes on the hardest difficulty).
Posted: 11/5/2006 4:53 PM
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Cardboard
Skilled player (1673)
Joined: 6/11/2006
Posts: 818
Location: Arboga, Sweden
NES TAS of 2008 Rookie of 2007 GBx TASer of 2007
When I was young, a couple of them years ago, I wanted to see the credits. That was when the game was beaten. It didn't really matter how I reached the end. Using a password to reach Wily's Castle, resulting in me playing Wood Man's stage like once every second year., was a common happening. Then, the golden age of the PSX came. Now, some strange things started to happen with me. During the first years, I abused any means neccesary to see the credits, but then came Gran Turismo. The damned game was unbeatable. I won all the tournaments and got every car I wanted, but kept on playing. It was fun to play, and I started to enjoy the games more and more. I wasn't happy when I reached the credits anymore. The credits had turned against me. They were no longer the wonderful reward from hours and hours of gaming, they had turned into something foul. A beast, pushing me away, telling me to leave the game alone. The game no longer liked me. This is how it still feels. I don't get a rush from beating a game anymore, I get more of a rush from playing them.
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
Posted: 11/5/2006 6:02 PM
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Zurreco
Former player
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Personally, I always play through games just to play them at first, but then my I can't help but shooting for 100% beating and completing everything the game can offer. Buying a GBA is a terrible idea if you have the above ethos. Every game you can get is great, but comes with the ability to consume all of your free time in the hopes of full completion. I'm more concerned with the fact that I always get very very anxious when I notice that I could have done things faster, or if a dialog seems like it is taking too long. I know I'm not shooting for a fast completion time or anything, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking "man, this is just seconds of my life I just wasted by taking the left path to a dead end when I totally should have gone to the right."
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
Posted: 11/5/2006 8:32 PM
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Boco
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 1354
Location: Heather's imagination
I keep trying to get 100% items/plot scenes/best character growth/whatever on my first playthrough of a game, which gets really frustrating sometimes and I give up and forget about the game for months or years. Really I should just play through the game and then play through a second time after I already know a lot about it and then try for 100%.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Posted: 11/5/2006 8:41 PM
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Bob_A
Joined: 2/12/2006
Posts: 432
Same thing happened to me, only primarily with zsnes's rewind function, which makes it extremely convenient to redo any mistake. I now recognize the folly of this and try to play with the function unassigned to any key if i find my self using it gratuitously. Just the past few days, i played metroid redesign trying not to use savestates or slowdown except in order to practise some trick to get it right before i actually do it. It was much more fun this way than the first time around (for example, getting early screwattack at full speed was thrilling). However, as i've mentioned on the snes forum thread, doing tourian like this is pretty much impossible (unless there's some way to unlatch metroids i don't know about).
Posted: 11/5/2006 10:06 PM
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Dacicus
Editor, Player (67)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1041
I also find myself abusing save states/playing games just to beat them. Often, this is because I play games just for the story (i.e., the later Zelda games). Since I'll get all the "essential" parts of the story from beating the required level/dungeons/whatever, I don't bother with [most of] the side quests. Another part of the reason I use save states on older games is that they don't have any other way to save the game, and I don't have the time or want to devote the time to beat them in one sitting. The only NES game I can remember beating on an emulator without using save states was LoZ. After finally finding out the locations of all the dungeons in the second quest online--I was looking for the third one since 3rd or 4th grade, and I beat the game in college--I decided to beat it using an emulator because my cartridge's battery was anything but trustworthy. I was going for a no-death completion of both quests, so I ended up using the Up+A trick a lot, but I considered that acceptable since it works on the real system. Recently, I've been playing matches against Argentina in Nintendo World Cup to see how badly I could beat them without using save states. It's been pretty fun, but I sometimes think about how boring the goals look compared to some of the ones in that playaround I recorded some time ago. So, save states have somewhat ruined my fun in that game.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Posted: 11/5/2006 11:04 PM
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feitclub
Former player
Joined: 3/13/2004
Posts: 1118
Location: Kansai, JAPAN
Blublu wrote:
Doukutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) has the absolute perfect amount of save points, for example.
Mmmm, frankly, I think one save point in Hell would have been really nice. I'm tired of getting killed by Ballos and having to start the entire stage all over again. It crosses the line from "challenging" to "not fun." Otherwise, I was very pleased with the ratio of save points to deadly challenges.
Do Not Talk About Feitclub http://www.feitclub.com
Posted: 11/5/2006 11:04 PM
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EscapePlan9
Joined: 12/29/2005
Posts: 119
Dromiceius wrote:
So, my theory is that we become too sophisticated as gamers for the old classics to really hold our attention like they did when we were younger, and that's why it becomes so goal-oriented.
It's still possible for the old classics to hold our attention like they did before. I find turning off save-states, rarely using fast-forward, watching the intro, and trying to follow the story (no matter how cheesy) helps a lot. And try to approach the games from the perspective of "I'm bored and want to chill out, I'll play this for fun". I play until I get bored of it, save, do whatever else for a while (maybe something productive even!), then come back to it whenever I feel like it. I used to make my goal to beat these short-ish games (an hour or less) without taking any breaks. So I'd continue playing even when I felt like doing something else. To return to playing games for fun, I had to stop this. If you feel like doing something else - stop. You're not playing the game anymore and you'll enjoy it more when you return to it later.
Posted: 11/5/2006 11:12 PM
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EscapePlan9
Joined: 12/29/2005
Posts: 119
Zurreco wrote:
Personally, I always play through games just to play them at first, but then my I can't help but shooting for 100% beating and completing everything the game can offer.
Playing a game for 100% completion and the likes is a satisfying goal indeed. I'm just saying the first time through, instead of looking to GameFAQs, speed runs or TAS runs, to play it through yourself without aid. You won't be playing the game as mechanically and finishing the game with be more satisfying. Then after you've had a good feel for the game, go ahead and look everything up on it you want, and play again when you feel like it.
I'm more concerned with the fact that I always get very very anxious when I notice that I could have done things faster, or if a dialog seems like it is taking too long. I know I'm not shooting for a fast completion time or anything, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking "man, this is just seconds of my life I just wasted by taking the left path to a dead end when I totally should have gone to the right."
I hear ya. I've responded in similar fashions before. But now I look at it from the perspective of "I'm bored and have some free time - I wasn't going to do anything productive now anyways, so just have fun". I'm very much a perfectionist in many facets of life (I think many TAS'rs have this trait to some degree as well), and have been trying to regain hold of my enjoyment of life, allowing some insignificant flaws along the way. I've made changes with how I deal with friendships, relationships, creating music, enjoying music, movies, video games, school, and many other areas for the better.
Posted: 11/5/2006 11:22 PM
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Zurreco
Former player
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
EscapePlan9 wrote:
I'm just saying the first time through, instead of looking to GameFAQs, speed runs or TAS runs, to play it through yourself without aid. You won't be playing the game as mechanically and finishing the game with be more satisfying.
Oh, OK. Yeah, I don't do this, and neither should you :p It sucks, though, when you buy a game just to say that you've played it/beaten it. I did that with Majora's Mask: didn't need the game until people started talking about it left and right, and so I bought it just to beat it and be done with it. Now, it more or less sits at the back of my collection of N64 games.
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
Posted: 11/6/2006 12:21 AM
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xoinx
Former player
Joined: 9/20/2006
Posts: 287
Location: Singapore
I am also inclined to try for a 100% on the first play through too. I usually try not to refer to any walkthru/FAQs when trying to complete a game. But sometimes, I think game designers are just out to make their games un-100%-able without a official guidebook of FAQ. Heck, I was playing Castlevania HoD a while back, and managed to find all collectibles except 1... which I only found finally after using a map guide on gamefaqs. Sheesh... even now I somehow only managed to uncover 199.6% of the whole map, and I have totally no idea where the last 0.04% is... and backtracking to find all the special rooms is just tedious and frustrating! I feel that when people start trying to 100% complete a game, it starts to take the fun out of the game, especially if the secrets are too well hidden... sure, it gives you a sense of achievement when you finally realised you can bust through a particular wall, but only after spending 3 hours rounding the whole map aimlessly trying to find which wall it is? It just kills the experience... As for savestates, I am guilty of using them a lot too... but usually on my first play through of games. For me, savestates are like bookmarks which I can revert to after I do some exploration of the map and realise there is nothing worth doing ahead. It saves time when it comes to backtracking. I have a weird habit of not using the in-game saves, but instead using a savestate at precisely where the in-game savepoints are, cos it allows me to load the game faster when I intend to continue it, which is good for an impatient gamer like me. I hate playing games that forces you to save a long distance away from some insane crappy boss battle who are capable of wiping you out in 3 turns etc only to have to replay the last 15 minutes of the game and go into the boss battle again without a nearer savepoint (ie Legend of Legaia). Such games only make me wish the console had a button for savestates. Game designers in a way force us to invent savestates, cos they do not supply sufficient number of savepoints, and making the game too unpredictable/luck-based for normal play.
Truncated wrote:
Truncated is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man. -- xoinx
Posted: 11/6/2006 12:47 AM
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EscapePlan9
Joined: 12/29/2005
Posts: 119
I agree with xoinx about the beneficial times to use save-states that don't take away much from the enjoyment of the game, and sometimes make the game more enjoyable. For instance, remember the horrible jumping control with TMNT for NES? You get to the end part of the level and have to make a precise jump to clear this gap. If you fall, you have to retrack through the level. My housemate Tom recently brought his old-school NES console with some games and I found TMNT far too frustrating to be enjoyable without save-states due to horrible control. Now I just save-state before those annoying jumps and otherwise play unassisted.
Posted: 11/6/2006 12:40 PM
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Since child, my playing was always goal-oriented. I only aimed towards beating the game. This is one of the reasons I never liked Zelda. It seemed like an impossible game to win ― I simply didn't have the right frame of mind to go exploring the world. I was totally lost with Zelda. And with Metroid, too. I liked straight-forward games. ** It all changed when I was introduced to the SNES Final Fantasy series on an emulator. Sure enough, I beated that game ― FF III ― played the same way, struggling towards finding the end of the game. But next in series was FF II, and slowly I started to appreciate the games for the world within. I wanted to talk to every person in the game, find every sidequest, less focus on beating the game but more focus on getting a wider utilization of the game's potential. Actually, Star Control II was similar. But I'm not there yet. I haven't beaten the deepest levels of Morlia Gallery in Tales of Phantasia, and I haven't got a grasp of the eloquent techniques in FF4―6, that are utilized in timeattacks. I had no idea Goblin Punch had something to do with level numbers *. And I would have never found out. I use savestates in my emulator playing. My attention span is not the same it used to be when I was a teenager. If my character dies in the game, and I end up losing last 2 hours of progress, chances are I give up with the game and don't touch it again.*** Savestates help me keep focused. So briefly, my experience is the opposite of EscapePlan9's experience. There were games I enjoyed playing without a goal-orientation. These were almost exclusively games with some kind of designer in it. Excitebike, Battle City, The Incredible Machine. Doom, Duke Nukem 3D. I enjoyed designing scenes in them and play them together with friends. *) Exception: Even though I never had the right frame of mind to discover a game's hidden secrets, I did have the patience to use days after days to try to figure out the password coding of games such as Simon's Quest. **) This does not mean "stupid games". I did like puzzle games. ***) It might be different if I actually purchased those games. But I'm not there. I have never owned games that put me into that kind of situation.
Posted: 11/6/2006 7:21 PM
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CtrlAltDestroy
Active player (325)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
Wow. Good topic, I read the whole thing. I actually brought up this identical question on a different forum recently, but I worded it in a much different way. Try reading this, the replies bring up some really good points: http://scuforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1002 Anyway, because of emulators, I will probably never plug in my NES or SNES again, or even my GBA. I can't even play my favorite NES game, Boulder Dash, any more without trying to perform TAS tricks in real time. --- I consider save states to be security from bad luck, which I have come to hate in games. Why fight a final boss who keeps casting KillAll (and having it work!) or voiding your support spells, when you can simply manipulate him not to do so? Why get all the way to the end of the Pachisi track just to fall into a trapdoor and have to start all over again, when you can manipulate all the dice rolls? Why wander around aimlessly for hours leveling up when you can manipulate the metabbles to never run away? I play games for fun. Sometimes, taking the bad luck, tedium, and possibilities of horrid failure out of a game is just more fun.
Posted: 11/7/2006 1:54 AM
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EscapePlan9
Joined: 12/29/2005
Posts: 119
One place where I think fast-forwarding definitely makes the game more entertaining is when you need to gain a bunch of EXP in an RPG. You could just fight battle after battle at regular speed mashing "attack" and "okay" (to speed up the messages) for hours to gain a few levels, or you can hold fast-forward down and auto-fire the attack/okay key. Most RPGs prevent you from staying in one place gaining EXP for too long by increasing the amount of XP needed to gain the next level and/or decreasing the XP you receive at the end of battles with weaker foes, so you're not really gaining an unfair advantage. You're just lessening the amount of mindless boredom time spent. I mean, no one actually enjoys those battles where it is The Waiting Game (thanks for the link CtrlAltDestroy, interested thread) - mindlessly mashing a button for minutes upon minutes so you can gain a level. I wish RPGs incorporated other ways to gain XP than the mindless battles.
Posted: 11/8/2006 5:20 PM
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xebra
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
But if they required anything other than effort, not everyone would be able to beat them!
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