Good Game Design

[~Axis~]

We've all played many games and have come to love or hate them based on the experiences they gave us. Even though every game is different all of them share the goal of giving you, the player, the best experience the developers can based on the genre of game. What I've noticed so far is that the quality of a lot of games have been going down, and it may be that i might be looking at the wrong games or genre for me but regardless... the indie scene has been making incredibly good titles that are worth every penny. This made me think to myself, "what makes a good game... good?" I always thought that it was having a good art style or good controls but it's obviously much deeper than that. Let's share our ideas! What do you think makes a good game? What is it about a game that makes you want to keep playing past midnight and wake up late in the morning? Feel free to theorize and debate...

[miyabi95_]

dragon ball xenoverse is pretty hard to stop playing if you haven't completed the single player campaign. although some missions are frustrating and require grinding, just having a story to progress through is a lot of fun. especially with the fighting system. it's probably one of the most technically advanced dragon ball games out there.

tl;dr a fighting game that doesn't let you buttonmash and provides an enormous amount of gameplay time. probably a great example of game design in my book.

[Cloud6625]

Blizzard hit a home run with the new Capture The Flag game mode introduced in the Year of The Rooster event. Many people including Blizzard higher ups themselves have constantly stated how a mode like CTF simply wouldn't work. Playing the mode we have in Arcade however, has shown otherwise. The simple additions like having to be untouched for a few seconds in order to capture the flag and Winston's ult making the flag drop really Balance the mode out for all heroes and create a completely new feel to a gamemode. I'm definitely on board for this mode being improved further and added to the official map pool with its own unique maps.

[Goemar]

I don't think CTF is staying from what I've heard...

Honestly, I think games are well - getting better. Like, there's a lot less stinkers out there and the bad ones are normally pretty obviously bad.

I think a good game rest simply on risk/reward. As long as the reward is worth doing whatever it is - the game will be good. Be this simply feeling smart for figuring out a puzzle, getting an awesome weapon for killing a boss 10 times or so, simply getting a badge saying "Your Awesome" next to your name or something or seeing the next part of the story.

As long as the game is good enough to make the reward attractive then it'll do just fine.

The Last of Us is a fine game. But I played because I wanted to know what happened.

Monster Hunter makes me do the same thing over and over again, but being able to make a better weapon (which allows me to do the same thing over and over again but faster) makes it worth it.

Portal made you feel super smart when you figured out how to progress.

Ninja Gaiden (old and new) made you feel like a badass for not dying.

Like, Super Meat Boy - good game, I guess, but I just didn't really care enough to play it more than twice.

NSMB 1 to CRTL+C CTRL+V are well 'designed' but I'd seen it all before. My 'reward' was simply more Mario, so yeah, I enjoyed playing them but never felt a need to play them.

As long as a game is good enough to make you feel good about playing it, then it works.

[miyabi95_]

BS-X aka Satellaview for Super Famicom. though it was pretty experimental, it ended up being pretty well known in Japan during the late 90s. most of the features were pretty interesting, plus being able to put yourself inside of a video game like zelda and dragon quest. also you could listen to a radio drama based on whatever game you're playing. (kinda like the intellivision where you had a casette player for certain games, but much higher budget and actually interesting)

i've only ever played it via emulation (which gives you about 60% of the actual experience, minus the radio stuff of course). but it makes me wish i were MORE alive during the 90s (i was just a baby when it was around)

[Goemar]

Would have been cool if the Switch's "monthly" free game was something like this...