Playing the "vision" vs. playing your game. What does it all mean?

[angelgrievous]

Inspired by this thread: https://www.resetera.com/threads/i-...-easy-mode-mod-and-it-was-fun-as-hell.162915/

I've been in and out of the linked thread all day and decided to make this thread in an attempt to have a civil conversation on what it means to play a game. As an enthusiast forum it's not rare to find opinions that weigh heavy on one side or another. On one end we have people clamoring that altering a game in any way isn't actually experiencing said game. On the other, folks say it doesn't matter as long as the player enjoyed their time with the game. At the end of the day none of it really matters. Once you buy a product, be it a game, movie, book, or something else, it's up to you how you consume it. If you want to read the CliffsNotes of a book instead of the full book, fine. If you want to listen to a piece of music without the drum track, okay. But the argument at hand is whether or not you "got what you paid for" or experienced the intended experience and whether or not that matters to you.

Now, like I said. It doesn't matter one way or the other. I'm perfectly comfortable saying that anyone should be able to take any liberties in order to enjoy what they want however they want but the question I'm posing to you is when does a piece of media/art/entertainment become something else and whether or not that piece was actually experienced?

I mentioned CliffsNotes above. For those of you that don't know what CliffsNotes are here is a Wikipedia blurb:

CliffsNotes (formerly Cliffs Notes, originally Cliff's Notes and often, erroneously, CliffNotes) are a series of student study guides. The guides present and create literary and other works in pamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. The company claims to promote the reading of the original work and does not view the study guides as a substitute for that reading.[1]

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Basically they were designed to help student's learn the essential information within a given text quickly by condensing said information into what they deemed the most important or most tested bits. A sort of cheaters guide, if you will. If I were to say, for example, that I read Bram Strokers Dracula and upon further investigation was found to have read only the CliffsNotes would you say that I read Bram Strokers Dracula?

If I were to say I listened to and enjoyed Symphony No. 5 from Beethoven but had the French Horn removed or changed it from C minor to C major (this is actually a thing):



original:



would you recommend I listen to it the way it was wrote or would you say I got the gist of it?

Hell, I'll go so far as to say that eating a bacon cheeseburger without the bacon isn't eating a bacon cheeseburger. At that point it's just a cheeseburger. But when applied to a video game does that compare? Does removing one aspect out of a video game alter the game into something else? If we praise games as a whole, that is, the writing, the music, the art style, the gameplay, the difficulty, wouldn't removing one aspect change the game wholesale, thus turning it in to something else?

Again, I want to reiterate that it doesn't matter to me how people play games or consume their entertainment, only that I'm curious as to where people stand on what makes a game a game and when/if that game becomes something else.

 

[HockeyBird]

For your bacon cheeseburger analogy, what if the hamburger itself is highly regarded but a person can't eat pork, say for religious reasons or something. Or maybe they don't like pork. Whatever the case. Would removing the bacon so a person can eat the hamburger completely compromise the experience to the point that it's not worth eating?

 

[Hybrid Rainbow]

I feel like this conversation is geared towards FromSoftware games and those who don't enjoy dying multiple times in the game.

 

[angelgrievous]

For your bacon cheeseburger analogy, what if the hamburger itself is highly regarded but a person can't eat pork, say for religious reasons or something. Or maybe they don't like pork. Whatever the case. Would removing the bacon so a person can eat the hamburger completely compromise the experience to the point that it's not worth eating?

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I would say that it would be incumbent on the chef to create a solution so that anyone could get the experience without sacrifice.

 

[leng jai]

I never knew people cared that much about a developer's vision until it came to asking for difficulty options in From games.

 

[Swift_Gamer]

People that can't stand 30fps in this very forum using smoothing filters in movies to make them fake 120hz complaining about not playing games the way they were intended LMAO

 

[angelgrievous]

I feel like this conversation is geared towards FromSoftware games and those who don't enjoy dying multiple times in the game.

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Well there was also that tweet from that one guy who basically said that if you beat a retro game using save state that you didn't actually beat the game. So I feel like the conversation is a bit more varied than that of FromSoftware games.

 

[MrMegaPhoenix]

"Who cares" seems like the answer here.

If someone is playing for a story, others for the difficulty challenge, another for a side creation mode, others for the speed running, etc, then "who cares" is how I feel about it. Providing games aren't patched to remove fun for one of those types or something like that, then people should be playing games the way they enjoy it if it doesn't affect anyone else.

Specific to the topic, yes you should play souplike games with cheats or mods If that is what is fun to you. We shouldn't care if people are happy or having fun in a way that has no impact on us.

 

[Giga Man]

A game actually is a pile of secrets when you think about it.

 

[angelgrievous]

I never knew people cared that much about a developer's vision until it came to asking for difficulty options in From games.

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I honestly think this is true in any enthusiast forum. I'd bet that in a car forum, for example, that people would say that someone restoring a classic car and not using OEM parts weren't actually restoring the car properly.

 

[angelgrievous]

"Who cares" seems like the answer here.

If someone is playing for a story, others for the difficulty challenge, another for a side creation mode, others for the speed running, etc, then "who cares" is how I feel about it. Providing games aren't patched to remove fun for one of those types or something like that, then people should be playing games the way they enjoy it if it doesn't affect anyone else.

Specific to the topic, yes you should play souplike games with cheats or mods If that is what is fun to you. We shouldn't care if people are happy or having fun in a way that has no impact on us.

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I agree wholeheartedly. I'm just wondering whether or not people think that those that alter the game are getting the "true" experience, whether it matters or not.

 

[Mobyduck]

As soon as it leaves the author's hands and gets to mine it becomes something else.

 

[MrMegaPhoenix]

I agree wholeheartedly. I'm just wondering whether or not people think that those that alter the game are getting the "true" experience, whether it matters or not.

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Personally, I don't think it matters if they are getting the true experience, rather I hope their preference isn't ruining or negatively affecting sequels.

For example, if someone modded metro is prime to play like call of duty, that's fine. But if MP4 played like call of duty, then that's bad.

It just feels weird being upset at people for using mods or cheats. I finished most Nes and snes era games with cheats or save states and similar, so it'd just seem strange if anyone got bothered by it, because it has zero impact on them and I'm happy with the way I did it

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

So to answer your question

Now, like I said. It doesn't matter one way or the other. I'm perfectly comfortable saying that anyone should be able to take any liberties in order to enjoy what they want however they want but the question I'm posing to you is when does a piece of media/art/entertainment become something else and whether or not that piece was actually experienced?

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As soon as a piece of media is experienced by someone that is not the creator/creators it becomes something else because it has now taken a life of its own and has a very different perspective and connotations that have been attached to it. No longer does it just represent a piece of work made by someone but it may also represent a pivotal part of someone's life or represent whatever others may intepretet it as. It is no longer X made by Y but X made by Y played by Z which means XYZ and so forth.

And to go back even further an idea changes as soon as it has been exposed to someone else, then it becomes a new idea multiply this by years of influence and input from a large variety of people and you have game development.

The myth of the pure unfiltered vision is just that; a myth, an abstraction, not something that actually exists. We would all like to believe that we are experiencing something in the rawest and purest of forms but that simply is never the case and that's ultimately a good thing because if the pure vision DOES exist it almost definitely has little to no worth as just that. It needs to be filtered through everything else before it can actually become something that of any worth.

 

[Dakini]

This is what happens when you try "to fit" in the crowd and find out you actually don't like what the crowd likes, but instead of moving on and go enjoy something else you just keep trying and trying to fit.

 

[angelgrievous]

As soon as it leaves the author's hands and gets to mine it becomes something else.

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Intent vs. Impact.

Does it matter whether or not an intended audience perceives your intent? Specifically in art?

Personally, I don't think it matters if they are getting the true experience, rather I hope their preference isn't ruining or negatively affecting sequels.

For example, if someone modded metro is prime to play like call of duty, that's fine. But if MP4 played like call of duty, then that's bad.

It just feels weird being upset at people for using mods or cheats. I finished most Nes and snes era games with cheats or save states and similar, so it'd just seem strange if anyone got bothered by it, because it has zero impact on them and I'm happy with the way I did it

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I agree. Getting bothered by how anyone perceives anything differently is just silly. I'm more curious as to how people define a "true" experience versus a contrived experience.

 

[Cantaim]

I never knew people cared that much about a developer's vision until it came to asking for difficulty options in From games.

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From games and mods that remove Mr. X from the Resident Evil 2 remake are the number 1 way to get Era to be very proactive about respecting developers visions. It's very tiring lol

 

[BeaconofTruth]

It doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things you paid the money for the game and you do what you need to do to get enjoyment out of the experience. If you can't, you can't.

This conversation has become blown out of proportion, because people waste energy arguing for easy mode to begin with, lets go with simplest and cut n dry reason. It gives players an option, and hard games exist that have an easy mode, hell harder games than what Miyazaki has made exist with an easy mode. End convo. Anyone who has a problem with easy mode existing, could simply not use it and get the same ass Miyazaki experience they know n love.

Where some of the issue is, that some of the arguments for easy mode are dumber.

1) Its bad if the game doesn't have an easy mode or a flaw:

Not really, not even a little bit. There is such a thing as wanting to be direct about your demographic, its what made sense when Demon's Souls was coming out and how they marketed Dark Souls. It's the benefit of being a niche title, is that you get to be laser specific as you are filling up a hole the big productions can't provide. Beyond that its also a resource thing, tuning up a game for proper settings is work, a lot of devs especially in action games from Japan actually take effort to mix up enemy rosters for different difficulty settings.

2) It's gate keeping me from seeing the rest of game:

You are not fucking entitled to seeing the rest of the game. Overcoming obstacles is the inherent art of video games, playing them, accomplishing goals, beating an objective, it's been the foundation of what GAMES have been since forever. And people do pay money to have walls put in front of them to be climbed over with said video games. If you purchased the game, you also purchased the challenge that came with it. Now you can use easy mode in the games that do have it, by all means, but understand it came with a trade off, if you want the same experience everyone is talking about, you're gonna need to be able to handle the challenge on some level.

3) Epeen or whatever

For whatever reason there is some putting down the idea that people get a level of satisfaction from beating challenges, again something that is unique to this specific art form. I get it if people are dicks about it, but don't knock the idea just because you don't see the appeal. I certainly see more value in a challenge being presented to a player, the player uses their wits to n resilience to learn a set of systems and accomplish the task than whatever "fake" "phony" "unjustified" fulfillment you think you get from a story.

All that aside, if a game dev has the time n resources to give options to a player, they should, casting a bit wider net in terms of features makes the game approachable without dumbing down the systems that the enthusiast crowd is fond of.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

 

[angelgrievous]

So to answer your question

As soon as a piece of media is experienced by someone that is not the creator/creators it becomes something else because it has now taken a life of its own and has a very different perspective and connotations that have been attached to it. No longer does it just represent a piece of work made by someone but it may also represent a pivotal part of someone's life or represent whatever others may intepretet it as. It is no longer X made by Y but X made by Y played by Z which means XYZ and so forth.

And to go back even further an idea changes as soon as it has been exposed to someone else, then it becomes a new idea multiply this by years of influence and input from a large variety of people and you have game development.

The myth of the pure unfiltered vision is just that; a myth, an abstraction, not something that actually exists. We would all like to believe that we are experiencing something in the rawest and purest of forms but that simply is never the case and that's ultimately a good thing because if the pure vision DOES exist it almost definitely has little to no worth as just that. It needs to be filtered through everything else before it can actually become something that of any worth.

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Does that apply to video games though? If a creator has a specific goal does the player not have to reach that goal to succeed?

I appreciate your reasoning and agree with it in most forms of entertainment but I feel like in video games it's more controlled. I think the creator has the ability to drive experience in a way that no other medium does.

*Edit: In the case of difficulty for example, a developer can force you to overcome a challenge to progress, without giving leeway on how a consumer experiences their product.

 

[justiceiro]

During all the time I played DotA, while it was mod of Warcraft 3, I never referred to it as Warcraft. I never said I was playing Warcraft, and that Warcraft was great, I said I was playing DotA.

When you play mods, you will probably always mentions if you installed a mod. I think that's the norm. Remember days? Nobody called Arma 2.

So, as long you play a version released by the devs, you played that game. If not, you played a mod.

The only muddy area in this are emulators. If are emulating a game or even worse, a controller, you experience can vary widly, and at this point you can hate a game because of some poorly done adaption, or love because you got to play using the controller you like. I know because I hated windwaker for a very long time.

 

[Hecht]

During all the time I played DotA, while it was mod of Warcraft 3, I never referred to it as Warcraft. I never said I was playing Warcraft, and that Warcraft was great, I said I was playing DotA.

When you play mods, you will probably always mentions if you installed a mod. I think that's the norm. Remember days? Nobody called Arma 2.

So, as long you play a version released by the devs, you played that game. If not, you played a mod.

The only muddy area in this are emulators. If are emulating a game or even worse, a controller, you experience can vary widly, and at this point you can hate a game because of some poorly done adaption, or love because you got to play using the controller you like. I know because I hated windwaker for a very long time.

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But you're talking about two mods that fundamentally changed the gameplay, as opposed to a mod that, say, decreases enemy health.

 

[Mobyduck]

Intent vs. Impact.

Does it matter whether or not an intended audience perceives your intent? Specifically in art?

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When I studied English a teacher would tell us a story about an author who decided to answer an exam about his own book. Some students aced the exam, the author got a zero.

The moment you put your work out to the public, be it a game, a book, a painting etc., you lose control over it. Each person, due to having their own unique life experiences, will see or feel something different. A painting that might make someone smile can also make someone else cry. Maybe what you consider to be your pièce de résistance is seen as an amateur's work by the majority of those who see it. That game that you created when you were angry, to let your emotions out, that you considered to be a complete piece of garbage, will be seen as your defining work by others in the future.

You could say that there will always be a public consensus of what a work means, or is supposed to evoke, but that doesn't mean that different interpretations are wrong. Intent might matter at an academic level, if you are writing a paper about that work, but outside that, I don't think it has much relevance.

 

[angelgrievous]

But you're talking about two mods that fundamentally changed the gameplay, as opposed to a mod that, say, decreases enemy health.

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would you say that a mod that decreases enemy health in a game designed around difficulty doesn't fundamentally change the gameplay?

 

[Hecht]

would you say that a mod that decreases enemy health in a game designed around difficulty doesn't fundamentally change the gameplay?

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No? It's a statistic. The player may end up playing a bit more aggressively, but the same tools are at their disposal and progression is the same.

Difficulty is subjective. Some things may be easy for some, tough for others, and even impossible for a few.

 

[ckareset]

Who gives a fuck. Do what you want to and whatever you think is fun as long as you arent cheating in multiplayer

 

[XaviConcept]

I dont see it as a big deal. Enjoy things however you like and it doesn't limit to videogames. Its like saying you didnt read a book because you listened to an audiobook instead. It reeks of insecurity from the gatekeeping crowd.

People get too hung up on the exceptions. If some person came up to me and was like "Im awesome I beat Sekiro in a weekend" only to later find out they used an easy mod then yeah I'll be like "LOL OK" but that BARELY ever happens. Most of the time people just want to be included and have fun in a way that caters to them and thats not something to be dicks about.

 

[justiceiro]

But you're talking about two mods that fundamentally changed the gameplay, as opposed to a mod that, say, decreases enemy health.

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The thing about mods is that they generally demand a effort from you in installing them. Successfully installing a mod is a achievement in itself that you can't help but mention, even because if you installed a mod in the first place, something was bothering you deeply in that game before you installed.

It's like that unofficial patch that allowed you to play dkcr with the classic control on the Wii. If anyone played that game after installing that mod, boy, they will make sure of telling you that.

 

[angelgrievous]

No? It's a statistic. The player may end up playing a bit more aggressively, but the same tools are at their disposal and progression is the same.

Difficulty is subjective. Some things may be easy for some, tough for others, and even impossible for a few.

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Yeah, difficulty is subjective but with mathematics and algorithms it's not. If an enemy usually takes 5 hits to kill but an applied mod reduces that to one hit then the gameplay is fundamentally changed, thus changing the game itself, no?

 

[Kupo Kupopo]

no writer has ever insisted that their book only be printed in very tiny type, & no musician has ever insisted that their music only be recorded at an extremely low level. likely because there's an inherent awareness that peoples' physical abilities vary. i'm pretty sure that, if a writer or a musician actually did do this, insisting that this, in their opinion, was the only true way of experiencing what it was they had created, they wouldn't be taken very seriously...

game developers are free to design games as they choose. but anyone who indicates that the challenge involved in playing their game can be mastered by anyone willing to put in the time & effort? not buyin' it...

 

[angelgrievous]

I dont see it as a big deal. Enjoy things however you like and it doesn't limit to videogames. Its like saying you didnt read a book because you listened to an audiobook instead. It reeks of insecurity from the gatekeeping crowd.

People get too hung up on the exceptions. If some person came up to me and was like "Im awesome I beat Sekiro in a weekend" only to later find out they used an easy mod then yeah I'll be like "LOL OK" but that BARELY ever happens. Most of the time people just want to be included and have fun in a way that caters to them and thats not something to be dicks about.

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What if someone said they read Moby Dick but actually only read the CliffsNotes? Would you say they got it or would you suggest they read the full book?

 

[Hecht]

Yeah, difficulty is subjective in the literal sense but with mathematics and algorithms it's not. If an enemy usually takes 5 hits to kill but an applied mod reduces that to one hit then the gameplay is fundamentally changed, thus changing the game itself, no?

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No. You are changing the difficulty. The game remains the "same," in that you are still playing the same game, with the same story, same gameplay, same music, same everything.

My definition of "easy" may be different from yours, but ultimately we can still play the same game but with different levels of difficulty. If I play Uncharted on Easy and you play it on Hard, did we play different games?

 

[Hecht]

What if someone said they read Moby Dick but actually only read the CliffsNotes? Would you say they got it or would you suggest they read the full book?

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Having read Moby Dick I say the guy reading the Cliffs Notes had a better experience

 

[angelgrievous]

No. You are changing the difficulty. The game remains the "same," in that you are still playing the same game, with the same story, same gameplay, same music, same everything.

My definition of "easy" may be different from yours, but ultimately we can still play the same game but with different levels of difficulty. If I play Uncharted on Easy and you play it on Hard, did we play different games?

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Yes, the game remains the same in Uncharted as it was designed for those variables. But in games without those options changing the variables changes the game and the "vision" or intent of the creator, no?

 

[Cenauru]

Well there was also that tweet from that one guy who basically said that if you beat a retro game using save state that you didn't actually beat the game. So I feel like the conversation is a bit more varied than that of FromSoftware games.

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The person that tweeted that, in the past had also mentioned in a tweet that they were only able to beat a retro game using save states. Alot of these arguments are disingenuous and are born from a want to feel superior, as their ego comes from beating hard games, but will also use every trick of the book to convince themselves that they didn't actually receive any "outside help" when they actually did.

But you're talking about two mods that fundamentally changed the gameplay, as opposed to a mod that, say, decreases enemy health.

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Not to discredit your reply (I agree with what you're saying), but you made me remember something pertaining to how my experience of a game was drastically changed by giving enemies more or less HP. In Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, the easier difficulties and even normal difficulty makes enemies die in just a few hits. But in harder difficulties, they stay alive and now you need to focus on crowd control by juggling them with moves that keep them in hitstun in the air and whittle them down as much as you can before they hit the ground. This kinda opened my eyes to how just numbers can make or break mechanics in a game. Although I think this is more of a statement on poorly designed difficulty settings.

When I studied English a teacher would tell us a story about an author who decided to answer an exam about his own book. Some students aced the exam, the author got a zero.

The moment you put your work out to the public, be it a game, a book, a painting etc., you lose control over it. Each person, due to having their own unique life experiences, will see or feel something different. A painting that might make someone smile can also make someone else cry. Maybe what you consider to be your pièce de résistance is seen as an amateur's work by the majority of those who see it. That game that you created when you were angry, to let your emotions out, that you considered to be a complete piece of garbage, will be seen as your defining work by others in the future.

You could say that there will always be a public consensus of what a work means, or is supposed to evoke, but that doesn't mean that different interpretations are wrong. Intent might matter at an academic level, if you are writing a paper about that work, but outside that, I don't think it has much relevance.

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I remember watching a video by Innuendo Studios on a game called The Beginners Guide that went over exactly this. I'll link it and timestamp it to the exact time when he starts talking about the most relevant part of this discussion, however everything else in the video is a spoiler for the game in one way or another.



At the end of the day a game is partially the player's vision, it's never a completely intact version of the developer's vision and this only seems to be argued by people who's visions line up very closely with the developer's visions. I've argued the opposite before if you scrub back far enough in a dark souls easy mode thread at some point (or maybe that was back on the GAF days, I don't remember...), but over time I've really learned that an artist's vision is never fully intact after it leaves their head.

 

[Lylo]

My nephew enjoys cutting grass on Zelda games, should i inform him that he's breaking Aonuma's heart?

 

[Hecht]

Yes, the game remains the same in Uncharted as it was designed for those variables. But in games without those options changing the variables changes the game and the "vision" or intent of the creator, no?

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No? Changing statistics without changing the actual gameplay is the same thing as in Uncharted (enemies do less damage, there are less enemies, etc.). You're still playing the same gameplay loop.

 

[trugs26]

Interesting thread. My gut reaction is the following (could be way off base though):

The gameplay is the game itself (or vice versa). Other elements dress up the game and our perception of it. I can skip everything else (e.g., music muted, skip over the story, downgrade the graphics) but I'd still be playing a "game". If I "turn off" the gameplay, I'm not playing a "game" (e.g, listening to the soundtrack is now "music", watching someone else play via a stream is now watching a "movie", etc.).

 

[Xiaomi]

This is just a fundamental disagreement about why people play games, and how they see them. For some people, it is a consumption activity like watching a movie. You start at point A, get to point B, and you're done. It doesn't matter how you travel down that path. For others, it is a hobby and a skill. Getting from point A to point B is the goal, but how you get it done is more important. Like building a model or playing an instrument, just finishing something is not all that matters to the second group: it needs to be done within certain restrictions/at a certain skill level. These two groups won't see eye to eye and maybe should just resign themselves to that fact.

 

[2Blackcats]

I think how we consume\play games can be quite personnel.

We don't fit in convenient boxes. I didn't vote

 

[angelgrievous]

No? Changing statistics without changing the actual gameplay is the same thing as in Uncharted (enemies do less damage, there are less enemies, etc.). You're still playing the same gameplay loop.

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Okay, but changing the predetermined statistics in a given game is fundamentally changing the gameplay, no? Despite all of the other elements in place, be it story, art, music, etc, changing a core mechanic of a game makes it something different. A new experience if you will. Not saying it's a lesser experience, but certainly a different one.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

Does that apply to video games though? If a creator has a specific goal does the player not have to reach that goal to succeed?

I appreciate your reasoning and agree with it in most forms of entertainment but I feel like in video games it's more controlled. I think the creator has the ability to drive experience in a way that no other medium does.

*Edit: In the case of difficulty for example, a developer can force you to overcome a challenge to progress, without giving leeway on how a consumer experiences their product.

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I think you're both overestimating developers ability to foresee how people will react to things and underestimating just how radically different someone's experience can be despite what the developers intended. Developers for example may not intend to make a game come off as sexist against women for example and when played by a man they very well might fall right into that intention but then say a woman plays it and it comes off as sexist. Right there we've entered an unintended experience and we go back to what I said before about how now the piece of media has taken a separate life of its own.


Yes developers can create very controlled experiences but they can only do that with specific knowledge about what kind of person will be playing their game be it their age, sex, gender, race, education level, etc. Eventually though in almost all instances someone who does not fall in the expected parameters is going to play the game and experience something completely different and uncontrolled. So yes it DOES apply to video games. The creators can drive experience a lot more than other mediums can, but they can't do it THAT well.

 

[Hecht]

Okay, but changing the predetermined statistics in a given game is fundamentally changing the gameplay, no? Despite all of the other elements in place, be it story, art, music, etc, changing a core mechanic of a game makes it something different. A new experience if you will. Not saying it's a lesser experience, but certainly a different one.

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I don't know how more clearly I can state what I already have

 

[XaviConcept]

What if someone said they read Moby Dick but actually only read the CliffsNotes? Would you say they got it or would you suggest they read the full book?

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You can always go with hypotheticals that make you skeptical "I read the synopsis so I read the book!" and when I see a coworker "watching" Watchmen in a corner of the screen at work I point out theyre gonna miss a bunch of shit but thats the only way they can make time to watch it and they get the show anyways. Thats how these things go, dont have RULES about this, just get to know people and learn how they consume media, this is all entertainment anyways, it doesn't deserve to be treated as medicine you need to ingest precisely.

 

[Timeaisis]

A game is an activity with rules and a failure state. If you've played one round of Tetris you've played Tetris. It's not that complicated.

 

[Dogui]

There's the game, the thing that exists from the creator's vision, and there's the mod, which is a different spin of this vision.

Both exists and are different stuff. And that's cool. I support both the creator's vision and its modification.

It's cool that Sekiro exists without an easy mode because it's the designer's vision. It's also cool that exists an easy mod for the game.

Too bad for the console players that game shark isn't a thing anymore.

Both main poll options are right. Take one thing away and it's something else, and that's okay to ignore it.

 

[angelgrievous]

I don't know how more clearly I can state what I already have

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Thanks for your opinions. It's always nice to have a back and forth with someone. I'm really just interested in where people stand on this. Not that it matters in the slightest. Just thought it would make for a good fourm topic.

You can always go with hypotheticals that make you skeptical "I read the synopsis so I read the book!" and when I see a coworker "watching" Watchmen in a corner of the screen at work I point out theyre gonna miss a bunch of shit but thats the only way they can make time to watch it and they get the show anyways. Thats how these things go, dont have RULES about this, just get to know people and learn how they consume media, this is all entertainment anyways, it doesn't deserve to be treated as medicine you need to ingest precisely.

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You're right. There are no rules. People can enjoy whatever they want however they want. It's just interesting to see how other people feel about the topic.

 

[angelgrievous]

I think you're both overestimating developers ability to foresee how people will react to things and underestimating just how radically different someone's experience can be despite what the developers intended. Developers for example may not intend to make a game come off as sexist against women for example and when played by a man they very well might fall right into that intention but then say a woman plays it and it comes off as sexist. Right there we've entered an unintended experience and we go back to what I said before about how now the piece of media has taken a separate life of its own.


Yes developers can create very controlled experiences but they can only do that with specific knowledge about what kind of person will be playing their game be it their age, sex, gender, race, education level, etc. Eventually though in almost all instances someone who does not fall in the expected parameters is going to play the game and experience something completely different and uncontrolled. So yes it DOES apply to video games. The creators can drive experience a lot more than other mediums can, but they can't do it THAT well.

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No, I completely agree how different people can perceive any given experience. I think in story heavy games it's almost a given that people will walk away with differing opinions. Hell, even in games where the story isn't as prevalent will yield common results. But in regards to difficulty and progression I think it's more linear in that most people will either adapt and overcome or concede and move on and thus creating a wholly different experience, and if altered will change the players perception of the game.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

No, I completely agree how different people can perceive any given experience. I think in story heavy games it's almost a given that people will walk away with differing opinions. Hell, even in games where the story isn't as prevalent will yield common results. But in regards to difficulty and progression I think it's more linear in that most people will either adapt and overcome or concede and move on and thus creating a wholly different experience, and if altered will change the players perception of the game.

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Even with difficulty a truly controlled experience rarely happens as there will be things that people find hard and things that people will find easy and what determines that can be from an experience standpoint or an outright physical one or something inbetween. If for example Bloodborne was designed to have The Moon Presence be a hard boss then I did not end up with that experience. There will be people who find the beginning experience to be the hardest and there will even be people that find an entire game from beginning to end to be easy. Even winning can fail to be truly controlled as most developers probably want you to feel triumphant when beating something and many people will feel that way but there are just as many people who beat something hard and feel relieved or like they wasted time instead.

 

[Deleted member 31333]

I don't give a fuck about the developers intent. If we can criticize a game for not putting checkpoints right before a boss fight, then we can critique From games for making things difficult and not adding difficulty options. If something greatly decreases my enjoyment of a game, it is bad / lazy game design in my opinion.