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The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

blog.joeyschutz.com

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Re: The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

#51

Post by sparkie »

s_trumpet wrote: post #38
watwut wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have games changed, or have you? Yes the games changed. I think that the claim the games did not changed would be absurd to anyone who looked at games in the past and is looking at games now. We changed too, sure. But kids dont finish games, typically either. And I dont even think pac-man is a good example here, very few people finished pac-man - but the game itself was not meant to be finished. It was meant to be…

The way the author defines loops is so broad that every single 90s game I can think of has them.

The difference is that 90s games had novelty at the time - many introduced new gameplay ideas.

A lot of today's AAA games have converged into a small number of genres like the open world action RPG games which all have the same "side quests" repeated ad-nauseam.

* Talk to NPC

* Go kill 5 monsters

* Talk to another NPC

* Collect 3 of some item.

* Talk to another (or original) NPC.

* Get some pocket change, EXP and an item as reward.

Repeated several hundred times throughout the game with minor variations and some uninteresting dialogue that doesn't develop your the story or character besides unlocking a new skill. Every skill is acquired the same way - through "skill points" that are acquired with EXP - but there's no novelty in acquiring EXP - just the same quests which increase the game's "content".

But this content is boring an uninspired. It's almost like it's done to keep people employed - or at least, to pay fewer programmer's high salaries and replace them with lower salaries of employees who can use a pre-packaged scripting system to increase the gameplay duration without adding any new gameplay. Or maybe it's the sunk cost fallacy - they feel like they've put some time and effort into implementing some mechanic, so it would be a waste to only use it once or twice, so they have to use it 50 times to justify the budget spent on developing it.

Re: The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

#54

Post by some_random »

latexr wrote: post #2

> For indies, the pressure to clear the 2 hour mark was hung ominously overhead when Valve updated their policy to allow refunds up to that threshold. If the game is good, I doubt most people would return it. “The Dark Queen of Mortholme”¹ comes to mind. I didn’t really find it enjoyable (good idea, boring execution) but the reviews praise it and I do get why. The game takes 30 minutes from beginning to end. Maybe yo…

It's difficult, I'm sure to some degree "fraud" happens (someone buys a game, enjoys it, and refunds anyways) but I also think that "game was way shorter than I expected" (where expectations are set by the store page, description, and most importantly price) is a real flaw in the product that is refund worthy.

Re: The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

#55

Post by nottorp »

throwanem wrote: post #41
nottorp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the obvious part. The non obvious part is ruining game design.

More than that evidently is non-obvious here. I am mainly concerned about the ruination of people. The fate of some niche and subparadigmatic school of ludic theory moves me little by comparison. (Of course I agree we need the humanities, but these are complex times when difficult choices may have to be made.) But I appreciate this is more an article for the - what did they call it, for five minutes on Reddit a coupl…

> The fate of some niche and subparadigmatic school of ludic theory moves me little by comparison.

Just because you're not interested in video games it doesn't mean they're all bad for your health.

Have you seen that study that says "consuming" "video content" passively no matter the source leads to cognitive impairment, while video games - which are active - don't?

Re: The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

#56

Post by swiftcoder »

It's fascinating, because I broadly agree with the author's point, but I think he's way off on Tactical Breach Wizards. Not only is it a very short game, but it adds new characters/abilities that fundamentally reshape the way the game is played all the way up to the final boss fight

Re: The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

#57

Post by throwanem »

nottorp wrote: post #55
throwanem wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that evidently is non-obvious here. I am mainly concerned about the ruination of people. The fate of some niche and subparadigmatic school of ludic theory moves me little by comparison. (Of course I agree we need the humanities, but these are complex times when difficult choices may have to be made.) But I appreciate this is more an article for the - what did they call it, for five minutes on Reddit a coupl…

> The fate of some niche and subparadigmatic school of ludic theory moves me little by comparison. Just because you're not interested in video games it doesn't mean they're all bad for your health. Have you seen that study that says "consuming" "video content" passively no matter the source leads to cognitive impairment, while video games - which are active - don't?

I haven't said that I'm not interested in video games! I admit these days I go deep rather than broad, but that's not the same at all as saying I don't play them.

That said, while I can't tell with whom you mean to find yourself arguing, I can see by now that's not me. I'll leave you to find an interlocutor better poised to provide the kind of discussion for which you're looking; enjoy your day!

Re: The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

#58

Post by karmakaze »

throw4847285 wrote: post #19

The fact that this article does not mention the word "roguelike" once is quite telling. The argument that gameplay loops are a relic of arcades falls flat when you realize that Rogue came out in 1980, the same year as Pac-man. The entire argument falls flat when you realize that a gameplay loop is simply another way of explaining the means of interactivity, and interactivity is core to the idea of video games. Even t…

The whole time reading this I was thinking, there's more than one kind of game. Even in the space of single player games there are many kinds. Maybe they should try playing a different one. Or maybe Dwarf Fortress will have enough depth.

The point of distilling a story into a loop does resonate though. Think of games made from blockbuster movies which succeed or fail based on the sliver that made it into the loop. I on the other hand love games that I can play for 10-20 mins, then do it again or not. These tend to be PvP games though.

Re: The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)

#59

Post by sph »

i_c_b wrote: post #43

(I'm a game designer, so I can't help but respond to this as a designer first, and not primarily a player) I wonder how much of the issue here is the rise of the abstraction of "gameplay loop" itself as a lens that shapes what gets made. One of the things that can keep a game fresh is players being unclear on where the border of play is, or what the range of the possible is. When I was playing Mario 64, say, I really…

Great comment. To add to this:

> There's something here about the aesthetics of open-ended discovery versus the pleasures of achievement, I think, perhaps in something like a fractal sense.

This is why INSCRYPTION was such a hit. You learn the game rules, and as you figure out the game loop, bam! you get a whole other game layered on top.

A game loop is necessary to create any game that’s not purely narratively based, but the secret sauce is to hide its seams well enough and integrate it with the game world (DARK SOULS and the cycle of death being a whole part of the story, Outer Wilds)

Or go meta and break the player’s expectations like INSCRYPTION did.

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