I had a bit of a rant about this a while back when I was playing Splatoon with friends.
The crux of the argument is this “if we stop trying to look at Splatoon as a good game and instead look at it as an entertaining game, the issues we run into make sense. The bugs glitches and bad balancing issues don’t matter as much from an entertainment standpoint. You get in you play and you’re entertained. Even if the match drops you can get back in an be entertained. It doesn’t mean it’s a good game, but it is entertaining.”
My friend’s and I are now freaking out about my prophetic words.
I have to ask then: what’s the difference between a good game and an entertaining game?
From my perspective, games exist to be entertaining so if a game is entertaining then it is a good game. I don’t know what other metric would be used to determine if a game is good.
Unfortunately that’s the part of the rant I don’t remember. I had a pretty decent definition for both a good game and an entertaining game and why they aren’t exactly the same thing but I also had a decent amount of beer that night.
If I think of it I’ll reply to your comment again with the update.
Mobile games, case in point. They often aren’t designed to be good or even fun, they’re designed to maximize playtime over the long term
That means you start off making it fun and easy to advance, but then you start to back off on the rewards and make them grind and wait more and more. It’s the Facebook technique
I had a bit of a rant about this a while back when I was playing Splatoon with friends.
The crux of the argument is this “if we stop trying to look at Splatoon as a good game and instead look at it as an entertaining game, the issues we run into make sense. The bugs glitches and bad balancing issues don’t matter as much from an entertainment standpoint. You get in you play and you’re entertained. Even if the match drops you can get back in an be entertained. It doesn’t mean it’s a good game, but it is entertaining.”
My friend’s and I are now freaking out about my prophetic words.
I have to ask then: what’s the difference between a good game and an entertaining game?
From my perspective, games exist to be entertaining so if a game is entertaining then it is a good game. I don’t know what other metric would be used to determine if a game is good.
Unfortunately that’s the part of the rant I don’t remember. I had a pretty decent definition for both a good game and an entertaining game and why they aren’t exactly the same thing but I also had a decent amount of beer that night.
If I think of it I’ll reply to your comment again with the update.
Mobile games, case in point. They often aren’t designed to be good or even fun, they’re designed to maximize playtime over the long term
That means you start off making it fun and easy to advance, but then you start to back off on the rewards and make them grind and wait more and more. It’s the Facebook technique