Games that hook players are often designed to be just difficult enough to be truly challenging, while allowing players to achieve small accomplishments that compel them to keep playing. In that respect, the design of video games is similar to the design of gambling casinos, which will allow players to have small “wins” that keep them playing.>
Going over addictive design elements like this can at least let people be more aware of why they keep wanting to play.
I mean, that quote just described game design for fun games though. A game that is fun will be addictive, but not in the same way gambling is. To most people, gambling isn’t fun. The act of sitting at a machine and repeatedly pressing the same button or pulling the same lever is not fun. The same repeated graphics are not fun. Repeatedly losing money? Also not fun. But, the prospect of winning big is exciting. This feeling, the desire to feel like you traded a small value for a large value and won big, greed, is exploited in many modern games.
A fun game presents a challenge, something just difficult enough for you to not steamroll it, but not so difficult that you want to quit the game. A fun game gives players rewards to incentivize them to keep playing, and generally, the best games reward players with better items or further level progress or additional story content. The reward never comes from the player spending real world money, but rather the time the player has spent in the game, or achieving some task, or being highly skilled. This is fun game design, and fun is addictive by design.
A game that exploits greed typically does so in ways that are hidden at a surface level. Generally, mechanics that are obfusicated from the player which involve rewards such as loot boxes that are purchased with a premium currency, this is the most obvious. Nobody blinks an eye if a blue uniform for your army guy is 400 crystals, because you can buy a pack of 200 crystals that gives you an extra 250 for free for $5 on your first purchase. But show that the blue uniform is $11, and people will complain. And I mean, yeah. Its the color blue. But now there is a problem. You have 50 crystals left. But nothing in the store is 50 crystals. Not to worry, you can buy another pack that gives you 550 more for only $10. So you buy it and get that cool golden scope that cost 350 crystals. But now you have a problem. You have 150 crystals left, and nothing in the store is… Wait, what is this? Lucky Chance? I can spend 10 crystals for the chance to get a legendary golden uniform? 0.01% drop rate? Yeah, I will just try 15 times. I didnt get it, but now the second pull costs me 15? No, Im good. But now what do I do with 140 crystals? You can see where this goes.
Also, the developers add a notification icon to the store page that doesn’t go away unless you click on something in the store. This is one of the big differences between a game that is fun and a game that exploits greed to make it feel like fun.
I‘m playing it in HDR and having a good time, just enjoying the spectacle, although the cops could be more loseable without ramps, I can see that annoy me towards the end of the game lol
Contraband Police - it’s like Papers Please, but since it’s in first person, it’s more complex - you have to manage the whole border crossing area with the few staff you have, you have a car that you have to manually drive to a supply shop and to drop prisoners and contraband off at, and you can get ambushed along the way or at your base, where you’re manually be shooting at smugglers with guns you buy.
Shadows of Doubt - A game where you play as a detective in a city and you have to solve cases (sometimes murders) and often end up committing crimes yourself along the way. A lot of cases solved used by matching faces to names to fingerprints to voices to jobs to blood type, eye colour, hair colour, age, and so on. Extremely addictive and often hilarious, despite how buggy this early access game is.
Dicey Dungeons - A roguelike deckbuilder with 6 different classes where you roll dice against cards with different effects and your enemy does the same to you. I don’t love roguelikes and really don’t like deck games but this one is really appealing, and has a great soundtrack. The different classes play through a LOT of different “episodes” where the rules of the game change.
also playing a lot of Heroes of the Storm every goddamn night
I got in pretty deep on Marvel Future Fight a couple years back. It really bothers me how a family friendly franchise will be packed with pressure points and gambling mechanics.
The game starts fine, as a short mission based story line, and progress happens fairly quickly. You play missions to get character bios (points) to unlock more marvel characters, and then you can build small teams for different missions.
As you start unlocking more characters, you also need to rank up the characters you own to make them more powerful. Again, the basic level upgrades are easy, as you collect material per mission, but as you start getting into the middle game, ranking a character happens through RNG.
You upgrade a character though multiple resource points, Rank, then Tier, then weapons, uniforms, gear, and crystals. There is no set “cost” for upgrading one part of a character. You build up a bunch of materials, and then you take a spin. There’s a random amount of progress made spending the material, and each upgrade path becomes its own slot machine, with its own materials to spend. You MIGHT get lucky and get a full upgrade to a power crystal in one turn, but more than likely you’ll need to burn HOURS of game time grinding to build up the materials, spend all the materials, and be left with nothing.
If you want to shortcut that progression, it can cost HUNDREDS of dollars to rank ONE character to a point where you can be competitive in online events and in guild play. You won’t be competitive with just a couple high ranking players, you need a FULL roster for the multiple events available.
At present, Marvel Future Fight includes over 250 playable characters. Each needs to be ranked and upgraded through multiple game mechanics, and new uniforms are regularly released that also require RNG mechanics to own and upgrade.
Whales will spend THOUSANDS of dollars at the start of a new event, and when new characters are released, to chase the game’s meta. Sure, you aren’t “buying a lootbox”, but players are spending money to build up resources, only to throw those resources away at multiple slot machines built into EVERY character. It’s one of the most insidious games I’ve ever played, and it’s marketed at kids and teens.
Pretty much. If they made a “Pokemon Fitness” that tracked steps or heart rate and calories burned, it would be the same thing. “Your steps were converted to fitness energy! Here are the Pokemon you met in your walk!”
I tried Star Ocean The Divine Force, up until the port town when they introduced a very anime character (after getting the healer), that I stopped.
The story didn’t grab me, and while I like how fast the combat and how agile the DUMA are, ultimately the combat feels very simplistic, even with the skill upgrades. It’s really a middling game
The only other Star Ocean game that I’ve played is Last Hope International, and I really dislike that game, because of Lymle.
tri-Ace has been insolvent, and it’s sad to see them struggling both financially, and in making good Star Ocean games. Maybe they should have gone back to 2D style to reduce budget, and to rely less on the exaggerated anime character animation style
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