Games should be fun. But, some games are not as fun as others. This is really a personal experience - game fun, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I experienced this first hand at home, playing Shogun - Total War. I was having a ball, controlling 2,000 soldiers, ordering them around the battlefield, commanding them to fight and die for the empire (well, MY empire anyway). When I showed my wife, her reaction to the game was very different from my own - very negative, in fact. I thought this was the coolest thing since the ice age, whereas she thought is was terrible that someone could enjoy ordering soldiers to fight and die for my glorification. A virtual abstraction, but that is what it amounts to none the less. This demonstrated to me once again that there is more than one way to view a situation. Even though we see the same thing, we experience very different feelings about that thing. Having seen her reaction caused me to change my view of the game somewhat. I found myself becoming less satisfied with the experience of playing, because I had taken my wife''s feelings on board (always the way to maintain a happy marriage 8-) and incorporated them into my own view of the game. This is what I call a GOOD THING. Seeing things from someone elses point of view helps to re-think ones own ideas and impressions. It gives a more holistic view of things. I had what is called a paradigm shift (Ohhh.... he used the "P" word). These things happen in real life, as well as in management theories on how to make a happier wage-slave. Anyway. The whole premise of the game, as with most RTS, is to win. To be the final victor. To grind your enemies into the dust - to rend alligances and trample all who stand in your way into oblivion. Tell you what - when the final battle is over, and you have gone as high as you can go - it is awfully lonely at the top. I have decided that my game(s) will not have this ultimate end goal - the final solutions (Goblin Genocide or otherwise) are now consigned to the dustbin of history. I think that players should have the freedom to choose... their own goals. I want to be able to choose the level at which I can say, with satisfaction, that I have won. This means that I do not have to be the lone victor, or I can be if I choose. Now, if I can only pay off my mortgage, and spend full time on it... Sine caffeae dedere spem desponere.

Nice post... very thought-provoking (and true).

I had a brainwave, about something really daft. Daft enough that it might work. What about a game where you choose the goal you want to reach (explicitly, this will be part of the game), and the game develops so that you can try to achieve this goal?
Kind of like a roleplaying game, saying things like
"I want to start as a poor peasant, and work my way up to king" for your average gamer, or "I want to get my name on a street-sign somewhere", or ,.. I don''t know.

It sounds silly, but perhaps it isn''t.


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
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Exactly! The original inspiration for this was the limited way in which an Ally in a game works. In most games I have played, an Ally was another player that you had an agreement with not to attack YET. Once the "enemy" is beaten, you then back-stab. Machivellian - to a point.

I would rather have a goal that says that I would aspire to the level of (to pick a dark-ages theme) lord of a holding that is part of a greater kingdom. I would take part in battles along side other players, for the greater good of the kingdom. "Victory" for me is to leave the keep and holding to an heir.

I like the street sign idea - Fame, Glory, Riches. My hand prints in the cement outside a theater near you!

The beautiful thing about this is, if you pre-choose your goals in an MMORPG, the other players will not really know if they are confounding or helping you in your goal!

Maybe I don''t want that promotion to General after all. Maybe I would like to go home and enjoy being a farmer.

Oops, I just had a side question. Why don''t players get post-traumatic stress disorder? It must be getting late...

RickTzu



Sine caffeae dedere spem desponere.

Perhaps this is what I am missing in current games... No More Casualties. If games about warfare were really following Sun Tzu, they would be more about preventing actual conflict - which is damaging to the state. The cost of war was well known in Sun Tzu''s time - to paraphrase - "Ensure that you have nine times the normal production to maintain a person before you set out."

The goal of warfare, usually, is not to kill as many of them as possible. Usually it is about economics.

I would prefer a game with more realism - and not because I enjoy gore - but rather I would like to use strategic actions to prevent such conflict.

It would be better to capture enemy installations/people instead of being forced to blow them up. Yes, there are examples of this, but not as a central theme for a game.

What about a scenario where you have to win by being defensive only (ah - another player-chosen goal)...

ASIDE: One of my favourite quotes comes from the US house committee on defence, discussing the possiblility of destroying foreign satelites "[in any defence system...] we must always preserve the option for irreversible denial." Gotta love that industrial-military complex jargon.

... ie: "the force is only used for knowledge and defense - never attack"

RickTzu

Sine lucre dedere spem desponere. - Ideas running low - pit stop required.

"Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy''s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regimen t, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them." Sun Tzu, Art of War, III-1

Yep, it''s funny to see so many RTS, so many games about war, and yet no one seems to have read Sun Tzu. It''s not like he''s the only one to have written about war, but all modern strategists still refer to him as the first to have written down so many good words, that are still studied in today''s military academies... and yet nobody seem to care.

I am still forced to exterminate all my enemies to the last before I can pass to the next mission, I am always facing ultimate annihilation of my planet, my species, etc.
I can make temporary alliances with my fellow players, but in the end "There can be only one". Well, it would be nice if it was Highlander I was playing, but strategy is something else altogether.

Now about Fun ... I am not sure it was the proper title, but I think I understand your point. The problem is that you seem to be a reasonable man, and most people playing those games ... well ... actually I wonder what does the generic RTS player look like, because I wonder why no one ever complains against so much bloodshed.

Hey, don''t take me wrong, I want to play RTS, it''s just so far I just don''t see any point. I am still waiting for the one taht would be a bit more, not realistic, maybe sensible ?
Well, I am not sure the debate here is about the meaning of war, but at least, I''d like to play something else than backstabbing homicidal genocidal generals, that are SO paranoid that they have to order every single soldier on the battlefield what to do and where to go ...

The thing you say about capturing buildings and all this is nice, but as some general pointed during the Kosovo conflict, at the end of the day, when you have made all the diplomacy, all the surgerical laser bombing, all the "let''s give them a last chance", war is all about blood, mud, and people dying. I''d like to see a game that would give you the feeling I had when watching Saving Private Ryan. So beautiful and cleverly made to make you think that I cried, and yet I couldn''t stop watching as it was so "beautiful"... call me crazy, you won''t be the first ones.

I would like to have games that make you think. I''d love (and now I definitely go off track), to have a "big boss" that is not necessarily utter evil. What about someone taht got corrupted, someone just like you, that got caught in a web of corruption, someone that became an evil person while he thought he was helping, doing all this for a greater cause. Someone that would be a warning of what you are becoming.

I mean, think about the number of people that die during a normal RTS game, not a single one ever surrendering, doesn''t that make us even more evil that the ones we try to destroy in the first place ?

Ricktzu : do you think that playing in defense all the time would REALLY be that fun. *I* for one would enjoy it, because that''s the way I play... because my greatest pleasure is to see the waves of opponents crash at my gates, even though I know I am doomed (must be some remaining of the Gauls ancestors I guess ). But, come on, if yo have read SunTzu, and if you have ever played chess, and actually, if you know common sense, defense is the BAD strategy.
Well, but maybe there would be a way to put it in a nice way, THAT would be a good designer job !

Oh, and LOL for your sig, but what the heck is that word "desponere", I don''t think it exist at all, you know.

youpla :-P

Don''t get me wrong - RTS''s are fun... but not that mind expanding. After all, in C&C and the like you can order all of your infantry to charge flame throwers - and they quite willingly do it. No questions. Very pretty. Smoke and everything.

The big boss need not be a corrupted person, assuming you mean a good person gone bad. Some people are inherently (gad, I wish I could spel) evil. Fortunately there are very few like that - in fact, most people are average. Which leads a bit onto the good/bad thing. Most people in the armed forces are ordinary people who are, on occasion, called upon to do a very nasty job. It is the motivation that is important. If you have the Way, you can proceed.

Erm... have studied Sun Tzu. Quite a bit. Actually, it make even more sense if you study Lau Tzu and other Taoist works.
A defensive strategy also involves offensive moves as well - I took this as read.

ahw: I like the idea of the enemy surrendering. How do you transport them from the front lines in a humane fashion and into POW camps? I would like to build POW camps. Better yet, also organise an underground to get them out. Is there a Geneva Convention in RTS? Should we make one?

Ta for the LOL. Oh, and thanks for proof reading my sig. The word should have been "deponere."

RickTzu.

Sine caffeae dedere spem deponere.

Slightly offtopic, perhaps, but in our multiplayer sessions of Dark Reign at University, after a certain number of casualties we''d usually concede defeat, instead of blasting away EVERY tree in the game to find that last, hidden scout.

It''s a major failing of the game that it NEVER concedes defeat until the last unit is destroyed. If the player is out of money and construction facility, he''s dead, you can ALWAYS beat him.


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

Referring to original post:

For some unsettling reason, you're making me feel good about not being married. :-P

- DarkMage139
++++++++++++++++
I can do things, things you never knew,
I can change your world if you only knew.

I can do miracles if you want me to.
Anything is possible, I'll prove it to you.

Edited by - DarkMage139 on August 8, 2000 6:01:47 PM

MadKeithV: I guess in the "old days" of Dark Reign and such RTS they did not have the budget to consider morale. The goal is to "win at all costs"

What I like about Shogun is in battle the troops can waver and run away. Your armies look fine on parade (all arranged in ranks and divisions - marching across the hills - looks just fantastic). And then an army twice the size of mine marches in through the mist. My army collectively wets itself (heck, I nearly wet myself) and they flee back over the hills in ragged non-formation as fast as each can go. No amount of ordering back to the front will encourage your army to plunge back in.

Ps: Marriage is wonderful... My wife lets me play games all I want... provided the dishes are washed, laundry done, garbage taken out, plants watered, floor vacuumed, bills paid... 8-)
In all seriousness, my missus is a Geek Girl and proud of it. Actually, it helps in thinking about game design, when I discuss my ideas with my wife, she has a female take on things (generalising I know). If I can tap into that, Games For Grrls will not be too far off... "Fun" for all?

RickTzu


Sine caffeae dedere spem deponere.