Sorry, but I agree with Keith Burgun in the comments:
Quote:
Save for one article I read by Michael Samyn a couple years back, this may be the weakest article I've read on Gamasutra. This article lacks any insight or useful understanding.
From my perspective, every aspect of a "bad game" that was pointed out in the article was self-evident. By that I mean that anyone could recreate the same list (or perhaps an even more complete list) by asking the simple question "What kind of things irritate me in the games I play?"
Additionally, the author's powers of explanation leave something to be desired. The entire article could have been written in perhaps 20~30 sentences, since every topic it deals with is common to other areas of life. (I also did not see the merit in giving bad press to all of those games I've never heard of, since it seemed to add nothing of value to the article.) Perhaps it would have been more useful to appeal to the common sense of the reader which the author assumes is being repressed. The only problem with that approach is that it would have revealed how elementary the topics being discussed really are.
Technical: In life, people sometimes spend money on tangible items. These people are termed "consumers," and the transaction is called a "purchase." Before making such purchases, consumers weigh the perceived value of the item against the cost of the item. Based on this comparison, they make a purchase decision. (value of item < cost of item = not worth it, do not purchase; value of item = cost of item = purchase; value of item > cost of item = great value, buy now) When an item does not live up to the expectations of the consumer, the consumer will revisit their purchase decision. If the shortcomings of the item are great enough to push it back to "value of item < cost of item" they will feel cheated, thinking "If I would have known what I now know when evaluating my purchase, I never would have made the purchase."
This is a basic fact of economics, and it should not be a surprise that it applies to games to. If you make a crappy game and people spend money and time on it, they may say "I want my money back, and you have wasted my life."
Sensory: Sometimes when people are consuming media, they become aware of shoddy craftsmanship. Studies have shown that people who play games also notice shoddy craftsmanship in games.
Rule breaking: Just as in other forms of media (movies, for example), the consumer expects to suspend their disbelief in some way. When the consumer is asked to suspend disbelief in conflicting ways, it "breaks" the media to varied extents. Ultimately, the impact of this brokenness varies from one consumer to another. Some people are just along for the ride and will go wherever they are taken, but other people cannot tolerate a single non-canonical detail in a passing conversation in episode xyz of Star Trek TNG.
It should be expected that the frustration which arises from this brokenness carries over to games, and that it follows the same rules seen in other media (that is, it varies from person to person depending on how much they care and how inconvenient it is to them).
Mechanics conflict: When a person attempts a given task, there exists a tension between their ability to perform the task and the difficulty of performing the task. This tension is sometimes described as "balance," since it could be visualized as a lever resting on a fulcrum. If a person's ability exceeds the difficulty of the task, the balance is in favor of of the person, and the task is said to be "easy." As the difficulty of a task increases relative to the person's ability, the balance will eventually tip in favor of the task, making the task insurmountable to the person. Different people have differing levels of ability, and what one person finds to be easy can be quite impossible for another, less capable person. Often, certain individuals develop their ability in a given area through practice (repeated performance of the same task) and incrementally increasing the difficulty of the task as they become more capable. When a person with limited ability is presented with a task that only a person with considerable practice would be able to accomplish, it creates a negative perception of "incapability" in them. As a generalization, people do not like to feel incapability, and consequently, they resent being expected to complete tasks which are sufficiently beyond their ability.
Oddly enough, even people who play games do not like to feel incapability, and they resent being expected to complete tasks which are sufficiently beyond their ability, especially when they have paid money to be presented with these tasks (see the "cost/value" discussion above).
