Things that bug you in (old) games

[Consignia]

Madhair60 is the guy riding round the Arndale Centre on a Penny Farthing of games.

The Stretford Arndale.

[Kryton]

Un-skippable cut-scenes.

Died at the boss? HAHA time to watch the 3 minute boss introduction again.

[Cerys]

^ This.  I'm looking at you, Yunalesca.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Keyboard control schemes designed by a madman

This.

3D Defender on the ZX81.  It looked good (in 1982, it probably looks like ass now) but the control keys were kindof sideways, and as it required quick reactions it was impossible to last very long.

Ant Attack on the Spectrum.  You've got ants chasing you and you have to react quickly to evade them... but the controls are utter cack and you spin round like an imbecile and end up going in the wrong direction.

Basically any game where the up key isn't above the down key, and on the Spectrum it seemed to happen more often than it should.

[beanheadmcginty]

Point and click adventures where it's possible to get stuck somewhere because you didn't pick up an item earlier and there's no way to go back and get it.

[madhair60]

Point and click adventures where it's possible to get stuck somewhere because you didn't pick up an item earlier and there's no way to go back and get it.

Waaaa I can't win its bad

[Kryton]

Waaaa I can't win its bad

No he's talking about broken game design.

[the]

If it was designed to be that way then it's not broken

[Ambient Sheep]

Ant Attack on the Spectrum.  You've got ants chasing you and you have to react quickly to evade them... but the controls are utter cack and you spin round like an imbecile and end up going in the wrong direction.

Oh God yes, one of the most annoying games I ever played.

IIRC somebody* came up with a bunch of POKE codes that made the controls far more sensible, but even after that it was still a bloody annoying game.

* - it might even have been me, I can no longer remember!

[madhair60]

No he's talking about broken game design.

"game design", "bad design" and "broken design" strike me as buzz phrases to evade critical thought, and that's the most serious thing I will ever say. Instead of saying it's bad design just say you don't like it?

Is it like the hardest thing ever for a gamer to do to just say a game is not for them? :) Sierra adventures are hard, maddening almost, and entirely by design.

[Phil_A]

"game design", "bad design" and "broken design" strike me as buzz phrases to evade critical thought, and that's the most serious thing I will ever say. Instead of saying it's bad design just say you don't like it?

Is it like the hardest thing ever for a gamer to do to just say a game is not for them? :) Sierra adventures are hard, maddening almost, and entirely by design.

What so no old games are really bad, it's only ever the player's fault? What is this fucking bullshit now, mate?

I've played a through a lot of Sierra games and it's clear some puzzles were designed to be unsolvable without help in order to make more money selling hintbooks. I've grown to appreciate those games for what they are, but I still think that's a cunt's trick.

[madhair60]

What so no old games are really bad, it's only ever the player's fault? What is this fucking bullshit now, mate?

Obviously it doesn't apply in 100% of cases, but I think there are plenty of instances of game design that could be described as archaic and are frequently written off despite offering something a little less than homogenous. I'd argue that the Sierra examples tend to err more towards gamer "folklore" (wank term sorry) in that you would have word of mouth spreading solutions and hints around, and I think that sort of communal solve is a valid way to approach a game. I find that the generally more lauded Lucasarts games don't inspire a whole lot of tension because they don't have any ways to fuck them up, and that to me is not necessarily an improvement.

[madhair60]

And to be frank most old games that people say are bad are generally perfectly fine, you have to go quite far back to find the truly unplayable barely-finished stuff. (and even that stuff can be interesting)

[Twed]

I think there are some instances of genuinely broken game design. Infinite death loops in Dizzy and Jet Set Willy. They add no enjoyment to the games. Lives existing in many games is just unnecessary, especially modern content-filled games like Mario.

[madhair60]

"unnecessary" is generally good for engagement imo, gets me invested when there are systems to push past.

and yeah like I said there are examples of bad design, errors etc, but I think when you're talking about save scumming in Sierra games and the like it's obviously by design and I feel like the games are enhanced by the obnoxiousness. It gives them personality that I rate

[Twed]

In Mario though you just end up with a bank of 99 meaningless lives, except for really bad players who are punished further for a game that is beyond them anyway.

[popcorn]

"unnecessary" is generally good for engagement imo, gets me invested when there are systems to push past.

and yeah like I said there are examples of bad design, errors etc, but I think when you're talking about save scumming in Sierra games and the like it's obviously by design and I feel like the games are enhanced by the obnoxiousness. It gives them personality that I rate

Why don't you just say they are good design (and argue how) instead of saying you like it?

[JesusAndYourBush]

Infinite death loops in ... Jet Set Willy.

Not to mention one of the objects you needed to collect in order to finish the game was in a place that was impossible to get to (behind a wall? / inside a wall?) until someone brought out some Poke codes to allow you to collect it.

[peanutbutter]

clicking through text is a right fucking chore these days. Tries playing Act IV of Kentucky Route 0 a few days ago, was fine playing Act III a few years ago but fucking hell I couldn't last one scene this time.

[Twed]

Not to mention one of the objects you needed to collect in order to finish the game was in a place that was impossible to get to (behind a wall? / inside a wall?) until someone brought out some Poke codes to allow you to collect it.

And yet on the other hand, including stuff like that in a game because it has some payoff can turn it into a good thing. Like at the beginning of a game to make a historical reference, for instance. Or in a way that is easy to recover from.

[Glebe]

This.

3D Defender on the ZX81.  It looked good (in 1982, it probably looks like ass now) but the control keys were kindof sideways, and as it required quick reactions it was impossible to last very long.

Ant Attack on the Spectrum.  You've got ants chasing you and you have to react quickly to evade them... but the controls are utter cack and you spin round like an imbecile and end up going in the wrong direction.

Basically any game where the up key isn't above the down key, and on the Spectrum it seemed to happen more often than it should.

Yes, annoying as fuck when you couldn't change the keys.

[Kryton]

"game design", "bad design" and "broken design" strike me as buzz phrases to evade critical thought, and that's the most serious thing I will ever say. Instead of saying it's bad design just say you don't like it?

Is it like the hardest thing ever for a gamer to do to just say a game is not for them? :) Sierra adventures are hard, maddening almost, and entirely by design.

No, there's clearly older games that weren't developed in the same ways that other popular games were. In fact even some older good games had flaws. As mentioned infinite death loops, but going back to the point and click games, certain games were completely unfair in progressing you so far and then not allowing you any further merely for allowing you to overlook a certain key item (without any clues that you needed it in the first place).

Other examples being broken loops in say Magic the Gathering (panoptic mirror anyone - how did that get past testers?), or particular verb choices in text adventures, or badly developed controls in platformer games (no inertia/too much intertia or pixel perfect jumping)... There's tons of examples.

In SS13 when mining was first implemented they didn't have a 'pull' command, so you could easily push a box into a corner and get yourself trapped.

In Diggers on the Amiga, you could flood your base with water, but if you happened to have an elevator you'd crash the game. Why even implement elevators into the game if they were so broken that water would fuck things up?

Rise of the robots. You could beat ALL enemies by jumping up and right and pressing kick.

[madhair60]

For the third time, I am not saying that this applies universally. There is a near-total resistance in the gaming community to retrogaming on its original terms and idiosyncrasies and quirks that give games their character are treated as flaws via the nebulous "bad design" criticism.

Twed's Mario example; why is it a problem that the 99 lives are spurious? I don't see how that matters. If people are so bad they're dying plenty and unable to progress in a given Mario, they can seek advantages or just acknowledge it's not for them and move on.

Popcorn, I thought I did, in fact, do that in my last post?

[bgmnts]

Most old games are shit, they pumped them out day after day, they crashed the market in a couple of years due to the amount of crap pumped into it.

[madhair60]

...In America

[NoSleep]

Was this last year or the year before that?

[earl_sleek]

"game design", "bad design" and "broken design" strike me as buzz phrases to evade critical thought ... Instead of saying it's bad design just say you don't like it?

These clauses seem to be at odds with each other. To my mind, insisting everything is just personal preference really is evading critical thought. We don't do this with (say) movies or music, why games?

and yeah like I said there are examples of bad design, errors etc, but I think when you're talking about save scumming in Sierra games and the like it's obviously by design and I feel like the games are enhanced by the obnoxiousness. It gives them personality that I rate

I don't think poor design choices being deliberate excuse them from being poor choices, it makes it something arguably worse - poor design by design.

That said, subjectivity has it's place - it's fine to like a game that has objectively bad qualities (and vice versa), or possibly even because of them, like you do with Sierra games' "personality", but it's really reductive to boil everything down to personal taste.

[BeardFaceMan]

...but going back to the point and click games, certain games were completely unfair in progressing you so far and then not allowing you any further merely for allowing you to overlook a certain key item (without any clues that you needed it in the first place).

You get something wrong and you have to start from the beginning applying what you've learned, that's just an early version of permadeath isn't it? It's not unfair, just difficult.

[madhair60]

This is very circular so I'll bow out for the sake of avoiding further repetition, but the fact Sierra's type of game - using it as a consistent example - is being considered objectively bad at all is, to my mind, a bit backwards. I agree with the consensus idea that these games a lot of other older games are difficult and frustrating, but I don't agree that this is necessarily a Bad Thing. I think when a game has no definite fail state it tends to result in relatively mindless gameplay, with no real incentive to explore the verbs/variables, or push against the boundaries to any meaningful extent. I find getting stuck in a Lucasarts adventure far more irritating than fucking up in, say, King's Quest. In something like Sam and Max I don't stop, walk away and think about it. I'll just brute force a solution because the game will never step in my way. That's not as fun for me!

That's largely irrelevant, though, because my point remains that people most frequently say "bad design" or "broken game" when a title from 1989 doesn't exhibit the same "quality of life" features of a 2019 AAA shooter, and it does my nut in.

[popcorn]

This is very circular so I'll bow out for the sake of avoiding further repetition, but the fact Sierra's type of game - using it as a consistent example - is being considered objectively bad at all is, to my mind, a bit backwards. I agree with the consensus idea that these games a lot of other older games are difficult and frustrating, but I don't agree that this is necessarily a Bad Thing. I think when a game has no definite fail state it tends to result in relatively mindless gameplay, with no real incentive to explore the verbs/variables, or push against the boundaries to any meaningful extent

Sierra is used as an example of a particular kind of Bad Design, which is not to do with fail states, but unfair fail states.

If you fail in Mario it's unambiguously your fault. If you fail in a Seirra game it's because you touched a piece of glass and bled to death, something that could not have been predicted. That's not only frustrating, it has profound implications for your relationship with the game - it means your choices have predestined outcomes and are not really choices at all, so you can't own their consequences. (Compare that to placing blocks in Tetris - you have to live with every decision you make, and take responsibility for it.)

I am very happy to call the Sierra thing Bad Design, although if you think that suggests an unearned degree of objectivity, I am equally happy to call the Sierra thing Design I Personally Think is Fucking Shite and if You Like It Then You're Probably Thick.