From: marms@python.cs.unm.edu (Mike Arms)
Subject: Configurable Games (was Re: Lynx vs. Game Gear?)
Reply-To: sandia!marms@unmvax.unm.edu (Mike Arms)
Organization: Sandia National Laboratories
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 21:19:49 GMT

freek@phil.ruu.nl (Freek Wiedijk) writes:
>I _hate_ configurable games.  They don't give me the satisfaction of
>`finishing' the game.  Only of finishing _one_ variant of the game.
>
>This is why I don't like Warbirds.  I `won' it in lots of combinations
>of the parameters.  But, I still think I haven't really played it.

Yep, I bet James Hague really sympathizes with you.  Yeah, I just hate
it when I spend $30+ on a game and can't just finish the game once and 
for all.  I mean, who wants to keep playing the same game for *weeks*?!?

For the humor impaired, the above is clearly sarcasm.

I want great games that will LAST.  Last for years even.  I still play
some of the great games on my old Atari 2600.  And you know what?
Multiple difficulty levels and user config of game parameters ADD to
the replayability of games.  Once I master a game at a certain level, I
can increase the level and play even more at greater challenge.  This
is assuming that I like the game and that I want to keep playing it.
If not, then the game is probably not a keeper.

This is something that Sonic would really benefit by.  Most of us
really like the game.  But without any choices in difficulty level,
once we master the game it tends to sit on the shelf.  Oh, maybe we
take it back down to play with very occasionally and often after our
skills have rusted a little so that it offers a little challenge for a
short while.  Why not have Sonic have harder settings (and easier
settings for the munchkins)?  In Super Mario Land for GameBoy, once you
win the game, you can play again but face more enemies.  Now I don't
want to have to finish Sonic completely in order to play a harder mode
(would work if they had a battery to record your standings like in
Super Mario Kart to get the Special Cup and the 150cc level).  Just
place the difficulty select right at the beginning of the game (Easy,
Normal, Hard, Manic - enemies everywhere!).  That would certainly add
more life to that great game for me.

User config is another method of providing increased capability in games.
What it does is place the control on difficulty more into your own hands.
I cannot see how this can be bad for anyone (except if it means cutting
out something important from the game in order to provide).  For those
who want to beat the game as the designers intended, let the difficulty
levels by default be the game as the designers intended.  Now if a player
wants to deviate from that standard by altering the user config, that is
his/her own choice.  You clearly can play the game the standard way if
you don't change the user config.  But let's say that I'm a VidWiz (not
the case by a long shot I assure you), and I have mastered a great game at
its highest difficulty level.  With user config I could extend my
enjoyment of the game by setting some parameters to provide even more
challenge at that same difficulty level.  Or likewise as the real case
with me trying to find games that my 6 year old son can enjoy, I could
set the game on Easy level and modify the config to make it even easier
for him.  

The whole issue here IMHO is enhancing the enjoyment of the player on
whatever end of the spectrum they may be.  I accept the reasoning by
someone else who said that it may be better to have niches like
boardgaming (i.e. Chutes And Ladders all the way up to Air War or World
In Flames).  But a I would argue that a computer game can vary its
difficulty much more easily than most boardgames.  "It's all a small
matter of programming."  :-)  But right now, I see very little of the
niche market in the Lynx games (lots more in SNES games though).  As
the Lynx game designers do not seem to be targetting particular skill
levels in their games (or more to the point they tend to offer only
one difficulty level to most games), I think it would be a good idea
to widen this up considerably.  The use of Difficulty Levels is probably
the easiest and most widely used for other game systems.  User Config,
especially in conjunction with Difficulty Levels, would provide even 
greater flexibility, more playability, and thus greater value in games.

-- 
Mike Arms
Editor of Encounter magazine
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