Game Design Philosophies

This is an albeit unordered list of philosophies,

* **Do not Stress off the player -** I have been playing videos games for almost the rest of my life. I used to enjoy this hobby but recently, many of us gamers share the sentiment how contemporary video games are starting to be shitty. They are becoming unfun. Something that is supposed to be escapism from our stresses in real life are now the cause of it. This is due to the monetization of games by large companies. People are paying $60 for a game only to be stressed, they are giving the free-time overnight to games that cause them frustration. That's why I prefer singleplayer games or co-op with friends, no fuzz from random people, but even they are plagued as more and more game developers keep adding more "padding" to their games instead of real content. Many non-gamers have the sentiment of games are a waste of time, but the more time passes in the gaming industries, I believe they are correct. We game developers should understand that not many of us have a lot of free-time to play video games. Vintage Renaissance, attempts to create fun by simply adding interesting content, or at least have players learn something new after they played the game. quality time spent > time spent. Even when players are currently in no mood to play, they will still consume the product online from other content creators, reminiscing their memories in the game. This also affects technical issues such as lag. I've spent so much stress from modded Minecraft in my old PC because of "lag" and it's developers lack of capability to bring up performance nor support modded content.
* **Enlightenment through exploration -** Sometimes, games don't have to rely on competitivity and instant gratification, sometimes games don't need a scoreboard or a leveling system. Some times a good open world is enough for this. Red dead redemption, and GTA series is a testament to this. The reason Minecraft became popular because it allows the freedom of players to choose, to have their own rules and own choices that no amount of role playing games can compare when it comes to freedom. Many popular and competitive shooter games rely on a narrow minded area that there is only one wrong move before you lose and the one's who have a better PC wins. My vision for Vintage Renaissance is to explore, to innovate, and more fun in singleplayer, a competitive and fair combat is nice for sure and is indeed a **requirement** but we should also not forget the true aspects of an open world. Discovery, Adventure, interaction with the environment, making machines, discovering new content and creative ways to play.
* **Concerning Gameplay rules -** Digital games like real life games, should have rules that is consistent and quickly present to the player via gameplay alone. Examples are a zombie multiplayer me and my friends used to play (NMRIH 1). The game have maps where zombies spawn infinitely and there are maps where the zombies don't. There is no obvious guaranteed strategy as if we should kill all the zombies in this area so they won't follow and vex us as we explore the rooms or we were just wasting strength and braincells to an infinite spawning horde.
* **Concerning Combat Balancing -** What I considered "OP" in videogames are anything that is **easy to use** with lesser effort compared to it's alternatives and **also** **have tremendous effects** **on the combat**. Anything that is strong must take effort to get or use, and is mostly based on a player's skill and effort rather than raw arbitrary numbers. I've seen games especially pay to win games or competitive ones that forces the player to use a character or weapon they don't like simply to compete or buy microtransactions. There is always room for versatility, reliability and more importantly viability for smaller weapons. A gunpowder arquebus may pierce an armored knight but they take loads of discipline and coordination from groups of players. They take much time to reload, and only fires one shot and must not miss. A single armored knight can melee off ranged units especially gunpowder but may be countered by the player's discipline and coordination. The Italian Wars 1494 - 1559, saw the merge of armored knights and gunpowder. Knights
* **Add interactability, even random and useless ones create a sense of immersion -** Plenty of older game titles have fun mechanics albeit useless to the overall gameplay, this is probably because in older titles and when computers were still new and rising in popularity, creative computer enthusiasts back in the day would like to experiment and push what is possible in the virtual world from their wildest imaginations. Take for example in the old video game "Bully" by Rockstar Games, players can drink from a drinking fountain despite "Bully" not having a thirst system, it simply plays a drinking animation when interacted. Yet for younger version of me, it created a sense of immersion to the game making me feel like I was in a real school, drinking from water fountains, exploring the beach, slapping random female school mate's bums, skateboarding, riding bikes, exploring the carnival you name it.
* **Do not listen to "pro gamers" -** "pro gamers" only take up to 1% of your gaming community. They are not real game developers albeit most of the time, they ought to suggest content that benefit themselves instead of the majority of the audience, take an example from Halo Infinite and the "Battle Royale" controversy. Plenty of popular streamers/youtubers- big names like DrDisrespect, NinjaYT, requested Halo Infinite to have battle royale or to be predominantly battle royale, this only servers them because "Battle Royale" content is easy to produce and these people have spent their lives mastering this gameplay and thrive from it, meanwhile older and original Halo Fans want to have the old style of Halo Gameplay. This could create a rift between game developers of Halo Infinite. The fun and memorability of games are unpredictability, nobody wants to talk about how they killed a guy every 2 seconds, rather "I remembered playing Halo MCC and a friend is good with a pistol, so as a homage, every time he we killed him in game, we would get his pistol and try to use it for luck" or "Me and my dad played used to sit together and play Amnesia and I will never forget during the water parts and you can hear ghosts via their foot steps in the water".