Comparison between Modern games and Retro games
I have researched a number of games, of course both modern ones and some retro ones. briefly summarising a few key points. In terms of "retro games" I'm talking about those that were made in the 80's and early 90's. Modern games being from late 90's to the present. Now, I'm going to look at two of those games in more depth, making comparisons between them.
Here is a table of the numerous games I researched:
Title
|
Genre
|
Release Date
|
Structure
|
Platform
|
Realistic/
Abstract
|
Dimension
2D/3D
?
|
Perspective
|
Goals
|
Objectives
|
Secrets/
Achievements
|
Narrative structure
|
Sprites or Polygons
|
Player Role
|
Overall
Rating
0-100%
(Rating
for retro games is high because they were good in their time)
|
Kotor 1
(Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
|
Adventure RPG
|
15th July 2003
|
Character development, story driven,
exploration/adventuring
|
Original Xbox (later released on PC)
|
Sci-fi (abstract)
|
3D
|
3rd person
|
Save the galaxy.
|
Visit multiple planets to complete
tasks/quests as character develops and story continues.
|
You could say certain bits of dialogue are secret
as they’re not simple to reach.
|
Open-ended. Multiple options. A Branching
Narrative.
|
Polygons
|
Saviour of the Galaxy.
|
95%
|
Kotor 2
|
Adventure RPG
|
6th December 2004
|
Character development, story driven,
exploration/adventuring
|
Orginal Xbox (later released on PC)
|
Sci-fi (abstract)
|
3D
|
3rd person
|
Save the galaxy.
|
Visit multiple planets to complete
tasks/quests as character develops and story continues.
|
You could say certain bits of dialogue are
secret as they’re not simple to reach.
|
Open-ended. Multiple options. A Branching
Narrative.
|
Polygons
|
Saviour the Galaxy.
|
95%
|
Mass Effect Series (1,2,3)
|
Adventure RPG
|
20th November 2007 (ME1)
26th January 26th 2010
(ME2)
6th March 2012 (ME3)
|
Character development, story driven,
exploration/adventuring
|
Xbox 360 and PS3 (later on PC and Wii U)
|
Sci-fi (abstract)
|
3D
|
3rd person (over the shoulder)
|
Save the galaxy.
|
Visit multiple planets to complete
tasks/quests as character develops and story continues.
|
You could say certain bits of dialogue are
secret as they’re not simple to reach.
|
Open-ended. Multiple options. A Branching
Narrative.
|
Polygons
|
Saviour of the galaxy
|
80%
|
World of Warcraft
|
MMORPG
|
23th November 2004
|
Online role-playing, adventuring, completing
quests, character development
|
PC
|
Fantasy (abstract)
|
3D
|
3rd person (can zoom in for 1st
person but made for 3rd person)
|
Develop your character.
|
Enjoy the world.. of warcraft. Adventure,
role play, do whatever you like.
|
None
|
Linear (told through written out quests and
cutscenes).
There’s no strict story as you do what you
please.
|
Polygons.
|
Be a hero/
Heroine
|
90%
|
Zork
|
Single player adventure
|
1980
|
Text-Based adventure
|
Atari
and Commodore
|
Fantasy (abstract)
|
2D
|
No perspective (it’s all in your
imagination!)
|
Become dungeon master.
|
Return from “Great Underground Empire” with
treasures.
|
Secret words/commands/
codes
|
Non-linear
|
None
|
Dungeon
crawler
|
Not tried myself but hear it’s around 8/10
(80%)
|
Pac-man
|
Arcade game
|
May 22nd 1980
|
Maze navigation/collecting (later released
on smart phones and xbox live arcade)
|
Namco Pac-man arcade machine
|
Abstract
|
2D
|
Flat 2D view onto the whole “game board” as
it were. Could even say bird’s eye view looking down onto the level. Side-on
platformer.
|
Beat all the levels and get a high score!
|
Collect as many items as you can while
avoiding the ghosts.
|
None (I believe)
|
None. Although I hear the narrative is
supposedly told through intermissions between levels (Also wondering why the
ghosts have names).
|
Sprites
|
A hungry Pac-Man?
|
50%
|
Space Invaders
|
Fixed Shooter
|
June 1978
|
Arcade game. Moving side to side, shooting
space invaders.
|
Arcade machine
|
Abstract
|
2D
|
Flat 2D view. Monochrome raster, vertical
orientation. Side-on platformer.
|
Beat all the levels and get a high score!
|
Shoot down as many space invaders as you
can, including special ones that give bonus points.
|
Secret codes and unlockables.
|
None really.
|
Sprites
|
Planetary defence laser cannon!
|
50% in
Modern
standards.
Probably
atleast 70%
in its time.
|
Asteroids
|
Mutli-directional shooter.
|
November 1979
|
Arcade game. Flying around and shooting.
|
Arcade machine
|
Abstract
|
2D
|
Flat 2D view. Could possibly say bird’s eye
view (similarly to pac-man). Side on platformer.
|
Beat all the levels and get a high score!
|
Shoot as many asteroids and flying saucers
as you can while avoid crashing.
|
Level codes and codes for secret effects.
|
None really.
|
Sprites
|
Triangular space ship
|
Around
50-
80%
(Not
played
it
personally).
|
Pokemon (game series)
|
Role-playing game
|
First ones released in 1996. Latest in 2013.
|
Adventuring with pokemon (pocket monsters),
battling them and gaining levels.
|
More or less all Nintendo hand-held
consoles.
|
Abstract
|
2D up until the latest verisons X and Y
which are now 3D
|
Flat 2D view (bird’s eye view/side on
platformer?)
Excluding X and Y which are a 3D side-on
platformer.
|
Become a pokemon master.
|
Adventure
through numerous places battling wild pokemon. Battle other trainers in towns
and beat gym leaders to advance in the pokemon league.
|
Some pokemon cannot be
obtained in-game but rather required by personally attending special events.
Secret locations and pokemon (there’s a sign implying about a particular
pokemon somewhere in one of the games).
|
Linear
|
Sprites originally, polygons in Pokemon X
and Y.
|
A young pokemon trainer.
|
80%
|
Quake Live
|
FPS
|
August 6th 2010
|
First person shooter, multiplayer arena.
|
PC and Mac
|
Abstract
|
3D
|
First person
|
Win the match
|
Frag enemy players, race, capture the flag,
carry skulls to enemy flag stand, capture domination points, attack/defend.
|
I hear there’s a Secret room? Rocket Jumping
challenge?
|
None really.
|
Polygons
|
Arena competitor
|
55%
|
War Thunder
|
MMO combat flight simulator (will later
expand into ground vehicles and fleets, currently just aviation)
|
November 1st 2012 (open beta).
PS4 release 15th November 2013. Mac open beta started 10th
September 2013
|
Multiplayer Combat flight simulation (will
later expand into ground vehicles and fleets, currently just aviation).
|
PC (later releases for PS4 and Mac)
|
Realistic
|
3D
|
First or third person (depending on game
mode/personal choice).
|
Win the match
|
Defeat the enemy planes, deplete their
resources by destroying ground/sea targets and capturing landing strips.
|
None
|
There’s not really a narrative but it does
tell you little facts about the history of certain battles that took place.
So I guess you could say it has a narrative and thus it would be linear.
|
Polygons
|
Aircraft pilot
|
80%
|
Super Mario Bros.
|
Platformer
|
September 13th 1985
|
Side-scroller
|
NES
|
Abstract
|
2D
|
Flat 2D view, side-on platformer
|
Save Princess Peach from Bowser
|
Reach
the end of each level, collect coins along the way and defeat/avoid the bad
guys.
|
More
points depending on how you kill enemies, score with the flagpole and
fireworks, warp zone, mazes, new game+ (sort of), the minus world, weird
bullet bill, little firey Mario, alternate method to the 4-2 warp zone, game
genie codes.
|
Linear.
|
Sprites
|
Mario (Luigi in multiplayer)
|
60% (not played it
personally)
|
Fallout: New Vegas
|
Action role-playing
|
October 19th 2010
|
Post-apocalyptic open world environment adventuring
|
PC, PS4, Xbox 360
|
Abstract (but believable, not too
far-fetched)
|
3D
|
First person typically, can go third person.
|
Main story is to find the guy who shot you
in the head but you can do as you wish really.
|
Adventure the Mojave wasteland, complete quests
for folks, randomly go around killing people, whatever you fancy.
|
Cheat codes, in-game exploits.
|
Linear
|
Polygons
|
Courier
|
75%
|
Left 4 Dead 2
|
FPS survival horror
|
17th November 2009
|
First person shooter with heavy emphasis on
cooperative gameplay.
|
Linux and Windows (PC), Mac, xbox 360
|
Abstract (but believable, not too
far-fetched)
|
3D
|
First person
|
Survive the zombie pandemic.
|
Fight your way through campaigns
interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of
escaping at each campaign’s finale.
|
Cheat codes
|
Linear
|
Polygons
|
Selectable survivor. Can choose one of the
survivors or be a zombie in multiplayer
|
65%
|
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
|
Action role-playing
|
11th November 2011
|
Character development.
Exploration/adventuring.
|
PC, PS3, Xbox 360
|
Abstract (fantasy)
|
3D
|
First person typically, can go third person.
|
Save Skyrim
|
Defeat dragon named Alduin, prophesised to
destroy the world. Take part in other important quest lines such as the
Skyrim civil war.
|
In-game exploits
|
Hard to say, the main story line is linear
but your personal journey/story is non-linear. Depends what you make of it I
think.
|
Polygons
|
Dragonborn
|
80%
|
Team Fortress 2
|
FPS
|
9th October 2007
|
Team based first person shooter, teams
compete for a combat-based principal objective.
|
Linux, Windows (PC), xbox 360, PS3, Mac
|
Abstract
|
3D
|
First person
|
Win the match
|
Complete the objectives in the match to win
(capture the flag, control points, territorial control, king of the hill,
payload, etc)
|
None
|
None
|
Polygons
|
One of the selectable classes.
|
65%
|
Minecraft
|
Sandbox, survival
|
18th November 2011 for Linux and
Windows later releases on other platforms such as Android and Xbox 360
|
Explore, build, craft, gather resources,
combat.
|
Windows,
Mac, Linux, Android, Xbox 360 arcade and retail disk, Raspberry Pi, PS4
|
Abstract
|
3D
|
First person typically but can go third
person.
|
None really
|
Survive generally, but you can do whatever
you want.
|
None
|
None
|
Polygons
|
You start off with a default skin known as
“Steve” but you can change it to whatever you want.
|
75%
|
Dota 2
|
Mutliplayer online battle arena
|
9th July 2013
|
Session-based multiplayer online matches,
controlling a hero.
|
Windows and Linux (PC)
|
Abstract
|
3D
|
Bird’s eye view.
|
Win the match
|
Focus
on improving your hero’s abilities, acquire items and fight against the enemy
team until you can push to their base and destroy it.
|
None
|
None
|
Polygons
|
Whichever one (of many) heroes you want to
play that match.
|
60%
|
First off, I'll look at one of my favorite games ever (modern game). Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by LucasArts. It was first released on the 15th of July, 2003. The first platform is was released for was the original Xbox (a couple of months later on PC and about a year after that released on Mac).
As with all Star Wars games, it is a sci-fi game, so I'd be inclined to say it is abstract (realistic in theStar Wars universe but unfortunately that is not a universe we live in).
The target audience of this game would simply be those who are fans of Star Wars or story-driven role-playing games.
"‘Ant-farming’ is when you design with a gods-eye view in mind - it’s when you throw around concepts which are ‘interesting’ or ‘provide fascinating social dynamics’ or ‘would really feel like a virtual world’ - but fail the basic ‘fun’ test. This is when the designers are designing a game that’s more fun to observe than to actually live in." (Schubert 2004). I sometimes fear this game suffers from a case of "Ant-farming" as (after many playthroughs) I begin to get a little bored of the gameplay. I never get bored of the dialogue parts, but sometimes feel like I'd like to skip through the gameplay just for an interactive story (blasphemous for a gamer, I know). I think BioWare successfully made the players feel attachment to the characters in the game. Each 'companion' has their own interesting back-story until they tag along with you on your adventure. The way you interact with these companions effects dialogue options with them, making them either like/dislike you (more so in Kotor 2 than this game but it still applies). I remember playing it multiple times trying to get a better relationship with certain companions to see what more they have to say and how they'd react in certain situations. There's a difficult decision towards the end of the game where you must choose a number of companions that will stick with you and others that you must kill.
I think the back story is pretty self explanatory for Star Wars games for those that are familiar with it (in a galaxy far far away.. etc). The scrolling text at the start (as with all Star Wars games and films) sets the scene for you but doesn't quite explain who you are or what your role in the universe is. I like that in this game, you discover that later on. The back story must be uncovered. As mentioned before, there is also a back story to the main characters, giving them personality and what not.
As far as I can remember, the game is balanced as there doesn't seem to be anything particularly over-powered. There of course are better strategies and abilities than others, but nothing that will let you just walk through the game simply (although I do think it could have been a bit more challenging).
I believe there are some cheat codes and some in-game exploits that will allow you to break the rules, as it were.
The game has a few cut-scenes. Most of which play out just like a normal dialogue conversation but instead are between two NPC's rather than yourself, excluding the dialogue options (making the cut-scenes linear I guess).
I think this is an emergent game (I wouldn't want to play it multiple times if it weren't). Of course there are only a number of dialogue options each time but there are so many different combinations of ways you can approach interaction with other characters it can sometimes surprise you to what you may find, the reactions from these character and the consequences of things you may say. The combat however, I find is pretty straight forward, nothing new after the first few fights you have. But at least there are different ways you can build your character, resulting in combat to vary depending on that. I'd describe the story to be a branching narrative. It seems to have checkpoints at certain stages throughout the game, but there are multiple ways as to reach these checkpoints, which I believe helps with emergence. Although contradicting with what I've just said, the game does have some sort of progression system. You progress through the story by hitting these checkpoints in the story, as well as character progression where you gain your Jedi powers (you don't start with them). In that case, surely all games with a narrative have progression? I wonder.
A certain amount of effort has to be put in to achieve certain dialogue outcomes. As for combat, of course you have to try and actually think about it, but there is a fair amount of randomness to it as.. "The game's system is based on Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Roleplaying Game, which is based on the d20 role-playing game system derived from the Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) rules.". Of course if you make the effort to increase certain character statistics, those dice rolls will be in your favor accordingly.
"While fun is an elusive concept, the most popular school of thought claims that video game fun comes primarily from the enjoyment of problem solving.". "A second school of thought describes video games as a combination of a number of different types of fun, where different games emphasize different types of fun.". Personally, I do find this game to be fun. I very much enjoy the story and I enjoy playing a role in the Star Wars universe. As mentioned before, I admit the gameplay can sometimes get a little bit dull. The problem solving can become a little bit tedious. But I think I just say that because I've played the game too many times. I know for sure the first time I played this game, there was not a single moment I did not find to be fun.
The game only features one game mode, that being a Story Mode (single player). It would have been interesting to have some sort of co-op feature but then I'm not too sure how the story would play out if your partner did/said something that you didn't want to. Maybe some sort of roll system like they've done in the more recent Star Wars game: The Old Republic (not to be confused with this game Star Wars: KNIGHTS of the Old Republic).
Some of the level designs are fairly basic and others can be a bit more complicated, almost like a maze. The game was made 10 years ago so I can understand why but a lot of the levels seem rather empty. I may not be doing the game justice but I seem to recall on a few occasions there will be paths and directions that you can take, but there's not really anything on those paths (other than some people to fight or interact with). One in particular comes to mind. You crash on a forest moon and while there are lots of trees and what not around you, the path of which you can actually venture is pretty empty. There's a high use of the colour grey as well, but that's understandable as you're on space ships or on space stations.. it would be silly if they were stupidly colourful and flamboyant.
I may have been "bashing" the gameplay combat system a bit, I should mention that it is typically turn-based. You pause to choose what abilities to use and on whom, then the dice roll system begins and the actions play out.
The game does give you a brief tutorial to begin with. It explains how to do certain actions and tells you what your interface does/means/where to find things.
The overall goal of this game is more or less to save the galaxy. The outcome being whether you choose to defeat the Sith and save the Republic or defeat the Sith and take their place, either way you eliminate the immediate threat. There are numerous objectives on the way, most of which require you visit certain planets to complete tasks and unravel the story further. I don't think you can really "lose" in this game. If you die, to revert to your last save. There is an auto-save system in the game but I'm sure you can turn that off and if you weren't to manually save the game yourself, I guess that you can lose the game and have to start over. Thinking about that though seems silly as you'd have to complete the whole game in one sitting without taking a break (unless you were to keep it running while you weren't playing).
The second game I'm going to look at (retro game) shall be Zork. I fear this comparison of two games is going to be much more like me analysing just one game, as I've played the previous one many times but never played this. Still, I hope research can provide me with enough information.
Zork was one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games. It's a text-based adventure RPG. I believe it was released im 1980 and could be played on: Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, CP/M, TRS-80, IBM PC and Apple lle (what are these crazy machines?).
"Zork distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit troll"), but recognized some prepositions and conjunctions ("hit the troll with the Elvish sword").".
It is an abstract fantasy game. As with most retro games, I don't think this really had a specific target audience. Video games were new back then so there wasn't really much of a target market to focus on, I assume it was just for anybody that took interest? However, I'd say the target audience for this game would be anyone with one of the machines able to play it (of course) and those with an interest in story-telling.
"Aesthetic goal - In game design, the method of designing a game with a specific player experience in mind. (Hunicke, LeBlanc, Zubek 2004.)". The creators of Zork want the player to experience being a nameless adventurer who is venturing into this dangerous land in search of wealth and adventure.
I'm not sure if, back in the day, Zork would have been victim of "Ant-farming". I think you're pretty limited to the amount of enjoyment you can get out of just text. Not to say that it isn't the best form of something enjoyable, books after all are very enjoyable to read. But as for video games, I'm wondering how long someone could play before getting a bit bored of reading. Regardless of the quality of writing.
I would assume that players would form some kind of attachment with the game (it's very hard to say without having played it myself). I'd imagine it would be just like a book really, you can feel attachment with characters in books, books can still pull on your emotions, I can't see why Zork wouldn't be able to do the same. If anything, I'd say it would be rather likely to form attachments with Zork as it's an interactive story where you're in control of what happens, making it more personal than something pre-set.
I don't know if there is any back-story to Zork. Surely the scene would be set within the first bit of gameplay where it describes the current situation (if that makes sense).
"In the Zork games, the player is not limited to verb-noun commands, such as "take lamp", "open mailbox", and so forth. Instead, the parser supports more sophisticated sentences such as "put the lamp and sword in the case", "look under the rug", and "drop all except lantern". The game understands many common verbs, including "take", "drop", "examine", "attack", "climb", "open", "close", "count", and many more. The games also support commands to the game directly (rather than taking actions within the fictional setting of the game) such as "save" and "restore", "script" and "unscript" (which begin and end a text transcript of the game text), "restart", and "quit".". With that in mind, I don't believe there would be any balancing issues. It's not like whenever you come across a problem you can simply say "solve problem" every time.
I don't know if there are any cheat codes or commands for Zork but I hear there are the odd in-game exploits you can take advantage of.
As Zork is purely text-based, there are no cut-scenes. Possibly parts where there's a lot to read but you don't need to key in any particular commands, it just continues onto the next screen of reading?
I would think Zork is fairly emergent. As there are multiple commands to enter, I imagine there's a decent amount of possibilities that could happen.
In terms of effort, I'm not sure how much would really need to be applied. I'd have thought it would mostly be a matter of "trial and error" until you keyed in the correct command. Of course you'd have to make some effort not to enter a command that may end in some undesirable consequences.
"Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek (2004) list 8 types of fun: Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression, and Submission.". In this case, Zork would be mainly be about narrative fun. That's not to say that it could include all of these. Seeing as there doesn't seem to be a type of "visual fun", I guess you could say Zork is fun.
The target audience of this game would simply be those who are fans of Star Wars or story-driven role-playing games.
"‘Ant-farming’ is when you design with a gods-eye view in mind - it’s when you throw around concepts which are ‘interesting’ or ‘provide fascinating social dynamics’ or ‘would really feel like a virtual world’ - but fail the basic ‘fun’ test. This is when the designers are designing a game that’s more fun to observe than to actually live in." (Schubert 2004). I sometimes fear this game suffers from a case of "Ant-farming" as (after many playthroughs) I begin to get a little bored of the gameplay. I never get bored of the dialogue parts, but sometimes feel like I'd like to skip through the gameplay just for an interactive story (blasphemous for a gamer, I know). I think BioWare successfully made the players feel attachment to the characters in the game. Each 'companion' has their own interesting back-story until they tag along with you on your adventure. The way you interact with these companions effects dialogue options with them, making them either like/dislike you (more so in Kotor 2 than this game but it still applies). I remember playing it multiple times trying to get a better relationship with certain companions to see what more they have to say and how they'd react in certain situations. There's a difficult decision towards the end of the game where you must choose a number of companions that will stick with you and others that you must kill.
I think the back story is pretty self explanatory for Star Wars games for those that are familiar with it (in a galaxy far far away.. etc). The scrolling text at the start (as with all Star Wars games and films) sets the scene for you but doesn't quite explain who you are or what your role in the universe is. I like that in this game, you discover that later on. The back story must be uncovered. As mentioned before, there is also a back story to the main characters, giving them personality and what not.
As far as I can remember, the game is balanced as there doesn't seem to be anything particularly over-powered. There of course are better strategies and abilities than others, but nothing that will let you just walk through the game simply (although I do think it could have been a bit more challenging).
I believe there are some cheat codes and some in-game exploits that will allow you to break the rules, as it were.
The game has a few cut-scenes. Most of which play out just like a normal dialogue conversation but instead are between two NPC's rather than yourself, excluding the dialogue options (making the cut-scenes linear I guess).
I think this is an emergent game (I wouldn't want to play it multiple times if it weren't). Of course there are only a number of dialogue options each time but there are so many different combinations of ways you can approach interaction with other characters it can sometimes surprise you to what you may find, the reactions from these character and the consequences of things you may say. The combat however, I find is pretty straight forward, nothing new after the first few fights you have. But at least there are different ways you can build your character, resulting in combat to vary depending on that. I'd describe the story to be a branching narrative. It seems to have checkpoints at certain stages throughout the game, but there are multiple ways as to reach these checkpoints, which I believe helps with emergence. Although contradicting with what I've just said, the game does have some sort of progression system. You progress through the story by hitting these checkpoints in the story, as well as character progression where you gain your Jedi powers (you don't start with them). In that case, surely all games with a narrative have progression? I wonder.
A certain amount of effort has to be put in to achieve certain dialogue outcomes. As for combat, of course you have to try and actually think about it, but there is a fair amount of randomness to it as.. "The game's system is based on Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Roleplaying Game, which is based on the d20 role-playing game system derived from the Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) rules.". Of course if you make the effort to increase certain character statistics, those dice rolls will be in your favor accordingly.
"While fun is an elusive concept, the most popular school of thought claims that video game fun comes primarily from the enjoyment of problem solving.". "A second school of thought describes video games as a combination of a number of different types of fun, where different games emphasize different types of fun.". Personally, I do find this game to be fun. I very much enjoy the story and I enjoy playing a role in the Star Wars universe. As mentioned before, I admit the gameplay can sometimes get a little bit dull. The problem solving can become a little bit tedious. But I think I just say that because I've played the game too many times. I know for sure the first time I played this game, there was not a single moment I did not find to be fun.
The game only features one game mode, that being a Story Mode (single player). It would have been interesting to have some sort of co-op feature but then I'm not too sure how the story would play out if your partner did/said something that you didn't want to. Maybe some sort of roll system like they've done in the more recent Star Wars game: The Old Republic (not to be confused with this game Star Wars: KNIGHTS of the Old Republic).
Some of the level designs are fairly basic and others can be a bit more complicated, almost like a maze. The game was made 10 years ago so I can understand why but a lot of the levels seem rather empty. I may not be doing the game justice but I seem to recall on a few occasions there will be paths and directions that you can take, but there's not really anything on those paths (other than some people to fight or interact with). One in particular comes to mind. You crash on a forest moon and while there are lots of trees and what not around you, the path of which you can actually venture is pretty empty. There's a high use of the colour grey as well, but that's understandable as you're on space ships or on space stations.. it would be silly if they were stupidly colourful and flamboyant.
I may have been "bashing" the gameplay combat system a bit, I should mention that it is typically turn-based. You pause to choose what abilities to use and on whom, then the dice roll system begins and the actions play out.
The game does give you a brief tutorial to begin with. It explains how to do certain actions and tells you what your interface does/means/where to find things.
The overall goal of this game is more or less to save the galaxy. The outcome being whether you choose to defeat the Sith and save the Republic or defeat the Sith and take their place, either way you eliminate the immediate threat. There are numerous objectives on the way, most of which require you visit certain planets to complete tasks and unravel the story further. I don't think you can really "lose" in this game. If you die, to revert to your last save. There is an auto-save system in the game but I'm sure you can turn that off and if you weren't to manually save the game yourself, I guess that you can lose the game and have to start over. Thinking about that though seems silly as you'd have to complete the whole game in one sitting without taking a break (unless you were to keep it running while you weren't playing).
The second game I'm going to look at (retro game) shall be Zork. I fear this comparison of two games is going to be much more like me analysing just one game, as I've played the previous one many times but never played this. Still, I hope research can provide me with enough information.
Zork was one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games. It's a text-based adventure RPG. I believe it was released im 1980 and could be played on: Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, CP/M, TRS-80, IBM PC and Apple lle (what are these crazy machines?).
"Zork distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit troll"), but recognized some prepositions and conjunctions ("hit the troll with the Elvish sword").".
It is an abstract fantasy game. As with most retro games, I don't think this really had a specific target audience. Video games were new back then so there wasn't really much of a target market to focus on, I assume it was just for anybody that took interest? However, I'd say the target audience for this game would be anyone with one of the machines able to play it (of course) and those with an interest in story-telling.
I'm not sure if, back in the day, Zork would have been victim of "Ant-farming". I think you're pretty limited to the amount of enjoyment you can get out of just text. Not to say that it isn't the best form of something enjoyable, books after all are very enjoyable to read. But as for video games, I'm wondering how long someone could play before getting a bit bored of reading. Regardless of the quality of writing.
I would assume that players would form some kind of attachment with the game (it's very hard to say without having played it myself). I'd imagine it would be just like a book really, you can feel attachment with characters in books, books can still pull on your emotions, I can't see why Zork wouldn't be able to do the same. If anything, I'd say it would be rather likely to form attachments with Zork as it's an interactive story where you're in control of what happens, making it more personal than something pre-set.
I don't know if there is any back-story to Zork. Surely the scene would be set within the first bit of gameplay where it describes the current situation (if that makes sense).
"In the Zork games, the player is not limited to verb-noun commands, such as "take lamp", "open mailbox", and so forth. Instead, the parser supports more sophisticated sentences such as "put the lamp and sword in the case", "look under the rug", and "drop all except lantern". The game understands many common verbs, including "take", "drop", "examine", "attack", "climb", "open", "close", "count", and many more. The games also support commands to the game directly (rather than taking actions within the fictional setting of the game) such as "save" and "restore", "script" and "unscript" (which begin and end a text transcript of the game text), "restart", and "quit".". With that in mind, I don't believe there would be any balancing issues. It's not like whenever you come across a problem you can simply say "solve problem" every time.
I don't know if there are any cheat codes or commands for Zork but I hear there are the odd in-game exploits you can take advantage of.
As Zork is purely text-based, there are no cut-scenes. Possibly parts where there's a lot to read but you don't need to key in any particular commands, it just continues onto the next screen of reading?
I would think Zork is fairly emergent. As there are multiple commands to enter, I imagine there's a decent amount of possibilities that could happen.
In terms of effort, I'm not sure how much would really need to be applied. I'd have thought it would mostly be a matter of "trial and error" until you keyed in the correct command. Of course you'd have to make some effort not to enter a command that may end in some undesirable consequences.
As there are no visuals other than text, there is no level design. I find it quite interesting though as it's all dependent on your imagination. You could make it out to be as good as you want. During it's time, I think I would have found this game to be amazing.
Time to look at some similarities between these two games: They are both single player adventure RPG's; Both have a very similar structure (heavily story driven with adventuring); They're abstract games; both have a non-linear narrative structure.
Some differences are: They are both played on different platforms (but that's kind of obvious as technology has advanced a long way since Zork to when Kotor 1 was released); Kotor 1 has 3D dimensions whereas Zork is 2D; They have different perspectives, Kotor 1 is in third person but Zork has no perspective really; they have different objectives and goals; Kotor uses polygons as opposed to sprites, Zork uses neither; Kotor 1 you play as saviour of the galaxy but in Zork play as a dungeon crawler.
We then decided we wanted to film ourselves giving personal interviews on our input to the project. Personally, my part was monetization. While chipping in giving my opinion and ideas for the rest of the guys in all aspects of the project, I had come up with the ways to monetize the game. Here is the script I created:
After receiving some feedback, our pitch wasn't as professional as one would have hoped. We only had 5 minutes to deliver this pitch, but ours was roughly 9 minutes long. We had to do lots of editing to reduce it as much as possible and to remove the stuttering, the "umms" and "ahhhs" and what not. Considering the monetization part of the pitch is arguably the most important, it was challenging to shorten it without removing key bits of information, however, this is what I had come up with.
Super Block Group Project
To begin with, our group started coming up with ideas for the prototype of Super Block. I helped in the process of giving ideas about how the game should be improved, this included level design, art style, music, etc.
Originally, I was set with the task to create the presentation. This would show images and videos of all our work and notes we had made, including the parts for each of us to read out. Here are pictures of some of the slides (keep in mind it wasn't a final version or completed as our plan to present our work changed):
We then decided we wanted to film ourselves giving personal interviews on our input to the project. Personally, my part was monetization. While chipping in giving my opinion and ideas for the rest of the guys in all aspects of the project, I had come up with the ways to monetize the game. Here is the script I created:
Monetization:
"Why hello there.
Initially, Super Block can be downloaded for free. But to monetize the game we
want to include multiple packages of content which the player shall pay for.
These packages will include things like:
Custom character
skins: Customize Super Block with a number of unique looks. Choose the look of
the opposing objects.
Map packs:
Originally the start off “classic pack” has at least one level utilizing each
game mode. But, you can buy more maps for all game modes that will follow a
particular theme. For example, using elements like water, lava, air. Other
themes like cyberpunk, digital, sci-fi, etc.
Music Packs:
Although music tracks are created to fit with each level, you can buy packages
that will include more music tracks. So you can customize your Super Block
experience by picking which track you wish to listen to playing.
Game mode packs:
Instead of buying a package with a map for each game mode. You could purchase a
number of maps for your favorite game mode, for example: side-scroller."
After receiving some feedback, our pitch wasn't as professional as one would have hoped. We only had 5 minutes to deliver this pitch, but ours was roughly 9 minutes long. We had to do lots of editing to reduce it as much as possible and to remove the stuttering, the "umms" and "ahhhs" and what not. Considering the monetization part of the pitch is arguably the most important, it was challenging to shorten it without removing key bits of information, however, this is what I had come up with.
Monetization:
"To monetize the
game we came up with some DLC packages:
Custom character
skins: Customize Super Block with a number of unique looks. Choose the look of
the opposing objects.
Map packs:
Originally the start off “classic pack” has at least one level utilizing each
game mode. But, you can buy more maps for all game modes that will follow a
particular theme. For example, using elements like water and fire.
Music Packs:
Although music tracks are created to fit with each level, you can buy packages
that will include additional music tracks.
Game mode packs:
Instead of buying a package with a map for each game mode. You could purchase a
number of maps for your favorite game mode, for example: side-scroller."
Unfortunately, time was running out. I had intended to re-film my part to be more enthusiastic but having to edit as well, there just wasn't time.
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