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Bad Games - PAX Prime 2013

edited September 2013 in GeekNights

Bad Games
PAX Prime 2013

We’ve all played “bad” games, but what truly makes a game “bad?” Is gaming beauty not in the eye of the beholder? Is one’s miserable experience not simply subjective opinion? Is there such a thing as an objectively “bad” game? More importantly, however we define the term, do bad games serve a purpose? Much as how without evil, there can be no good, without the worst of gaming, how could we possibly recognize the best?

It turns out that the problem is not in defining what makes a game “bad,” but in what makes a game a “game.” Some games are great at certain things, but terrible at others. Candyland teaches children colors and counting, but is a terrible candidate for a serious tournament. Dungeons & Dragons is great for that heroic fantasy adventure, but not so much for your future cyberpunk transhumanist court drama. Silver Surfer serves as a lesson (and a warning) to future game designers the world over.

Join us for a lively discussion of the worst of gaming, what that truly means, and what we can learn from “bad” games. You may find that some of the worst games ever made can be some of the most fun you’ve ever had.

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Comments

  • Once again I saw that I knew 90% of Scrym's panel content because I've read the Characteristics of Games. And 9.5% came straight from Geeknights episodes. And there was maybe 0.5% of panel unique content.

    Still a not a bad panel.
  • I'm totally cool with watching presentations that are ripped from the pages of Characteristics of Games (and, moreso, I'm glad you guys are sharing that knowledge with a wider audience), especially when it's entertaining. Not a bad panel, and I like the ideogame concept.
  • I wonder why some sports embrace technology while others hinder it.
    Obviously with race walking the sport would be dead however others would not.

    e.g.
    Cricket has 2 on field umpires and an off field umpire who has access to everything from cameras surrounding the oval, on the pitch, in the wickets, thermal cameras, microphones etc.

    Soccer doesn't embrace it even though it is a good sport with out the diving.
  • And there was maybe 0.5% of panel unique content.

    Still a not a bad panel.
    This is true of many good panels. A lecture isn't bad just because it isn't telling you information that has never been told before. There are plenty of people who haven't been presented with the information before the lecture.

  • Our lectures are basically short summaries of the last eight years of GeekNights. ;^)
  • I said it's not a bad panel. I just find it interesting how easy it was to spot parts that were directly lifted from Characteristics of Games.
  • I said it's not a bad panel. I just find it interesting how easy it was to spot parts that were directly lifted from Characteristics of Games.
    Don't mistake "lifted from that book" with "using the terminology of the book." Most of what that book says, we've been saying for years. We just adopted its lexicon over our own.

    What we used to call "direct fucking" we now call "politics."

    That book just gave us a nice focal point around which to define our terms. Our primary goal for the near term is to drill that lexicon and the concepts thereby described into everyone's heads in order to facilitate higher level discourse later.

    Take Go as an example. We expressed this exact complaint about the game as early as 2003, vocally and publicly. I remember arguing with the Go Club at RIT at length on the topic of how the fuck a beginner can make decisions in the game.

    I only recently have a term - directional heuristic - to use for it. Characteristics of Games uses that same example because Go is a perfect example of a lack thereof.

  • Watch "How to Win at Games" again. We wrote and performed that panel long before we read Characteristics of Games. If we did that exact same panel again, with the same slides and talking points, we would differ only in that we would reference and make use of the lexicon of Characteristics of Games extensively.
  • edited September 2013
    Here's one thing that can make a game "bad," with little qualification necessary: ambiguous rules coupled with erroneously-translated card text.

    Fuck you, High Bohn. Fuck you.
    Post edited by TheWhaleShark on
  • Here's one thing that can make a game "bad," with little qualification necessary: ambiguous rules coupled with erroneously-translated card text.

    Fuck you, High Bohn. Fuck you.
    Fuck you Hellas.
  • Our "bad rules" example was Hellas.

    We skipped a lot of topics at PAX due to time. We're running the same panel 90 minutes instead of 60 at MAGFest to correct that.
  • Oh shit does that mean Director's cut?
  • "direct fucking" has a nice ring to it though.
  • Great lecture. Curious as to what topics you'd hit given more time.

    I was definitely surprised by and loved the examination of ET as a way to explain the "good at vs. bad at" concept. Looking at his wrinkly pixel-face is all I need for sustenance this day.
  • edited September 2013
    I'm totally cool with watching presentations that are ripped from the pages of Characteristics of Games (and, moreso, I'm glad you guys are sharing that knowledge with a wider audience), especially when it's entertaining. Not a bad panel, and I like the ideogame concept.
    I think it's idiogame, as in "idiosyncratic". I think you might have gotten it wrong because Scrym's pronunciation of "idio" is off.
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • Note: after hearing you guys mention Candy Box previously, I did in fact look it up and proceeded to win by reading the Javascript.
  • Believe me there is something about the words "directional heuristic" that makes me want to slap Rym when he says it. And I consider Rym one of my best friends.. Fucking Heuristics :-p
  • I've never played a single game of Go and I already knew the directional heuristic problem, long before I knew the name for it.
  • Oh nice cameo for the greatest retro video game store in the country Digital Press. Both the AVGN and NC been there multiple times and featured them in their videos.
  • Believe me there is something about the words "directional heuristic" that makes me want to slap Rym when he says it. And I consider Rym one of my best friends.. Fucking Heuristics :-p
    Everyone should be made to understand what 'directional heuristic' is. Saying 'directional heuristic' aloud in any context is a slappable offence.
  • edited September 2013
    Oh nice cameo for the greatest retro video game store in the country Digital Press. Both the AVGN and NC been there multiple times and featured them in their videos.
    I try to make it to their monthly NAVA events, since the store is only 20 min from my house. Great place. It is absolutely the mecca of retro video games. It also gives me an excuse to hit up Mitsuwa since I am up that way already.

    Post edited by Matt on
  • Fucking Heuristics :-p
    How do they work? *end ICP reference*
  • Oh nice cameo for the greatest retro video game store in the country Digital Press. Both the AVGN and NC been there multiple times and featured them in their videos.
    I try to make it to their monthly NAVA events, since the store is only 20 min from my house. Great place. It is absolutely the mecca of retro video games. It also gives me an excuse to hit up Mitsuwa since I am up that way already.

    Sweet I used to go down there all the time, I was there for their 10th anniversary last time. Since I do not collect like I used to it has been a while since I have been there.
  • On the topic of this thread, Dice Tower just posted its latest episode, which is about "replacement games" (games which have replaced older games in your collection). Definitely has me interested to see whether their picks are good or not. I wouldn't have expected them to go with that topic, since I find their conversations to be very surface-level. Takes an ounce of depth to say "this game was good at the time, but is now obsolete for X reason."
  • The reason your "soccer = diving" joke fails: You are using the wrong analogy. It should be something like this:
    image

    "Diving" is called this because in soccer people are doing all sorts of contortions and acting to be awarded something by the referee. This is analogous to an olympic diver jumping off a diving board, doing all kinds of contortions to be awarded a score by the referee. Not like diving with a scuba tank in the ocean.
  • I finally got round to watching this presentation! It's probably one of my favourite of your panels on YouTube. It's a pity you ran out of time at the end. I hope you upload a version of the 90 minute panel some time.

    The diving picture is wrong, as chaosof99 correctly points out.

    Also Scott fiddling with the bottle on the edge of Rym's closeup is super annoying. You can super easily remove this! No reframing needed, just cut out a segment of the bottles where Scott isn't fiddling with them, and loop it over the top of when he is fiddling with them.

    Also, I've played E.T. and it's a bad game. The collision detection is such that if E.T.'s head touches a hole or well, he falls in. This has now been fixed.

    Why people accidentally fall in to the wells

    The myth: A lot of people blame poor collision detection for this problem. That is simply not true. The collision detection in E.T. is perfect. There are no bounding boxes like in more modern games. Collision detection happens at the pixel level. You can't get any better than that. If you fall in to a well, it's because your player character visually overlaps it.
    The actual problem: We don't want pixel-perfect collision detection!

    The reason that people so easily fall in to wells is that they don't expect to fall when, for example, E.T.'s head overlaps a well. After all, his feet are clearly on solid ground!


    image


    Figure 1: E.T. appears to be standing in front of a well. However, because collision detection is pixel perfect and some of the sprite pixels overlap the well pixels, E.T. is sure to fall. This is a bad thing.


    E.T. uses a weird perspective not well suited for pixel-perfect collision detection. It's an overhead view, but we see E.T. and the other characters from the side. An article on tvtropes.org calls this "Three Quarters View" and describes it as a "tilted bird's eye view perspective".

    Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda uses the same perspective, but you don't hear a lot of complaints about accidentally running in to enemies or obstacles.


    image


    Figure 2: A similar perspective is used in The Legend of Zelda though it somehow manages to be even stranger. The floor tiles and blocks, the outer walls, and the player character are all shown from different perspectives. This doesn't hurt the game in any way, it actually makes it better.


    Zelda uses a neat trick to make the perspective feel more natural when playing and less like the characters are lying on their sides. Collision detection is designed around where your player character appears to be, not by what sprites happens to overlap. In Zelda, when you approach an obstacle from the south, for example, it doesn't obstruct your movement until about half of your sprite overlaps it.


    image


    Figure 3: (Left) Our player character appears to be standing in the row of floor tiles below the block. The player assumes that they are able to move forward as there are clearly no obstacles in the way. However, if collision detection was pixel-perfect they would be obstructed by the block. (Right) Thanks to good design, we can do the obvious: walk on the tiles in front of the block.


    If we can modify the collision detection in E.T. so that it's not pixel perfect, but based on where the player character appears to be, we can give the player the same intuitive advantages that Zelda players enjoy. In the case of E.T., such a change is simple: we just need to ensure that only collisions with E.T.'s feet are detected. The game will feel much more natural, and players won't fall in to wells accidentally nearly as often.
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