First!

Hi all.

This is the first post in what I am tentatively calling "The Way I Play", a blog dedicated to... well, let me try and explain.





Games and stats

Games come in many flavours and many types, from the old-school text-parser like Zork to the grind-fest insanity that is the modern MMORPG's, like Wow.

A common factor in many games, especially modern ones is stats. This isn't surprising as programming and game design mechanics tend to boil down to maths problems, so having "stats x y and z" on one weapon being greater than another tends to be a simple case of upgrading.

You want to do more damage, so you go with the better gun. This can be evolved into the RPG elements that are common in many games. While an RPG's backbone is character developement from a level 1 flare casting wizard to a level 20 Archmage that can bend time and space to their very will, many other games have adopted elements of the system.

RPG and RPG Elements

Take Infamous. It allows you to upgrade abilities with EXP, but the game itself isn't a true RPG as there's not stats for EVERY OTHER aspect of the character. A game like Fallout 3 or Oblivion uses stats as its backbone. I'm not saying that buying new abilities isn't important and core to the game, but Coles upgrades are purely linear, as in the reward for solving a problem (problem being "I don't have enough exp" so you have to play/gring until you get more) whereas Fallout 3 involves Choice.

This is what I'm really trying to get to here. RPG elements in games a good mechanic, they allow the game designer to award their players with added bonuses late into the game. This both gives them a skill curve to unlock new mechanics, extra health, etc, allowing them to keep pace with the challenge of the game, rather than have their weak one-trick-poney get blasted away in later levels.
However, when the question is not "how do I want my character to develop" but is instead "Do I want to upgrade my character" then choice goes out the window. Of course you want a more powerful character, you want to see all the fireworks and have all the bells and whistles.

Problem and Choice

There's 2 shorts that Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits did, one prior to his time at the escapist, and another more recently. You can find them Here(Extra) and Here(This, talking about these) . These will highlight better than I ever could the quintessence of what I'm trying to hammer in. And seriously, take a look at the rest of the series, he's reused some material from one to the other but it's all good stuff.

Going back to my gun example above. Maybe instead of doing more damage, you have the option between a shotgun and a sniper-rifle. Both are equally powerful but in different circumstance. Sniper is good for long range but too slow and clunky to be used up close, shotgun is practically only useful up close. This can either be a problem or a choice. The choice is when you just want to either go up close or at range, the problem is when you're facing an enemy that's only easily killable with one or the other. Take a zombie, you'd probably go shotgun to blow all its bits off, but equally if that zombie explodes when it's killed, you might solve the problem of getting your bits blown off by blowing their bits off at range with a sniper-rifle. Problem solved.


As Floyd said, Wow (as well as many modern RPG's) suffers from this issue as well. Sure there might be various options to your talents/gear, but if you want to do the most damage/the most healing/the most snack-food conjuring then choice kinda goes out the window. You'll always select the build that has the greatest of these derived statistics. The choice comes early on, with the class/race you choose, and the particular play-style for that class/race you adopt, but once you've decided you're going to be a gnome warrior specialising in weapons bigger than himself, you know your job comes down to "dealing a lot of damage, having a lot of health, biting a lot of ankles" and then it's just a case of solving the problem to get the gear that facilitates this.


Games aren't stat building, they're FUN

However. Stats are boring. You don't play the game to have the most powerful character, you play it for fun. Getting the most powerful character might be fun for you, but actually having them will go cold pretty quick.

Even games like football manager are more than just stats. There's an element of random chance (what the game decides to throw out at you) and your ability to stay on top, still working towards the goal you've set while also managing these risks adds to the challenge and the fun.

I'm going to do an article on WMGG (my other blog) at some point on what exactly "fun" is in the context of a game, but it isn't pressing a button and everything dies. Or it can be, but it'll be about killing everything efficiently, or trying to do it in the fastest time, i.e a challenge.
It tends to be generated by interest and challenge. Interest in the world/story/character development, or challenge in how hard you can push your own skills through the game, or unlock x y and z (very common with modern achievements), or react to and control random events, or harnessing and perfecting a personal skill... You get the idea...

farmville have "goal-post" goals, where you have to grind to a point, and are rewarded with new... chickens? Sheep? And then that adds an extra dimension.

Again, on WMGG I'll likely do the "balance" of challenge and skill. In games where you can improve your characters power, there's always the chance the game will get easier as you make your character more powerful, in turn making the game less challenging and potentially less fun for yourself. The best games don't allow this to happen, they give you the mechanics and allow you to play with them at a rate appropriate with the difficulty curve of the game. Portal, Braid and others are good examples. Where you're given time to learn core and new mechanics without being dropped in the deep end of the difficulty pool.

The (rather heavily laboured) Point

My point is, and the focus on this WHOLE blog, is that there are occasions when the fun isn't to be had in the highest stats, though that can be a part of it. It's to be had in roleplaying, in making choices and solving problems to develop and build a character that feels right for you, not just in being everyone's friend and completing every quest. It's rare in most modern RPG's to get everything, so you tend to need to make choices and weigh the odds, to work out why your character is the way he or she (or indeed it) is and has the abilities they has.

Games that marry the plot, narrative, mechanics, roleplaying, character development and customisation, both stats and personality-wise, the difficulty curve AND the interest and challenge inherent in all these things are the ones I'll be focusing on.

Therefore, the games I'll be exploring in this blog will be more the Fallout's, the Deus Ex's (yes, even the second one). Games that emphasise choice, both in plot and with character, with a good healthy dollop of problem-solving (again, plot and character, especially when it comes down to working out how to kill someone.

I'm talking a character that's ultimately flawed. They might be awesome with pistols, but useless with big guns. An amazing hacker, but couldn't put a bandage on to save their life (literally). Maybe they're a generalist, but they'll never be quite as good. Characters that are still playable, and I can still achieve what I want to achieve but still have an element of challenge.


I'll likely explore other games as well. There's a lot of non-story games that involve choice and problem-solving that I could talk about. Games like TF2 and Borderlands come to mind, where your characters loadout and abilities comes down more to personal preference, as there's always something to do in that situation.

I'm not saying games that don't have roleplaying, RPG elements, a deep in depth story and rewards for completing challenges can't be fun. The Uncharted Series doens't unlock any abilities, you only ever have 2 guns and those you pick off dead guys, and the story and characters are well written, but they're familiar stereotypes and cliches, and honestly pretty dumb. It's still one of the greatest and most fun series I've ever played. I guess there's micro-challenges inherent, as Floyd said with the mushrooms in Mario, you've gotta weigh the odds before you kill guy for gun, as up until you kill him, he can use shiny gun against you. But anyway, that's not to do with this Blog...

(a bit) More on the Blog

So why am I doing this Blog? Partly because it's never been done before. Sure, there's a thousand "Lets plays" on youtube, and people are always talking about character stats, but aside from some (often horrible) fan-fictiony type stuff, there's very rarely "I play this character because of THIS" where "THIS" isn't stat related.

Like my other blogs, these are not reviews. They're not even neccessarily intended for other people to read. I'm using this as a personal space to work out some of my geekier tendancies. If you are afraid of spoilers etc, then do not read this blog, or any of my blogs, as I'll be going into the intimate inner workings of many of these games, revealing plot-points and character abilities.

As a point of course, anything that appears here will also have appeared or be worthy in "WMGG". I'm not going to indepthly craft a character I enjoy playing for a game I hated.