noiseredux wrote:How are you defining "substance?"
There are more variables and more outcomes.
Think of Ultima for example. You have different character classes, different weapon and armor classes, there are different kinds of monsters, moongates and spells and so on. You have a (relatively) huge world to explore and there's a lot of lore - you're not just doing random stuff to gain points, you are on a mission. Different characters make references to events and people while you talk to them so you feel that all the different places, characters and events are connected to each other and aren't just a bunch of loose set pieces. The game world feels elaborate, there's back up history, people are given a story, you have a purporse. The game makes you think about different moral dillemmas and the storylines explore differnet ethical and philosophical themes.
Or think about World of Warcraft's 3v3 arena during WOTLK. You have 10 different character classes, all of them have 3 different talent trees with 71 talent points to use. Every character has different weapons and gear, different enchantments in gear and so on. Every character class has like what, 35-45 different spells to use? Every different race has different racial abilities. When you put all those variables together, there is just a massive number of different outcomes. 3vs3 in a FPS game is very straightforward compared to that, every one has a gun and the same amount of health, shoot the enemy before you get shot first. No one will do
this kind of theorycrafting just to find out the most optimal way to play CS
Yar's revenge has very little variables and the game experience remains the same every time you play. You shoot the bricks and blow up the enemy, the game resets. There are two outcomes, you either loose or win, and the way how you reach the goal remains pretty much the same from game to game, even if you become more efficient at playing the game.
Think of it this way: chess is a simple game but it has a lot of depth. There's a huge amount of different outcomes for every game and a crazy amount of different strategies you can apply to different situations. Compare that to tic-tac-toe, where every game is the same more or less.
noiseredux wrote:Your initial claim was that games like MM2, LOZ, etc can be played for hours while a single screen game is going to get boring quickly. Isn't Galaga a single screen game? Well I've sunk many, many hours into that game. Probably as many as LOZ. Probably more than MM2.
You know there are folks that play Pac-Man for high score. They get to kill screens. They play for many hours and it's not because they want to see how long they can endure a "boring" game.
That has nothing to do with substace and this argument has nothing to do with whether a game is actually good or not. Many of the simple golden age arcade games are designed well. They are designed to make you hooked so you would keep on paying the machine more and more quarters.
BoringSupreez wrote:You know a thread has gone down the tubes when people start arguing in a civil manner
I dont see how this worse than the alternative
AppleQueso wrote:If substance has nothing to do with whether a game is good or not, then why does it matter if a game is substantial?
Because I want more from my games than eating pills for points or shooting birds at pigs. I value more substantial games above simple casual games for the same reason why people respect Mozart more than Souljaboy. There's nothing wrong about enjoying casual games (or pop music), I do it myself too. Aslong as you aknowledge the hierarchy.
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