Blog » What Makes a Game?

Posted by NetHawk on Friday 24th June, 2011   ·   1 comments

It's been a while since I considered switching to windows, mainly because for a work envirement linux is just better. So, why would you even go for windows, well, because of the games of course!
I've been playing games for a while, started out with NASCAR and DOOM, then simCopter, IL-2 Sturmovik, UT, Operation Flashpoint, etc. etc.

Now, Unreal Tournament was the first "online" game I played, through honestly it was more on LAN parties
And playing with real people, shouting at eachother really got to me, so when I started playing IL-2 Sturmovik, it took me all of a week to join a clan (Partizanska Eskadrilia).
Let me tell you, being 3 months in the status of "recruit" until you're allowed to fly (passed full flight license) is intense, and rewarding. So I've been flying IL-2 for about a year, before I had to start learning again, that and my joystick broke...

So, fast forward a year or two, and I joined Project Torque, a car racing game, quite nice, MMO even. This didn't have a long effect as some german !@#$!$@#@! company decided to take licensing for europe in their hands. The last day on the server was nice through.
So, where did we go from there? CoD and BF came out with crap, Console racers are arcadish and most everything wen't for graphics. So I did what every geek would do, and burried myself in an endless maze of terminals and ASCII characters, silently lurking in the dark. Now X3:Reunion with Roguey's Mod woke me up, and relit the gamer in me. Now, I'm looking at LFS again, ARMA 2 (and 3), Bohemia also announced Take On Helicopters, there is a new Deus Ex coming and LFS got a nice update.

Looks like a good year to dual-boot with windows!

But the question is, why this games? What makes them special?
Is it the graphics? Is it the names, the associations with our childhood? Is it just that these companies know how to make gameplay?
I don't think so, for me it's always been the community, friendly mature people just playing a game having fun, helping eachother, and not taking everything too serious.
I have not once heard in LFS or IL-2 "OMGZ you'z a N00B!", rather "hey NetHawk, you should try to take that curve just about 2m more to the left, so you'll get a faster exit speed for the straight" or "NetHawk, it might be that your joystick sensitivity is too high, try setting it lower, and you'll have less problems with stall".

And this my dear friends is what makes a game. graphics are nice, but a game get's forgotten fast if that's all it has. Gameplay is something we all talk about, and consider important, BUT the REAL trick is having a good community, as most everything is forgiven if the community is great.

Thanks and peace-out.

Comments

To post comments you need to register and log-in.