🚀 go-pugleaf

> But I have always maintained there are two types of gamers: those
> interested in the mechanics, and those in the experience (I tend to
> call them PacMan gamers versus Kings Quest gamers because those are
> two early games which strongly differentiated between the two modes).
> On the one hand are people like Rin, who are focused on the gameplay:
> how the AI works, the balance of the weapons, how the level design
> effects the second-to-second flow of the action. They also tend to be
> more into online and competitive gaming. On the other hand, I trend
> more towards the latter camp. Story and setting are crucial; I want an
> "immersive experience" with highly detailed worlds. That's not to say
> the former group are completely disinterested in what a game looks
> like or what the story is about, or that I don't care if the AI is
> brain-dead and the gameplay is repetitive but our focus is different.
>

I think there's a lot of truth in that and and although the 'mechanics' 
of a game are important for me it's the story and setting that can make 
or break a game. CRPGs can really show this difference up between the 
players who are interested in how to maximise their characters and those 
that are far more interested in the story itself.

Personally I want my character to be just that and not a set of numbers 
to be played with so I'm more than prepared to used the slider 
difficulty to make my life easier. Another good example is This War of 
Mine. I really like this game and although there's lot's of information 
out there on how to 'play' it I purposely haven't read any of it as I 
play this game to build a story around the characters I build and not to 
win. That means part of the experience for me is making mistakes.

Taking it even further back to when I used to play table top RPGS. We 
changed from using AD&D to Warhammer and made a decision that only one 
person would be the Gamesmaster and the players would have the minimum 
amount of information required to be able to play the game. It made a 
breath of fresh air that we got on with the story and not the rules. As 
Gamesmaster I even, on occasion, cheated so that players didn't die as 
that's not what we played for. You may end up badly injured but dying 
was reserved for doing something really stupid.

None of this is to say it's the right way to view games of course, just 
a different one.

Summing it up, if I go back through the games I've really enjoyed it's 
the story and experience that's important to me and the part I remember.