Fuck games that think they deserve your valuable time but that they don’t have to earn it.
Yeah, fuck Depression Quest!
Fuck beating games, because we are so far beyond that concept that for the vast majority of games it makes about as much sense as beating Michaelangelo’s David does.
Yeah, fuck watching the ending of movies, too! In fact, the back half of any movie has nothing to do with the art at all so it might as well not matter.
Some games are made of mechanics, and if you’ve mastered a mechanic as much as you want to, then you can stop.
U f00kin w0t m8? Games are mechanics. If a game fails to have competent mechanics then it has failed to capitalize upon the inherent artistic advantages it has given itself by virtue of being a fucking video game. It's like you're a film critic saying "You know what? Fuck cinematography. If I've seen a shot once, I don't have to continue on looking at it."
You see how you fail to make sense, yet?
Some games are made of stories, and if you’ve experienced as much of a story as you want to, then you can stop.
Not if you want to analyze it and gleam deeper meaning from it. All artistic interpretation requires time. You have to digest the information the art gives you, think about it, be introspective about it. Re-experience it multiple times. Fucking meditate on it if you have to. If you just watch a film from front to back and fail to think about the reason why certain shots were used, the reason certain objects might have been placed in certain shots, then you've failed to understand the art.
If you don't want to do that, what value does your criticism have? It's the defining line between an opinion and a critique we're walking here. An opinion can be as simple as "It was good/bad." A critique will take a few (read: a lot) more steps than that.
If they bore you or they fatigue you or they just don’t interest you: you are not obliged to continue. Even if you’re still in the tutorial.
I believe that if you're going to publicly criticize a game, you owe it to the intelligence of any who might listen to to develop an informed opinion by sticking around until you at least understand the game structure.
Related: fuck 80 hours of gameplay.
Well, if you don't want an 80 hour gameplay session, that just like, your opinion, man.
Games that are more than ten hours long are — almost without exception — paced awfully. There is no possible way that a game can take into account the varied human contextual needs for pauses, breaks, interruptions, basic stuff like sanitation, over the course of three hours, even if they’re paced perfectly.
Neither can books. Neither can films. No art can guess when you're going to get up and go fuck up your toilet's shit into next month. I mean, can you really rock through a thousand page novel in one sitting?
I don't know anyone who can, and if you can I'm genuinely impressed.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this: collectables in a story-based game are straight up shit.
That's just like, your opinion man. Nice misspelling of collectibles, though. You know, I'm willing to bet that people who actually like games for what they are don't mind collectibles and if they're genuinely bothered by them, they might ignore them.
Remember Skyrim’s infinite quests? And it turned out that, actually, all of those quests were things like “acquire six sapphires” or “fetch for me these rare and ancient herbs, which are just over there, brave hero” or “kill six snow moose”?
Yep. That's what we all expected, too. And you know what? A lot of people actually enjoyed that.
Items in games are fascinating, and: collecting stuff is interesting when you’re doing it for your own reasons. Whatever those reasons are. Running around GTA San Andreas collecting 50 oysters so you become irresistible to your in-game girlfriend is grunt work. Your time is worth more than that.
What if I enjoy collecting those oysters? What if it's a fun hunt for me? It's my free time and if I want to hunt oysters I'll hunt fucking oysters. It sounds to me like I'm doing that for my own reasons.
And if the collections make sense within the context of the game world and the fiction — giving you something meaningful. Audio logs do not count (and can also get fucked)
That thing that does the thing I want? It doesn't count.
Will you ever be pleased?
The minute you replace an intrinsic motivation — something I want to do innately because it’s enjoyable or rewarding — with an external one, something I do because you give me a reward? The activity actually becomes less fun. There’s research on this. It’s bad. Don’t do it.
That research sounds interesting. Too bad you haven't sourced your shit so I'm gonna remain skeptical.
Achievements are pretty much the embodiment of making a fun thing less fun by adding an external reward system.
NOBODY FUCKING CARES ABOUT ACHIEVEMENTS
You know what I think when I see that achievement window coming up on steam? Oh that's cool, back to the game.
You don’t need badges to tell you how to enjoy your time or consume your media.
Yeah, you need this shouting asshole to do that.