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10 Things Needed for Greatness

10 Things Needed for Greatness

Did you ever wonder what it was about your favorite games that kept drawing you in for sequel after sequel? Yes, we’re talking to you, Call of Duty fanatics. Did you ever think, while your next match was loading, about what it was that truly kept you coming back for more? There are tons of games just like CoD that have drug us all into their thrall. But have we ever really sat back and asked what those things were? Specifically? Have we ever really examined the things that keep us buying every game in a series? And more importantly, have we been getting these things in sufficient enough quantities that it justifies us spending more money on tons of games? Have the big game publishers out there been faithful to us and provided us with what we are truly looking for? We asked a bunch of gamers from around the country to tell us what the top ten things that kept them playing games were. Here’s what we found out.

Graphics

Graphics

Graphics were actually not as high on the list as I had initially imagined they would be. With all the craziness over next-gen systems every time they release, you would think that graphical content would be a huge thing. But it comes in at number ten on this list. Most gamers said graphics were important, but unless it was some epic game like Dying Light or Battlefield , no one really stated that mediocre graphics would stop them from playing – or even paying for a game. This is the first of the real shockers on this list. There will be others, but I was truly blown away that this wasn’t as important as some of the other things you’ll see on this list.

Exclusivity

Exclusivity

Oddly, a lot of the gamers we talked to wanted games exclusive to their favorite system. The Sony guys and gals wanted more titles like inFAMOUS and God of War . The Microsoft camp wanted more Gears of War , Halo and Forza . It seems that exclusive first-party franchises still have a viable place in the gaming market. I wonder if any of the big guys out there even read these articles? It seems to me that if they could listen to us gamers a little more, then maybe they could squeeze even more money out of us by actually giving us what we want.

DLC

DLC

I am not going to lie. I was actually shocked that DLC was even a thing, at least for this list. I have heard nothing but griping and complaining from nearly every gamer I know (myself included) when it comes to feeling like we got our money’s worth out of a DLC pack. Honestly, the last satisfying DLC pack I remember getting was the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3 . That’s the last time like I felt I got exactly what I paid for. It was enjoyable. It brought back some characters that I loved playing with in earlier games. And most importantly, it incorporated fan fiction into the mix and I think it’s awesome that BioWare would even do such a thing. Can we assume that’s what people were asking for when they listed DLC as important?

Price Point

Price Point

This one would be a little higher on the list if I were making my own. It seems that games get more expensive as time goes on and that we as gamers get less and less of a game when we drop our money down on the counter to buy them. But we all just keep paying the big, bad gaming companies out there tons of cash to play games that we’re going to bitch about later. How many of you bought the Walking Dead games? Or how many of you have played Destiny ? We didn’t really get all we were told we were getting when we picked these games up. It seems that these days, it’s becoming a rarer thing to actually get a game that delivers on what we were promised during the marketing blitz for it. At least to the people we asked, it seems like they feel less and less like they’re getting their money’s worth.

Emotional Investment

Emotional Investment

A whole lot of the people we asked said that they loved becoming emotionally invested in a story, a series, or a game’s characters. But no matter where their investment was, it seemed that they all wanted to feel like they were actually a part of the story. They all wanted to feel like what they did in the game and the choices they made really made a difference in the world that the game was set in. For example, love it or hate it, several people cited Mass Effect as being a game you could get invested in. Skyrim was another one, even though your character is mute. But above those, Fable was probably the biggest mention.

Good Control Scheme

Good Control Scheme

Intuitive controls were a big thing with nearly everyone we talked to. I heard on more than one occasion that a crappy game with a solid control scheme was a lot more tolerable than a good game with crappy controls. For example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was brought up a lot. We heard from more than one gamer that they felt it would have been better served as a third-person, cover-based shooter. Everyone agreed that they were aware the franchise was an FPS title, but everyone who talked about it said that it felt weird since there was already so much cover-based shooting going on.

Immersive Action

Immersive Action

Total immersion. Two words that I heard a lot from our queries. When asked to elaborate, they all talked about sound effects and soundtracks as well as the basic cinematography of the game. They also mentioned the rift between cut scenes and gameplay either being a help or a hindrance to the movement of the game and story. They said that getting lost in the action was the reason for playing a lot of games. This sort of escapism is very common in gamers, it seems.

Memorable Characters

Memorable Characters

Everyone mentioned memorable characters. Names like Master Chief, Mario, Marcus Fenix and Kratos were tossed around when gamers were asked to name a few memorable characters. But the ones spoken with in nearly reverent tones were Lara Croft and Nathan Drake. Gamers said that they wanted to feel like their characters were as real as they could be for their given situation. Even if that situation is surreal. It would seem that the days of the silent types or the machismo-drenched, steroid-headed characters are numbered and quickly fizzling out. I also heard one gamer say that after playing the Arkham series of games, he had more of a connection with Batman as a character than he had in the past. One guy even said that if it hadn’t been for GLAdOS,he would’ve never finished playing Portal one or two. So great and memorable characters are key to a great game, it would appear.

A Great Story

A Great Story

Not one gamer said that they would play a game that had no story. By and large, gamers said that it was very important to them to feel like the world they were playing in was established. Knowing the motivations for the actions of the main characters and even some NPCs were very important to their overall enjoyment of a game. Yes, even most of the Call of Duty freaks out there said that without there being a cool story to get them hooked, they probably never would’ve started playing the games in the first place. You hear that, Activision? Gamers actually like stories in their games! So why don’t you try bringing that element back to your games instead of focusing so much on what was inevitably going to come next on this list…

Online Gameplay

Online Gameplay

Yup. You guessed it. The number one thing that every gamer we polled said – yes, every gamer – was online playability. Whether it was co-op gameplay or PVP, every single person we questioned said that online compatibility and solid server connections were paramount to their gaming experience being a great one. Not a single soul mentioned anything above it. Online gameplay. They went on and on about how this game has a horrible server farm and how this game had rock-solid connectivity and how these games have better match-making parameters than these other games. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing online as much as the next guy, but at no point in my gaming ‘career’ would I have put online gameplay above everything else on this list. Oh, well. I guess it was only a matter of time.

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