Lately, my favorite game has been Dwarf Fortress. I think it's because it comes, essentially, from the Sid Meier school of thought. Sid Meier says, and I paraphrase, that a game should impress you not with what it can do, but with what you can do with it. And likewise, that is exactly what was so great about Civilization III. There was no scripted story. Which is not to say that there was no story at all. On the contrary, the gameplay was full of suspense, adventure and drama. There was no need for the game to proceed on rails, along a script, because the game was designed in such a way that the story emerged naturally from the players' interaction in the game world. And I think that this is what embodies good game design. Unfortunately, this is the complete opposite of the dominant paradigm in the design-by-assembly-line industry as it is, especially in the action genre where it seems as if the same game is repackaged with new graphics and resold to the public over and over again.
I've been playing Battlefield 3 as well, and was surprised to find that I like it better than I expected. Mostly for two things. Most of the weapons in the game are quite effective so long as they are played to their strengths, which adds an element of strategy. Further, I also liked that all of the guns are ballistic. I like that there is some skill and anticipation required in order to hit anything. If I wanted to score purely by point-and-click, I would simply play a web-based game, or somewhat less sarcastically, I might say "Quake" instead. Not that Quake was a bad game by any means, it's just been done to death.
Moreover, though, I have certain standard complaints which are applicable to almost every action game I have ever played. The gameplay design is ADD-centric, which ruins most of the threads of battlefield drama which could otherwise emerge from the premise.
"Cover me!" "What for? You'll just respawn twenty yards away in five seconds anyway".
"This convoy must arrive intact within five minutes!" "What convoy? The gameplay revolves entirely around shooting stuff, and it has no notion of supply lines"
And so on. The whole of gameplay basically boils down to an elaborate variation on laser tag. Don't get me wrong. I was a huge fan of Action Quake II, a Quake II mod of which the better known Counter-Strike was a direct descendant. AQ2 was very much within the twitchy action mold. But it was done well. All players would spawn with a standard load of default equipment which was inaccurate and not particularly powerful. Scattered throughout the level, there would be a fixed number of powerful unique items of which each player could only carry a few of their choice. And so everyone would fight over their chosen favorite super-items in a sort of dynamic king-of-the-hill. When you finally obtained the loadout you desired, there was suddenly great pressure to survive because you didn't want to lose your advantage and have to go hunt down your items again. At the same time, everyone who wants your stuff is now simultaneously charging after you. To add to the tension, the scoring system was unique, in that there was a multiplier in play, which increased if you stayed alive, and reset if you died. So, in addition, for surviving, you were rewarded with exponential points. All this would have the ultimate effect of producing action-movie-like action/suspense sequences which emerged not from a script, but from the basic rules of the game, this being the stated goal of the designers. And this takes us full circle to the earlier Civ III example, and we see that the same concepts apply to both action and strategy games.
In contrast, we find that most game companies are content to recycle the same tired game mechanic over and over again, only dressed up in ever more elaborate shaders, textures, and high-poly models. They change the artwork, they change the title, and voila, it's a sequel. This is a shame, because even though everyone can appreciate impressive visuals, gameplay matters. The success of Minecraft, in particular, proves this. Minecraft, despite its lo-fi 8-bit visual motif, with its cubic layout, where even the sun is square, seems to succeed largely on the basis of simply being different. Indeed, I think Minecraft illustrates a market which is starved for novelty. More generally, we can consider pretty much the entire constellation of MMOs which often lag generations behind the visual cutting edge, as evidence that gamers will happily trade eyecandy for interactivity and depth of play. Not that I would consider the average MMO to be nearly as engaging as it could be. If I really liked any existing MMO, I would probably be playing it instead of thinking about writing my own game.
