| ▲ | standardly 4 hours ago | |
Some great commentary in here. I agree all games have loops, so the authors stance against them comes off as a bit confusing. I think what the author is getting at is when loops are obviosuly "felt" and feel canned. Strategy games typically have obvious, tight loops. Turn-based games are loop-driven by definition. And so on. This is fine. But single player games, single player RPGs, etc, can suffer if the loop is really tight and obvious. Early on, you feel "oh, i get it. it's going to be 40 more hours of THIS". Novelty wears off if the loop doesn't really change or evolve. Whereas in turn-based games or strategy-based games, the loop itself IS the game because it progresses as the game state evolves. Nobody complains about the game-loop of chess because that's the game - if you don't like the loop, you don't like the game and the convo ends there, is what is is. But a single-player adventure game, for example, has to do a lot of other stuff right to keep a player incentivized to keep playing the "loop". Best example would be BG3, where theres clearly a loop - but its massive. Theres a LOT of variation and events between leaving camp and returning later that night. So each "loop" rarely feels samey. I think the issue is when gameplay loops become transparent and predictable rather than maintaining novelty. A LOT of games suffer for this - the type of game you agree is good, you enjoy it, but put it down after 12 hours for some reason. It's bc of this. The human brain seeks novelty. | ||
| ▲ | pimlottc 3 hours ago | parent [-] | |
You probably meant to reply to a different post: | ||