泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
A Unique and distinctive video game
Recently I participated in a video game-related event named investment market. In spite of the high-sounding title, through this event, investees introduce a game which is in the making and create a vision to raise money and investors listen to a presentation and see the displays to look for better investment destinations.
However, the question comes to mind whenever I attend this type of event is what the difference between a new game and existing ones is although every developer emphasizes distinction and uniqueness of the game. Some of them don't even talk about 'fun' which is the most important factor in the game.
"This product is small and light and easy to carry around. Also, it looks good with a pretty shape. Men and women of all ages can easily use it. Consumers can buy it throughout the country."
What do you think about the phrase in the advertising campaign for a headache pill above? It's meaningless if the tablet doesn't help you get better. The distinctions, which lack a fundamentally useful function of the product, are totally pointless.
We often hear that we should always keep to the basics. Nevertheless, there are many people whose words and deeds are in contradiction to each other as if some grown-ups who lack morals teach their kids to protect morality.
I still don't know what an amusement factor of auto-battle feature in an RPG game is. But everybody seems to regard it as an essential part of the game. Of course, it can be a suitable mode for mobile devices, but it doesn't suit my taste at least. Accepting the auto-battle system as a critical feature, developers talk about differences in it. There is nothing about the fun of the autoplay. Though I cited the auto-battle function as an instance, it's much more than about it.
There has been no discussion of the fun factor for some time and everybody are talking about a distinction. The distinction should be an element for fun of a game. Some well-made video games so-called a classic are still fun and exciting. In fact, it's not easy to differentiate between the classics and a lot of games released after when it comes to unique factors including graphics. Still, they are fun. Fun is the most fundamental element for a game. I expect to see many games that can appeal to players with their significant basic element, together with emphasizing on the distinction.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
