May I ask what you find interesting...?

[Ponch]

* If you had to list 3 things that make up a good game what would they be?
Characters (this is the most important one to me. If I don't like the character, then no matter how good the story is, I can't get into it. [first person shooters exempted, of course]. Story. Dialog.

* What is it about a game that inspires you?
Cleverness. I love when a game makes me think in new or unusual ways in order to progress.

* What do you consider 'off putting' about a game?
Any time a game has a clumsy, emotionally manipulative moment. I hate ham-fisted attempts to make me feel something. That should flow naturally from the story and the dialog.

* Your Preference: Lucasarts or Sierra or other?
Indifferent.

* Mouse or Keyboard controls?
Indifferent.

* Anything else you can think of....
God Bless Texas. (And by that I mean the American Texas. Not the Texas that I just recently discovered that Australia has. Knock that off, Australia!) Also, the New York Jets should have gone to the Super Bowl. And most importantly, vote for my game in the AGS awards!!! I crave your love, AGS Community!!!

[bicilotti]

* What is it about a game that inspires you?
Boobs.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Story.  Make sure you're telling something fresh and fun.  Fresh does NOT necessarily mean new; you can revive a lot of old ideas with a wash or a coat of paint, and there are many ways of turning familiar stories into something exciting.

Gameplay. Be it adventure, action, or a straight puzzle game.  Do it right!  As long as you can manage it, don't be afraid to mix up play styles to throw wrenches at the player and make them rethink everything, like an adventure game where the player wanders into a bar and gets involved in a pinball championship (or darts, or bar fight, or drinking contest, etc).  If you have an empty room and aren't sure what to do with it, get rid of it!  Focus on the parts of the game where you can keep it a lively, engrossing experience and don't try to pad it out.

Controls.  A game will live or die by proper controls.  Don't artificially complicate your interfaces (and the game) by having a button that would better serve as a standard left/right mouse click behavior.  I've played so many ags games where the interface is intentionally complicated to make the game 'harder' and that's simply poor design.  If a person is playing an action game, for god's sake don't make them click an onscreen button to jump or duck or reload!  These things need to be handled with controller or keyboard buttons and kept as close to player control as possible.  Only have as many actions as needed (the age of overwhelming people with a long list of verbs is really long gone) and make sure they make sense, especially if they are icons.  No matter the control scheme, spend some time refining it until it does exactly what it should do without impairing the player's enjoyment of the game.

[Ponch]

I've played so many ags games where the interface is intentionally complicated to make the game 'harder' and that's simply poor design.  If a person is playing an action game, for god's sake don't make them click an onscreen button to reload!  

Hey now. That was a bit of brilliant game design on my part and in no way indicative of me being terribly lazy. No sir. 

[paolo]

Every time I see a thread about what people don't like in adventure games I look at the game I am currently working on and start worrying whether I should be removing X because people don't like it or doing Y instead of Z.

Then I have to remind myself that you can't please all of the people all of the time, and then I carry on working on making the game as good as I can to my own satisfaction. There will be things that some people will love and others will detest, but that's par for the course.

EDIT: Of course, I know the sorts of things that people tend to dislike (such as bad English, puzzles that have nothing to do with anything, pixel hunts and crap graphics), and so these won't be featured in the game

And my answers:

Three things that make up a good game
An exciting plot, fantastic graphics, humour.

What is it about a game that inspires you?
Good design and clever programming.

What do you consider 'off putting' about a game?
Crashes, poor English, object interactions that don't do anything, no suggestion of what the next goal is... essentially anything that says that the game-maker hasn't put in much effort.

Your Preference: Lucasarts or Sierra or other?
Regarding the interface, Sierra. Having to do everything with two clicks (verb, object) soon gets annoying, as does trying out myriad verb+object combinations that have no effect. As for the games themselves, I can't comment as I've never really played any of the originals.

Mouse or Keyboard controls?
Mouse, but if there are keyboard shortcuts for mouse operations (eg, for opening a particular verb on the verb coin), then that can only be plus.

[hedgefield]

Well said paolo, that's exactly how I feel about it too. You would always do well to avoid big no-no's like mazes and such, but beyond that it really comes down to personal preference. Like you said, you can't please everyone, so the most important thing is that you please yourself.

That.. sounded kinda wrong, but you know what I mean.



Oh and as for my answers:

If you had to list 3 things that make up a good game what would they be?
I would say the most important thing for me is immersion, which is achieved through a combination of these three factors:
- Fun gameplay (challenging or clever puzzles, responsive controls, proper feedback and rewards)
- World/Setting/Atmosphere (a sense that you are really part of a living, breathing world)
- Narrative (good story, logical objectives, well-written characters, memorable moments)

What is it about a game that inspires you?
When the the factors I mentioned above mesh together, and you go from thinking "I am playing this game where I am X" to "I AM X".

What do you consider 'off putting' about a game?
Poor controls. If walking around is already a hassle, there is little chance I'm going to continue playing the game.

Your Preference: Lucasarts or Sierra or other?
I've never been much of a fan of Sierra games, so between the two I favor Lucasarts for various reasons, mostly because of the more playful way they approach settings and characters. But overall I prefer Revolution for the intuitive controls and advanced graphical trinkets of their Virtual Theatre Engine.

Mouse or Keyboard controls?
Touchscreen. It's basically the same as mouse controls, but somehow it feels better. But on PC I favored the one-click mouse system for a long time, although I'm starting to experiment with keyboard controls aswell. I'm never going back to cycling through available cursor modes though...

[Eggie]

If you had to list 3 things that make up a good game what would they be?

-Really glad to see so much use of the A-Word on here. Atmospheeere, of course it's important for the mechanics of the game itself to be elegant but that's an area of gratification that can be fulfilled outside of the computer. It's when, in addition to playing a fun game, that I really get a feel that I'm walking around a real world, talking to real people (albeit in a very effeciant and stripped down way which serves the gameplay) that I really start feeling like something's been achieved that's unique to this artform.

-Good storytelling. Not necessarily a grand, life-changing and wholly original story; just one that's solid and told in a competent and interesting way. I think it's really important; from playing experience and personal development experience. I tried to make my IF game fully open-ended with no over-arcing story and it's just a mess (there's lots of other reasons for that too but I think this is a core one), the player needs something to string them along and go back to when they're done soaking up the world. The most important factor of this is that the protagonist needs a goal to achieve, this is in every screen-writing manual and it goes three billionfold for interactive storytelling because achieving goals is what keep players hooked.

-It has to be fuuuun! This guy explains it better than me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqJv68pE_cY

What do you consider 'off putting' about a game?
Slow walking,  bland dialogue, eerie poser-looking characters or any 3D with bad stock motion-capture, crystals broken into four shards by an evil wizard, relentless punishing of the player, puzzles that don't make sense until after you've stumbled upon the solution, sudden changes in gameplay mechanics (variety is important, timing-based minigames in amongst puzzle-solving is annoying),

Your Preference: Lucasarts or Sierra or other?
Lucasarts all the way. I really don't have the patience for Sierra "YOU HAD TO CLICK ON THAT EGG DIDN'T YOU?! YOU IDIOT! YOU DIE FOR BEING SUCH AN IDIOT!"

Mouse or Keyboard controls?
For 2D I like 100% mouse-based, it's good to have keyboard shortcuts available but I generally don't use them if I don't have to. For 3D gameplay though (which might start becoming more common in AGS now it's open source, who knows) I like first person shooter controls (mouse to look around, WASD to move, click to shoot, e to interact). I find the keyboard/mouse hybrid interface of Telltale's recent games a little bit clunky and inelegant, I sometimes feel like I'd prefer to just do everything on the keyboard like in Grim Fandango