Like anything in life, one has to be motivated to play games. And also like everything else, the motivations can be varied. After a debate with my son about a certain game, it got me thinking about why I gravitate to certain games, avoid others, and why I play games at all. So here's what I came up with, in no particular order.
Solving the Puzzle / Challenge - This is what Wilson accused Dr. House of having. Unlike most doctors with a savior complex, House had a "Rubik's complex" - he had to solve the puzzle. This is my main motivation for doing things like crossword puzzles, sudoku, and doing increasingly difficult twisty-puzzles like the Gigaminx here. Games that scratch this particular itch are things like Portal, the Zelda series, Picross, the Ace Attorney series, and most point-and-click adventure games like King's Quest.
Story Investment / Good Writing - While it could be as simple as those presented by Ninja Gaiden (avenge my father), Zelda (save the Kingdom of Hyrule), or Super Mario Bros. (rescue the Princess), as the character, I have some motivation to finish the level or get to the end of the game. Obviously there are better examples of deeper stories, like the Final Fantasy series, but more modern Zelda games also have a better story than the original game. Plot, character growth, friends in peril, and a hero's journey are all excellent features of a well-written story that makes me want to keep playing to find out how it all turns out. A game having excellent dialogue and/or humor is also a plus. Good examples of this are Octopath Traveler, Final Fantasy VI, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Day of the Tentacle, and South Park: The Stick of Truth.
An already-proven series / genre / franchise - If a new Metroid or Zelda game were to be released I would buy it immediately because I know I already enjoy that style of game. The same is true about most point-and-click adventures or "airplane" / flight simulator games. The SNES Star Wars games were fairly generic platformers for the most part, but I played them so much mainly because I loved the franchise so much. Up until recently, I would have probably liked any Star Wars game but not so much now. More examples of this would be Secret Files, Rogue Squadron (for the franchise and genre), and the Ace Attorney games. I played The Turing Test at the recommendation of a redditor who said it was like Portal, and based off of that I bought the game and enjoyed it quite well. A bad game starring a well-liked character might be considered to be playable by those who are fans of the character.
Escapism / General Entertainment - As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I like story driven games where I pretend to be the character in the game. In other words, when I play a Batman game, in my head I pretend that I'm Batman. When I'm playing Metroid Prime, I stop being myself for a couple hours and become Samus Aran temporarily. It's partially to escape the daily grind and politics of the real world and it's nice to have a vacation in Hyrule. I'm not so keen on games where the main character is a blank slate and I'm inserting myself into the game, so it's Joseph wandering through Tamriel, acting like me and making all the decisions that I would make. This pretty much applies to all games, and isn't specific to a series or genre, but unconventional games I like such as Flower Town are mainly on this list.
Interesting Game Mechanics / Elements- There are a lot of platformer games that came out in the wake of the popularity of Super Mario Bros., and likewise a plethora of generic FPS games released after Doom. But often, there will be a game that stands out because it has an interesting take or a little twist to it that makes it better. Goldeneye007 added mission elements like hack the computer, photograph the evidence, and escort missions to make the FPS part more interesting. Fractured Soul has a unique mechanic of having the character jump between the top and bottom screens of the 3DS. The Messenger took the basic concept of Ninja Gaiden but added a Metroidvania element as well as flipping between 8-bit and 16-bit graphics/sound. Octopath's shield/weakness and boost system was a neat twist on the typical RPG turn-based battle. Other examples might be game elements like exploration (Skyrim), creativity (Minecraft), or team combat (Overwatch). Besides those examples mentioned, others include Portal, Guitar Hero, Typoman, and Untitled Goose Game.
"Bucketlist" / Zeitgeist - Sometimes I set a goal to play every game in a series, like when I systematically went through the Metroid or Castlevania series (except for the PS and Xbox exclusives). There's also an element of being able to say that I've played/finished some of the same games that a good chunk of the gamer population have played for a communal experience. As I'm writing this, Elden Ring is the game everyone is talking about and it makes me slightly want to play it for that reason alone (though I probably won't). I got to experience that with Breath of the Wild because I bought it day one, but not with Portal since I was playing it 6 years late.
Bragging Rights / High Score / Accomplishment - This is something that appeals to the competitive nature of me. Being able to say that I finished a difficult task or got the highest score and am therefore "the winner" is something that I think everyone can understand. It's the basic motivation behind sports and wanting to win a championship or something. It's why I'm in a little competition with my daughter as to which of us can get the most wins in PuyoPuyo Tetris, and why I play Pac-Man 99 chasing the next #1 finish. More examples of this include F-Zero and pretty much all racing games, Tetris, finishing Punch-Out!!, or being able to say that I got all 900 Korok seeds on Breath of the Wild. Being able to say that I've finished games like Ninja Gaiden or TMNT that appear on Top 10 lists of hardest NES games fills me with a small sense of pride and accomplishment.
Overall Fun / General Feel - This category is partially about just playing games to stave off boredom or to have something to do. But in addition, some games just "feel" more fun because of the culture around them. Games like Mario Kart just naturally have a air of fun around them, moreso that something like F-Zero despite being in the same general category (racing). The same could be said about comparing Mario Party to Monopoly. Something like Guitar Hero is fun because of the co-op nature of playing music, which wouldn't normally sound like a fun thing but it is. Wii Sports was built around a simple concept (learning motion controls) but was so much fun that it was enjoyed by players of literally all ages and became a minor cultural phenomenon. Sometimes a game will just have that je ne sais quoi which makes it great.
Graphics / Controls / Sound - These are pretty typical things that don't need a lot of explanation because they're the core of what a video game actually is. There are plenty of examples of games lauded for their graphics and sound and sometimes a beautifully made game can help hide or distract players from an otherwise generic game in the same way that John Williams' score in Attack of the Clones made up for the lack of on-screen chemistry between actors. Games with difficult-to-master controls or wonky menus are the bane of good game design. A lot of what the AVGN complains about are these kinds of issues, and it can have a deterring effect on players. Good controls are like special effects in movies in that they're best when it's not even noticed. This category is a bit unique in that it's not usually the motivating factor to play, but is more of a deterrent when something isn't adequate. In other words, bad controls can detract from a game's enjoyment, while good controls don't stand out as a main reason to play something.
Ease of Entry - This is a category that follows more of the game design philosophy. In books and movies, good writers tell the audience what they need to know and how the rules of this world work. Often there's a stand-in for the audience, like the way Batman explains things to Robin, or Harry Potter needs to be informed how certain aspects of the Wizarding World function. It's also good form to introduce this stuff gradually and not in a huge lore dump at the beginning. There's a similar thing in games with tutorials. Razbuten from YouTube created a series where he introduced the lady he lives with to games she'd never played before and got her feedback. It was a fascinating look at barriers that keep new players from enjoying games they've never played before. A long and slow tutorial is bad, but one that is quick and doesn't give players time to adapt is worse in my opinion. Sometimes too much information too quickly can be like drinking from a firehose. Games that don't adequately explain what things are and how they work, as well as leave an avenue open for review and practice of necessary skills/controls make it difficult to keep wanting to play. Earlier games came with instruction manuals that usually did a good job of these things, but manuals went the way of the dodo around 2012 or so, and games that don't have a good in-game replacement give players a harder time getting into them. I can totally understand Razbuten's point that a lot of developers just expect players to have already played something in this particular genre and know stuff about games.
Despite my call for ease of entry for new players, I also think that there should be an option to skip tutorials for those who are already used to such games. Ace Attorney 2 had the main character experience amnesia as a way to facilitate teaching how the game works to players who didn't pick up the first one, but gave the option to skip it. In later games, the new mechanics unique to the game (like seances or the psych-locks) are given their own mini-tutorial later once players feel comfortable with the rest of the game.
So having said all that, I play different games for different reasons. I don't care about story in some games (like Pac-Man), but it is the driving factor in others. For some games, it's the gameplay and the feel that make me want to play, and I'm willing to overlook graphical shortcomings because of it. In my mind, all of these different elements add up, and once they pass a particular threshold, I can readily enjoy it and will recommend it to others as a game I liked. But I find it harder to stay invested in a game that doesn't meet the minimum requirements. On my hypothetical example chart I have above, it could be that the threshold is 30, and so Game #4 isn't going to be something I continue playing, while Game #3 might be one of my favorites.
There are some games that really only fulfil one or two of the categories, but do so enough that those are all I need. Some games have a compelling enough story and interesting gameplay, or feature characters I like to where I can overlook problems in other areas. There are also some games whose reasons I play change throughout the game. I might initially be interested in the story and graphics but then by the end I'm more interested in getting a high score or 100% completing it for bragging rights. Fractured Soul would be an example of this - I mainly was interested in the unique mechanics of how the platformer worked, but by the end I was more interested in speedrunning it for an online ranking.
But either way, there needs to be an initial hook - something that draws the player in and makes the player want to keep playing. If there aren't enough of those things near the beginning of the game, it's hard to find reasons to keep playing. When reviewers say things like, "Don't worry, it gets really good, like, 80 hours in," it usually doesn't make for a great game. In movie The Fellowship of the Ring, we got a little bit of a lore dump with the tease of a good story to come, then we got introduced to characters, then we were given a little bit of a mystery, which then turned into reason to leave the Shire suddenly. But imagine that we weren't really told most of this until the 2-hour mark and we just had to hang on to the hope that we got a little bit of plot/development, it wouldn't have the wide appeal that it currently does.
The other factor to consider is weighing the expected happiness/pleasure of out playing a particular game over other activities. In other words, I sometimes ask myself something like, "Will I be happier playing Skyrim or riding my bike?" Time is the one thing we can never get back, so we have to figure out how to optimize getting value out of an activity. Even within a game I like I have to decide if grinding for experience or some other in-game currency is worth my time. Although I don't do much carpentry, I really appreciate the time I put into making my kitchen table every time I sit down to use it, so I think I have gotten more value out of that than had I, say, used the time to play through Minish Cap for the fourteenth time or getting 900 Korok seeds.
I'm sure others might have a few other reasons I'm not listing here, and obviously everyone will rate each game differently, but this kind of framing for why people play makes sense to me.
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