Can the numbers behind a game ruin the immersion?
I want to share a story. It’s an example of how I fell in love with World of Warcraft in its early days. I’d rolled a Dwarf (shocker) Paladin, and was happily running around Dun Morogh at level 7 or 8. I was already really excited about the stuff that would be coming sooner or later – dungeons, talents, professions, mounts – and was struck by how you could have a go at all of the areas of the game, or just specialise in one or two, and still have loads of stuff to do.
Then a Snow Leopard dropped my first uncommon (non-white) item. It was a Tigerseye.
My mind was blown. Why is this item green when everything else I’ve picked up is either trash or white? There are different colours of items in the game? What are the others? What can I do with this? How do I get more? LOOK AT HOW MUCH IT’S WORTH!
I realise how child-like and naïve that must sound, but you won’t catch me apologising. That is one of the strongest, stand-out memories I have of gaming in my entire life. I still get echoes of that feeling every time I see a Tigerseye in game. And the first couple years was the most I enjoyed WOW.
As longs as the game was about the gameplay and the exploration and the experiences and the story. I was in love. I wasn’t interested in the numbers. I didn’t need to know what secondary stats were priority or how to maximise my output. I was just far too busy enjoying the game for its own sake.
After joining my first guild and joining my first few raids (can anyone remember 40 people in a raid?!?!) my enjoyment of the game started to lessen. I loved the raids, loved the social aspect, and found new activities to replace levelling. So what happened?
It all seems to boil down to understanding the numbers behind the game. They didn't just underpin the gameplay - they were driving it. If you didn't understand the numbers, the chances of your success dropped significantly. I shouldn't have to study external, 3rd party web pages just to take part in a game. I shoot
The way I was enjoying the game became entirely invalid. A ret pally in vanilla? Don’t be silly! The numbers just didn’t support that. Healer it is, then. Knowing that ‘x’ amount of intellect on gear would provide ‘y’ amount of mana and Mp5 removed the sense of excitement at what piece of gear I would get next. Now, I needed to exceed this amount of DPS to be raid viable. Finding new gear meant finding something with the right combination of words and numbers on it.
How my armour looked, what it was called, how I had gotten it – none of that mattered if it didn’t satisfy the numbers. My experience had become secondary to how the game was designed.
And don’t get me started on gear score.
The numbers problem doesn’t stop at stats. Daily quests are just exercises in math disguised as a game. The daily quests in Burning Crusade to get your Nether Drake mount? Repeat these few quests this many times. No, they don’t vary in the slightest. Yes, that’ll take months. No, there’s no other way to do it. And now you know that number, you’ll never forget it.
For me, this realisation started the inevitable road to leaving the game. Once a game is reduced to ‘hey, you only have to do that exact same task 118 times but are limited to once a day’ it isn’t fun anymore.
Without the numbers, games wouldn’t exist. But it begs the question that when a game can be that great an experience without any requirement to even acknowledge their existence, why do so many games rely so heavily on our knowledge and adherence to the numbers to even function?
Surely there's another way?
Commenti