Developer's Gameplay Paradox

Harrower

<div class="IPBDescription">Regarding NS and NS2.</div>Humans act based on a cost-reward utility system. Combat has a low cost, and <i>seemingly</i> great reward to novice players who understand nothing about balance. NS' gameplay takes significant effort to learn, but is deep, complex, and relatively balanced. Combat is simple, easy, intuitive, and unbalanced. Casual players play intuitive games that offer great reward with low cost. Deep players play complex games with even greater rewards, ignoring the challenges to get to them. There are far more casual than deep players. Flayra's job is to sell copies of a product, but he seems to care about depth and complexity. What are his options?

Discuss.

Rapier7

How pseudo-intellectual is the OP?

It's easy. Make the game easy to learn, hard to master. Like chess or CS or all of that.

This isn't a paradox, by the way, it's a dilemma.

Good games, even if they are meant for the hardcore, will sell. Games like The Sims sell well because, yeah, they cater to non-gamers. But the FPS gaming demographic is huge, and if it's a good game, it will sell. Complexity doesn't necessarily mean that it's good. I don't think the learning curve for NS is that big, anyways. It's harder to master lerking or fading than it is to just play the class.

That's all there is to it.