Brown’s 1st Law of Gaming

Deep Thoughts, Gaming Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Since StarCraft II was recently announced, and all of Korea essentially went berserk with anticipation, I decided to give the original StarCraft another shot. I’ve never been much of a fan of Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games in the past, but perhaps my tastes had changed over the years.

Nope. Turns out I still hate them.

Being the analytical type that I am, I gave it a bit of thought. I know I enjoy the strategy of it, especially considering how much I enjoy playing D&D. I know that it’s not the game in particular, as I can appreciate the balance and the amount of design that went into StarCraft. The game makes sense to me, it’s not a lack of understanding what I need to do or why I lose.

But in thinking about all of this, I realized that there’s a common thread among the genres of games that I usually despise, and it all comes down to one thing, now immortalized as my First Law of Gaming:

Brown’s 1st Law of Gaming:
The amount of time invested in a game is directly proportional to how pissed off I am when I lose.

What it all boils down to is that I essentially hate games where my time can be completely wasted by a defeat. In most of the games I enjoy, say RPGs or Action/Adventure games, the player’s advancement is broken down into small chunks; stages or levels in the case of Action games, or character advancement with Experience Points in the case of RPGs. If the player “dies” — the amount of time lost is only what you put in since the last save point, usually 10-15 minutes at the most.

Take Super Mario Bros., for example. Let’s say it takes 20 minutes to get to Level 8-4, Bowser’s Castle. If I get to the end of the level and die while battling with Bowser, what happens? I start level 8-4 over again, and have lost, what, maybe 5-10 minutes tops? No big deal, I just go through the level again.

But, if I spend an hour playing a game of StarCraft, what happens? GAME OVER, MAN! That’s it. Defeat is absolute. All of the time I spent collecting minerals, vespine gas, building units, researching upgrades, amassing an army, exploring the map… wasted. All of that time spent advancing now means nothing. I can’t start over again from a point 45 minutes into the battle.

The issue holds for most sports games, like Football, Baseball, and Hockey. Once I’ve lost a game, that 80-yard touchdown in the first quarter doesn’t matter much.

Basically, I’ve found that I hate having achievements invalidated, and I can’t stand the thought of having to go through another hour of hassle just to get back to where I was. In moments like that, I usually end up shutting the game off, and, more often than not, I usually won’t play it ever again.

So, in conclusion, what this all really means is that I’m a complete nerd and have way too much time to contemplate things like this.

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