What Makes a Good Game?

While it’s a little difficult to say something as dramatic as “it is only a great game if it redefined a genre!” I do think there are some merits to it. There are games that tend to come along that people will remember for decades to come, even long after they have become outdated and relatively unplayable. The reason these are so important is because they shaped how future games would be developed. It’s an easy parallel to draw that they are genre-defining because they made enough money to make other developers jealous, therefore all developers started copying them, but it’s important to look into why they were so successful.

Innovation

The first, and most obvious, choice has to be Super Mario Bros. If you can say absolutely nothing else about the franchise, it captured people’s hearts and minds enough that it warranted having over 200 spinoffs! But why was that? If the name “Mario” is so important, shouldn’t the original Donkey Kong be the franchise starter? Well, yes and no. While Donkey Kong was very popular, I think what really made Super Mario Bros stand out so well was that it expanded games as a whole in a completely new way. It didn’t just make platformers new or expand on existing tropes for side scrollers, but instead, open up the world of videogames to much larger ideas.

For example, Super Mario Bros was one of the first games to be so massive in scale. Multiple levels, each that were longer than just the screen you are initially presented with, “boss” fights, a story, and even brand-new styles of level design. One minute you’re jumping on koopas and bouncing their shells from block to block, the next you’re button mashing just to stay afloat underwater. This level of immersion and depth had never been seen before and became the hallmark of all great videogames. It was no longer about beating the one badguy in the one zone or avoiding repetitive obstacles, but about a world with meaning.

Player Agency

The second greatest game to me would have to be Dungeons and Dragons. Not a videogame, no, but certainly one of the most influential games of all time. We could start going back even further to say the Chinese game Go belongs on this list, but DnD had a very direct impact on the videogame community as well. Building your character, embarking on quests, and experiencing a world were all done on paper with cardboard figures long before players were scaling mountainsides in Skyrim.

What truly made DnD great was the player agency attached. Regardless of genre or playstyle, players love to feel like they are a part of the world around them. It doesn’t matter if it’s an immersive fantasy or a straightforward shooter, when given the option to make choices, a player will never simply button mash through so they can get to the next part of killing. Games had become more than a race to earn the most points, they became an experience.

Replayability

Naturally, I’ve talked about the lengthy chain of Wolfenstein-Doom-Quake-TF2 before, but not without reason. These games started to challenge traditional tropes of games which tended to be a bit slower and a bit more casual. Once players got their hands on the ability to blow things up and ever-expanding ways, there was no going back. DOOM was so personally responsible for defining how action games should be played that if you look up DOOM clone, you’re taken to all FPSs.

But what about these were so important? One thing is a heavy emphasis on gameplay. The prior two examples of great games talk about the world-building, which is important to be sure, but DOOM spent its time throwing you right into the action. Absolutely obliterating unique and challenging enemies with an ever-expanding arsenal of weapons gave players a sense of grim satisfaction to play it, and the challenge it offered helped direct what is considered fun hard and what’s considered just.. hard.

Community

League of Legends. Love it or hate it, you know the name. You know the hype it brought to the world. Is it a great game itself? That’s up to the individual. However, it cannot be overstated how much this game revolutionized videogames overall. The fact that esports are now so popular they are being considered for the Olympics is nothing short of miraculous. Many popular games started the esport craze such as Starcraft, but none brought out such a large audience as League of Legends. This game taught us how much players like involvement, be it either killing other players or having players watch each other play.

Whether it was due to the popularity of the gameplay, or the luck of the dice, League of Legends became one of the pioneers of gigantic prize pools and huge stadiums for an esports event. While dwindling only slightly behind DotA 2, Counterstrike, and Fortnite, the hype LoL was able to generate put the very idea of esports on the map. What used to be a niche, underground idea to keep players busy if they could ever meet up for one-off competitions, is now a growing enterprise encapsulating all online viewership of games. The explosion of LoL took gaming from a hobby to a profession.

Fame?

But, naturally, who can’t look back to our roots and see what made videogames overall a famous pastime: Pacman. Earning more than $7.5 million in revenue at arcade stations across the globe, Pacman was one of the pioneering videogames that brought players in from near and far to drop their quarters into the machines. Introducing the concept of basic AI and a competitive score system, Pacman enthralled players for years and was one of the reasons why videogames became so juicy a target for future developers.

Most Importantly

This brings the question, then. What makes a good game? Was it Mario’s innovation? DnD’s agency? DOOM’s replayability? Or is it just popularity like Pacman and League of Legends? Well, kinda none of the above, sorta all of the above. There is no one videogame that everyone will love. Instead, there are concepts that tend to work well throughout games. If you haven’t read up on the 8 kinds of fun, I highly recommend it as it gives a great overview of how to make a game fun without being genre-specific.

So really, the answer to the age-old question isn’t so much what makes a great game, so much as what elements of games must exist in a game for it to be great. Like the previous examples, players tend to want to be involved in what they are doing. Choice tends to be very important to them even on the smallest level, otherwise they are watching something, not playing. Challenge is the reason the player wants to get into the game in the first place, as it is the obstacle they must overcome. If there is no obstacle, it is once again, not really a game. And finally, responses. If you were to win a game and then the screen immediately went blank, there would be absolutely no sense of satisfaction. If every time you defeated an obstacle the obstacle simply disappeared without a single noise or flash of praise, there would be no hype to do it again. The player needs to feel good about overcoming obstacles, and enjoy the process of overcoming them with constant reaffirmation of their correct decision making.

Overall

Mario, DOOM, League, Pacman, and DnD (to a lesser degree), all follow these rules. Whether it’s an RPG that has leveling or just seeing the guts flying out of a demon, the player needs to feel challenged by their opponent and satisfied with their overcoming of it. Without these, a game simply cannot survive.

So, that’s my stance on what makes a game great. If your favorite game didn’t make it on this list, tell me why you think it deserves it! Were one of mine maybe not so memorable? Why not? I’d love to hear feedback! I will only cry for a few hours, but I’ll learn something too! Until then, this was a quick look at what makes games great. Thanks for reading!