Indulgent Creativity

One of the most common mistake I see in video games is the tendency to create a good game experience, then build barriers to keep players away from it for as long as possible. Your first reaction is probably "Wait! Who does that?" The answer is almost everybody, but it's probably faster to just list off the ways it is done. 1. Hiding behind an easy intro Think of the last strategy game you played. How long did it take before you actually had to, you know, use any strategy to succeed? Sometimes, game developers are scared that if players fail too early, they will quit the game out of frustration. There's probably some truth in that, but I suspect it usually applies more to players failing and not understanding why. If you've created a game that involves putting in effort to overcome obstacles, then a newcomer isn't really playing your game until they have to put in effort. A player who fails but has ideas about how to avoid failing next time will ofte

Game guides/walkthroughs are quite a double-edged sword, offering much that is both positive and negative to a full game's experience.  One of the negatives that I want to address here is the way guides are almost mandatory in multiplayer games. In single player, it's easy to say "I like to figure it out myself", and you can just ignore the guide and have a good time.  Multiplayer is different. In PvP , you can expect to have opponents who have read or watched strategies from the best players in the world, and if you don't do the same thing, you get repeatedly crushed. In PvE, your team mates will usually have read or watched these best-player strategies and will quickly become frustrated with you if you make them fail because you're trying to figure out what they already looked up. Unfortunately, game guides (as well as similar things like expert streamers, or forum discussions) will quickly change a tactical experience into a pattern experience, especially i