Jan 19 2009
Mini-Games Are Awesome
On June 11, 1996, I brought Threshold RPG fully online for the first time. I generated my first couple characters to make sure everything I had created was working. The game was playable, though it did not have a tremendous amount of content. It had a handful of “zones” and your character class (guild) options consisted of: fighter, mage, thief, cleric, and psion. With so many possible things to code, and so much in need of creation, what was the first thing I created at that point? A mini-game. I coded a deck of cards for playing 5 card draw.
Why Are Mini-Games So Awesome?
I will answer that question with a question (which is weird, since I’m the one asking the original question in the first place). Why is combat so awesome? If you really thinkg about it, combat is just an elaborate mini-game. People sure like combat, don’t they? So why wouldn’t they like other types of mini-games as well? Well… they do! They love them. We have tons of mini-games in Threshold and people love them to death. Trial Arcanus (laser tag), Fishing (and ours is actually mini-gameish, it isn’t just cast, wait 10 seconds, retrieve), Saber Dueling, Quail Hunting, carnival games, Snowball fights, Snowman building, Foo’s Chit, and more. Most of the mini-games have no “benefit” as far as xp, loot, or anything like that. They are just fun. That’s why mini-games are awesome. They are a fun activity you can do with your in-game friends while you hang out and socialize.
Why Don’t More MMOs Have Mini Games?
Because they’re stupid? Ok, I’m being glib. I don’t think other developers are stupid. I think a lot of them are creative geniuses. But I do think they get in a rut and focus on doing what has already been done. They see combat and raiding and maybe crafting, and they duplicate those. Sometimes they put their own little spin on those features and think they are being special or unique. But every single time one of those games comes out, people complain about getting bored of “the grind.” They aren’t having fun on a day to day basis. When they login to their favorite game, they immediately know they have one thing to do: kill stuff. Doing the same thing all the time is boring, but even more disheartening is when you know you don’t have any other options. If there were alternative fun things to do people would login and do them. And whenever they did go off to fight/grind mobs, it would be the result of an actual choice - not simply a default action.
So in conclusion: mini-games are awesome. Wise developers spend time creating them even when it seems like there are more “important” types of content to work on.
I personally love mini-games, but I fear that only a small percentage of the WoW players would play them if there wasn’t any type of bonus.
I havn’t played WoW for 1-2 years but some of the daily quests introduced back then had a mini-game feel to them.
There were a couple of quests where flying was involved. There were one where you had to repeat some tune by pressing some stones and other things like that. There were even one where you could take over some demon and try fighting some other demons.
These quests were a nice break from the daily grind, but honestly the only ones that were really popular was the ones where you could get some quick gold.
One more fantastic image. Not only mini-games are awesome. Your blog images are awesome, too.
At the moment I am absorbed in Fallout 3. Besides Mount & Blade, the day has only 24 hours, unfortunately.
Definitely a very nice game, and also one of the better Bethesda games, though it shares a lot of the flaws of Oblivion and Morrowind. This time they did something right. I confess that there were always some “things” that made me TOTALLY hate Morrowind and Oblivion in the end.
But I guess I am going off-topic too much. The mini-games in Fallout are very simplistic, but definitely a nice addition. I like the lockpicking minigame a lot.