What stuck out to me on the Thursday lecture was the idea that playing the same game, but in a different style, could create a diffident sense of engagement to the point it may be a different game.
This idea didn't seem so far fetched as I instantly thought of games such as World of Warcraft, but then I continued it onto games that I perceived to have less variation, yet it could still be applied.
The most obvious example to me was WoW. This is not a game I am overly familiar with, so please feel free to correct any mistakes I make. Roughly, the player picks their own playing style in picking the character they play. Things such as the race give different abilities, as does class. It is from here playing style is determined. The stats and boots you give to the character are done to build the best specific role you can, whether it be tank, healer or damage. Each of these come with their own style of play, essentially creating a minimum of 3 game play experiences. In group battles these classes all take on specific strategic roles in the fight. As a tank you try to be as resistant to damage as possible, high armor, health, and try to take all the damage so as the less resistant members of the group are able to do their jobs, thus tanks are the main target of healing. Healers try to avoid being hit, due to low damage resistance being often inherent of this category, while healing the tank mainly, as well as other members of the party. Lastly DPS try to kill the monster without drawing its attention off the tank, and onto themselves.
This requires a lot of co ordination within teams too, but if people don't play their role as expected bad things happen.
As such each class plays and feels completely different. Each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and thus approaches to playing the game.
However once I began thinking about it more, I applied this same logic to games that to me seem more homogeneous, and it still held true.
Shooter games came to mind. TF2 has a great deal of different experiences available to players due to its own class system. The Spy (if you haven't already, watch the whole series) is one of the quirkier styles of gameplay compared to an average FPS. He relies less on 'shoot em up' and more on stealth, and in fact impersonating the enemies to sneak up behind and stab them is one of the most efficient ways to get kills, yet this skill set is entirely useless for other classes. There are snipers (fairly self explainitory) who hang back and take long range scoped shots. Soldiers use of rocket jumps is almost expected. Healers again have to avoid the damage being tossed out, whilst staying in range to heal their companions.
These skills don't cross over classes, and thus neither does the gameplay experience. So players often prefer only a few classes (noting preference and "are better with" may not equate. Although it an be hilarious when someone plays a class in a way that deviates from the norm.
The game I thought had the most homogeneity was Left4Dead 2, (not counting the ability to play as the infected).
L4D2 is a zombie shooter where the whole city is over run by zombies. There are some that have their own special abilities, such as the stereotypical 'tank' and some that incapacitate single players, such as smokers and hunters. The aim is to get to the other side of the map, to a safe room without dying.
I often play very, at least I like to think, efficiently. Only shooting what I need in order to make it to the next point, avoiding mass conflicts. In this style of play it is often a constant run, only pausing to pick up ammo or for built in choke events. In this style of play the game is very fast, and fairly sparsely infested.
However, other people play differently. There is the "all guns blazing approach, which while killing zombies fast, also attracts them fast. In this style its more a old fashioned shoot everything that moves and hope they don't get to you style of play. And I had one friend who decided it was more like a WW2 FPS game like Medal of Honour, who tried to sneak around slowly and tried to kill the zombies from distance. His experience was being swarmed by the mob the game spawns to chase slow players, and he left the cyber cafe saying L4D2 had a stupid concept, and was a lame game (slightly clean version of events)
I would be interested in hearing any games where people have different experiences, and how it differs, based on their gameplay styles, especially if the game does not have a class system.
Playing through L4D2, I find it quite cool how different maps also encourage different playstyles-- on Hard Rain, I tend to speedrun things, urging my friends to run through the storm with me as fast as we can go so we don't get separated in the relative darkness of the level; versus Dark Carnival, where we all take our time playing the carnival games and exploring the motel on the highway. While you might try to keep a consistent playstyle across all levels-- guns blazing in Hard Rain and speedrunning Dark Carnival-- each area encourages you, in its own way, to change how you approach things, to encourage replay value-- and I think that's a really cool feature of the game.
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