<\/p>\n
One of the (few) downsides to being professionally involved with games is that there is a certain pressure towards being an expert at all<\/em> games. (I believe my subpar Foosball skills once disappointed a group of people.)<\/p>\n So, perhaps this is one of the reasons why so many games are broken: since most people testing are in some way involved with the industry and\/or are gamers wanting to show off their amazing skills, they are afraid of admitting to finding the game\/UI too hard. We are afraid of looking stupid, so we keep quiet about obvious usability and balancing issues.<\/em><\/p>\n Fortunately, the backlash is here. In order of appearance:<\/p>\n 1) The reviews at Games for Lunch<\/a> are successful in their honesty about such matters. Here is the Parappa the Rapper<\/a> review:<\/p>\n 0:49<\/strong> The next stage is a cooking show. “My style is rich, dope, phat, in which\/We’ll make a cake today that looks rich.” That almost sounds like English. I admit it: I failed here too and never came back to the game.<\/p>\n 2) How do I Play Game<\/a> is the chronicle of a “non-gamer” playing Half-Life.<\/p>\n I played for 10 whole minutes last night. Got off the train, started moving around, started opening doors and wondering through. I figured out I was supposed to be looking for this test chamber. Scientists and security guards were talking to me but I didn’t have the sound up and wasn’t really listening.<\/p>\n Found a “break room” with vending machines and stuff … wtf? Found a door, but a security guard wouldn’t let me through because I didn’t have a suit on.<\/p>\n Got frustrated and exited for the night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 3) Jurie Horneman<\/a> has an honest post about failing at games:<\/p>\n 4) Jurie also mentions Donald Norman’s observation that most users (of anything) tend to blame themselves, rather than the design \/ game \/ object.<\/p>\n That leads to the good news: It is alright to blame the game<\/em>. Don’t be afraid of admitting to failure.<\/p>\n Which gives me the courage to admit how I utterly failed at the desert level of Patapon<\/a>. Here is how it went:<\/p>\n 5) I think it should be officially OK to blame the game: What games did you fail at?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the (few) downsides to being professionally involved with games is that there is a certain pressure towards being an expert at all games. (I believe my subpar Foosball skills once disappointed a group of people.) So, perhaps this is one of the reasons why so many games are broken: since most people testing … Continue reading “It is Alright to Blame the Game”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n0:50<\/strong> “The other day I was called a little turkey\/But I’m a chicken, got it, ya beef jerky?” This line always cracks me up for no good reason.
\n0:52<\/strong> I fail the song, but I have no idea why. I thought I was doing OK, actually…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nFound a men’s restroom with feet under the stalls … wtf?
\nFound a room with a suit that looks like I’m supposed to get it but I couldn’t figure out how to get it from behind the glass.<\/p>\n\n
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