Great Wage Slave Games

To round off this article, I'd like to close with a subjective summary of a few other games that are highly conducive to my new lifestyle. I've split them into three categories I've just made up: Linears, Customisers, and Toolboxes.

Linears: Usually combat-based, with perhaps some puzzle elements. Action adventures, real-time strategy single-player campaigns, and some First Person Shooters can fall under this category. These have the most potential to be plot-driven, leading the player, largely on rails through a series of usually tightly scripted events, while providing entertaining gameplay along the way. In all cases the player can save his progress at any time, leaving and returning to the game when he wishes. Uncomplicated gameplay, good direction, little need to explore every corner of the world, and/or few secondary objectives make it easy to pick up where the player left off. There is a definable end to the game, a story -- however weak -- to be told, and goodies to be earned during the course of it, rewarding the player's time and effort.

• "American McGee's Alice": An intriguingly dark (and, some might say, natural) extension of Lewis Carroll's works, "Alice" provides intriguing atmosphere and some very imaginative settings (The City of Doors, in particular). "Alice" also features a pair of footprints that appear when Alice is about to make a jump, to indicate where she will land. The welcome relief this brings to loathed leap-of-faith jumping puzzles cannot be underestimated.
• "Bioforge": An old classic that's still just as playable today. While some puzzles are very frustrating and the interface can be somewhat awkward, I still return to it on occasion, and usually find myself playing through the whole game in one sitting. Speaks for itself.
• "Bloodrayne": A brainless bloodfest from beginning to end, with a heroine that became increasingly less compelling the more time I spent in her company. While far from complicated, the combat-heavy variety of gun and blade attacks, coupled with an unlimited "Bullet Time" vision mode, kept me playing. It was easy to pick up and put down. Also, one vision mode displays the next objective as a blue aura pointer, even through walls, so the player is always homing in on his next waypoint, instead of wandering around aimlessly.
• "Half Life": The game that needs no description. Even to the wage slave, time spent playing through the well-designed set pieces of "Half Life" is time well spent.
• "Jedi Knight"(s): While the single-player plot is largely underwhelming, the Force is definitely strong with this one. Wielding a lightsaber and flinging Stormtroopers around like frisbees has never been more fun.

Customisers: Customisers are games that provide a great deal of replayability by providing a variety of game modes out of the box. Mostly a game's multiplayer component has this capability.

Real-time strategy games are great in this respect; you can gradually play through the Linear campaigns over a long period of time, toy with creating your own content, play skirmish games against AI players, or fight head-to-head against other players. Best of all, the latter two usually have a wealth of configurable settings, allowing you to tailor the session to suit your own availability. Need a quick five-minute game? Play in Lightning mode. Don't want to waste time collecting resources? Turn on the Deathmatch option. Want to be left alone to build up your base? Turn on some initial alliances, or pick a water map. Some RTSes are also able to generate random maps, providing additional variation.

Multiplayer FPSs are typically equally scaleable, and it's even easier to get knee-deep in the dead. Nothing like a little "Unreal Tournament" action to burn off the frustration of a hard day in the cubicle farm.

Practically a category all on its own, the "Worms" games can be equally tailored to suit the amount of time one can spare, and are a lot of fun, to boot. It's also one of the few games that, in my experience, even the most ardent girlfriend game-hater will play with you. The cutesy animation and helium voices will tickle her cuddly bone, while introducing her to the competitive wonders of obliterating an army of annelids with a vast arsenal.

Toyboxes: Toyboxes are games in which I can go off the beaten path (ignore the main plot thread) whenever I wish, and for as long as I wish. Moreover, they are games where any time spent "wandering in the wilderness" is to my benefit. Every monster killed in "Diablo" is making my character stronger, providing new items, more wealth, even if it's not getting me closer to the end of the game. Similar lucrative goodie-hunting can be accomplished in the "Grand Theft Auto" games.

Randomly-generated scenes or objects are most effective in this case; there aren't particular conditions that I have to hunt down, the world layout is always a surprise, and if an area is cleared of foes and items, new ones will respawn when I return. If I make a mistake, I can always come back and try again.

These "kicking back in the game world" moments are great for wage slaves, as you can effectively play around for as many minutes as you can spare, and feel rewarded for every minute spent in the game. You still make progress in small increments, there is minimal frustration as the penalties for failure are minimal, no frantic quick-saving is required (or possible), and except when you're close to finishing a mission, you can come and go at your discretion.

Conclusions

For those with even less time than I, here's a summary of the main points of this article. Note that these transcend target audience and genre; they could probably be applied to any game.

• Make every moment the player spends in your game time well spent.
• Spend that time entertaining and rewarding the player for choosing your product.
• Challenge without frustrating, and guide while still keeping the player in control.
• Your world, your choice. If something isn't fun, don't put it in the game.
• Keep the player in the game as often as possible.
• But let him leave whenever he wants.
• And remove any barriers that stop him from picking up where he left off..
• Keep it simple, keep it accessible, and keep it fun.
• Don't demand a huge time commitment from the player or dictate the length of his sessions; let him take it at his own pace.
• Don't fix things that aren't broken.
• Test with a wide spectrum of players and non-players to find out what's intuitive and well-received.