Game Mechanics Examined

This post is about examining games mechanics and figuring out if you can have too many or not enough.  What is a good balance?  Instead of focusing on just one game I am going to compare and contrast two games – Seaman and Far Cry.   These are two completely different games but are both defined by there gameplay mechanics and interactions.  Yes you can have too many choices or a good balance between the two.  I'll explain...

Seaman is... well... seaman. A weird life sim of this create from hatching it from an egg to raising it and finally getting him out of the tank onto land.  You have a special microphone for the controller slot and this allows verbal interaction too.  It was really advanced for its time.  There is no set course and if you fail to keep care of seaman he will eventually die.  There are just too many choices and consequences.  Seems too much like work and less fun or entertainment.  It was neat at the time to raise this weird creature/pet thing and see what happens.  Well for me what happened is all of the non stop feeding, cleaning the tank, training and teaching.  Felt like raising a child at some points.  I lost interest.  Could be that I was younger and less focused.  Or with the game being so detailed the developers lost focus on being catchy and entertaining.   Maybe if the designers lightened up on the real life aspect of monotonous feeding, cleaning and water quality and found a few more ways to keep us hooked I would have gotten my Seaman out of the tank.  The Sims got this right, later down the road, with simulation that did not feel bogged down.

Far Cry on the other hand is an open shooter, based in the pacific on a remote chain of islands.  You were not lead on one specific way to get to a target in most missions.  If you were like me you were taking up different routes to confuse guards or take down the bad guys in ways that funneled then into a kill zone.  Nothing like pulling out the sniper rifle, dropping someone from 1200 meters away, and circling around after you spooked them all and running them over with a jeep.  Since you were not forced into one path like “corridor shooters” (i.e. Doom III, Painkiller) you did not feel as trapped or led by the hand.  Now to counter act this, if you did stray to far there was a bombardment called in to let you know hey you've gone too far.  This assisted in limiting your options in a way but acted as an invisible guide.  You do have waypoints and some mission parts are scripted to bring the story along.  Without these limitations you would just hop from island to island wasting time figuring out what to do.  Sometimes limited choices help in guiding the overall experience.

Just remember to keep a good balance, if you allow too many choices things become a chore.  Yes there will be players who truly enjoy this but the larger segment of the market will be left out.  On the other end too little choice ends up feeling constricted or scripted to the point you are just a passenger in the game car looking at the pretty scenery going by but not having any control.