Use CTRL+F and put TL;DR if you want to read a summary of this post.
This article may contain some spoilers about some games, so I recommend discretion while reading.
Introduction
The perfect game is something very subject to relativity, it is basically as subjective as having a favorite color, people's tastes will always differ in one way or another and this makes that simply not everyone feels comfortable with a game, and it is completely normal. The issue of perfection is something very complex and creating a video game like this is not an easy task, trying to cover all possible aspects in a game can end up being an impossible task from the point of view as a developer, basically we would be talking about a utopia and I think it is not the ideal scenario.
What good is it if you don't care?
What good is it when you simply play something to complete it and you don't care at all about the actions you take in the game? That you make every decision without needing to worry about all the future actions that come with making that decision, if you simply don't care, you won't pay attention to it and it will be much, much easier to stop playing or walk away from the game.
This is why I put Until Dawn as a game that covers quite intelligently the point I mention, every action you take will lead to many, many others, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was the first (or at least one of the first modern games) to mention and execute the butterfly effect in a video game.
I highly recommend reading about this effect, it really is interesting not only in video games.
Thanks a lot Wikimol for this beauti piece of art:)
The importance factor is basically what I consider paramount to create a game as close to perfection, make every decision has been mentalized, worked to get the most out of it and can give us good results in the future, as if it were our own life. To date, there have been many games in which the story depends entirely on the decisions made by the players, such is the case of Until Dawn, where you have the power to decide which characters will reach the end or the type of ending you will have.
Let's think for a moment about a game with a story as well crafted as The Last of Us, which runs in a slow but complete way and makes the user really care about the characters we play, but without the need to follow a linear story, with the opportunity that simply and without deviating from the main plot of the story, we can build a destiny for our characters based on all the decisions we make.
I'm absolutely sure that there have been games like this and not just Until Dawn, for example; The Walking Dead, Beyond Two Souls and even Heavy Rain (although I don't know much about the latter). Not that it's a not-so-hidden resource, but one that still has a long way to go to get the most out of it.
Where are these games currently?
Well, technically they still exist. They are out there hanging around and they are still really good set pieces, the only game I had the opportunity to play with was The Walking Dead and I must admit it is an amazing piece of story that immerses you in a story that is just too good. I must admit that it is a game with a rather slow progression, but completely satisfying and allows you to get to know in depth each of the characters that are part of the game.
In its time this game was one of the most famous games thanks in large part to the same aspect as Until Dawn, only in a much more linear way. While in Until Dawn the ending and progression of the game could vary entirely, in The Walking Dead the story progressed in a linear fashion to result in the same ending (or at least this is what I understand), this is something that makes a game susceptible to spoilers and a repetitive ending that makes it pointless to continue experimenting with the game unless you are a gamer looking to complete all the achievements of this one.
I should clarify that when I talk about The Walking Dead I am only talking about season 1 of the game, I have not played the others..
What is the problem?
In general, an aspect that agrees among all of them is: There is nothing more to offer. This is completely normal since it would be impossible to make a game with infinite content, basically the current technology does not allow it as far as I understand, so I will not cover the subject.
But there are many aspects in which these games have not been able to give the best of themselves, in the case of The Walking Dead there was not so much graphic impression that could detail the most beautiful of a scene, nor was there a soundtrack that was so good as to remember it and repeat it for a long time. I understand that budgets can be too big an economic constraint and try to create something balanced, maybe it would have been too expensive to create an Until Dawn with beautiful graphics and a splendid soundtrack, or maybe with a much longer and more elaborate script like The Walking Dead. Or maybe it was simply lack of creativity and time, it could be many factors.
'The Last of Us 2': el mejor juego del año parece un brutal experimento sobre el covid
Let's just analyze the case of The Last of Us superficially, a game with splendid graphics, with one of the best soundtracks in modern games and with a story that completely immerses the player, undoubtedly one of the most splendid games created to date and that will be in the memory of all players.
But here's the thing, was.
Thanks a lot Nine for this gif
Apparently not everything lasts forever with these games, the emotion, the feeling, everything is temporary in this life, but that's the detail, in the game it doesn't necessarily have to be like that.
Imagine a different mountain of feelings every time you play it, a story that can integrate you into the game and put you at the feet of your character, being able to empathize with the feelings and realize that every action you take really matters. Something as incredible as the immersion that The Last of Us gives you, but that doesn't necessarily have to end in the same way, that the ending can be as you want it to be and you create your own story.
And why not just release back to back sequels of the same game? Simple, it's an unnecessary ongoing expense, why not just create a game that keeps on lasting despite the time? Just look at the case of Left 4 Dead 2, over a decade has passed since it came out and to this day it still has a considerable amount of people playing it.
To add to the proposal
I don't think the people necessarily need to make an online game to keep a game that keeps players in it, the potential of offline games is simply abysmal and the only thing that I consider that can cause boredom is the lack of content, this is why a well worked story can become an aspect that makes a game extremely good.
Ark Survival Evolved is one of those games where you don't necessarily have to be bored by the lack of content, in fact, it has an extremely good approach to what I want to describe. Ark is a dinosaur game that grants good offline content and extremely difficult, but lacks a straightforward story that keeps you chasing a real objective rather than just showing up on a deserted island because that's just the way the game is.
ARK: Survival Evolved: TODA la información - PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch - Vandal
Ark has a lot of stats to watch out for while playing, but as the game goes on you can increase them and never have to worry about them again, after hours of play, rather than a survival game, it becomes a shooter with dinosaurs, completely losing the essence of what I think this game should be.
When I started playing Don't Starve with Risha I noticed that there is a new factor in this game that I have never seen in any other survival game I have played: Sanity. This factor indirectly makes you worry about a lot of things, such as being close to some monsters, your food bar and even the night. I don't know if there are more ways for sanity to go down because I'm a newbie to the game, but it really is a pretty interesting factor to play around with.
Don't Starve is a survival game that makes you care completely about your character, except that it is an excessively hostile environment, if you die and do not manage to revive in time, your map will be completely eliminated, forcing you to start from 0.
TL;DR
Just imagine a game where you follow a story with a specific plot, I am not a professional scriptwriter and my creativity is not very good, but a game with a story to follow is basically the first base to create a video game adaptable to the greatest amount of public. Since we all have different tastes, the ability to choose is something entirely necessary, that the player himself creates his character, that although the plot rolls based on a specific goal, there is the feeling that there is a wide branch of different paths to follow, not only that, that in the most creative way the player feels at the feet of the character and that every decision he makes has a meaning and a repercussion not only for the playable character, but for the player himself.
I think the survival genre is what best fits my idea. So far there have been many games that have presented excessively good scripts, but they are games where there is no need to play other than to repeat the same story over and over again, which no matter how good it is, once you have finished it, there is nothing else to do, so I think that a dynamic story is the best thing a game can have. There are so many players who play to distract themselves from real life, why not create a game where you yourself can take the reins of what you want to do? An idea that could be ideally embodied in basically a simulation of real life, you are a person with tastes, pleasures, desires and goals, where you can be a simple economist to an astronaut working hard to be the first human being to travel to Mars.
This idea rather than simply being a way to create a video game, I feel it is more of a formula to follow to achieve the closest thing to reach perfection in a game. I hope that at some point in my life I can experience something like this, that something of this magnitude can be done without having to use extremely powerful machines to run it, that it is within the reach of anyone and that I can find the perfect balance between high difficulty and a challenging experience.
This was my idea. Thank you very much for reading it.