A Good Space Game

[Cmdr Dubstep Dragon]

What makes a good space game?


Fun?
Immersion?
Realism?
Roleplayability? - (not a word but idc)



i seen so many different opinions on the forums, please tell me yours

 

[Cynaqq]

This can be asked of any game.

It's also a very 'layman' way of wording the questions.

In any game your ultimate goal is to create a 'fun' experience through a healthy balance of 'effort', 'reward', and 'immersion/atmosphere/emotion'. What makes any game good is the feeling it leaves you with after completing minor and major game loops, and up to a very high degree, depends on the individual. What makes me feel good can be and is very different from what makes someone else feel good. Example: Before last year's hitbox mechanics update, CS:GO felt terrible to me. No fun at all if what's important to you in an FPS is the feeling of a good hit. However, if the only thing you care about was K/D and total number of frags you get, it was perfectly fine. However it didn't feel like I made a good shot, instead it felt like I shot the general direction of the enemy and a bullet hit them by chance. Now I feel much more in control of the spread and a good shot feels like good shot. There was of course some disagreement about this since some people couldn't adapt to the new tighter hitboxes and better netcode because their 'tactics' they used to get frags didn't work anymore but the update was very well received overall.

Roleplay is irrelevant for a space game because a space game can be perfectly good without having any 'roleplaying' or player determined outcomes. A story driven, linear space game can be a very good one. If it's a roleplaying game set in space, then of course, good roleplaying makes for a good game.

As for my personal preference, a good space game is one that makes me appreciate space, its wonders and dangers and ultimately make me feel like I deserve to survive in there instead of depending on fail-safes as much as possible. In other words, I like to think about the choices I have to make and feel that I made the right ones after the fact.

 

[kilvenny]

I want to feel like I imagine what it's like to be a space pilot. This is the part that for me ED gets right in the journey from a station in one system to another. It feels like I have traveled a long way and when I hear the station flight control it feels like I am ending a journey and its a great sense of relief when landing. When I engage in combat, I know it's not space realistic but hey its fun.

So it's like the OP's facets of a good game are a set of slider bars and depending on what I am doing in game they need to move to match the way my brain wires for an activity.

 

[Mephane]

OP, there is no answer because "space game" is not a genre in the first place.

Imagine the analog category "city game", which would apply to GTA, City Of Heroes, Cities Skylines, Assassin's Creed 1, etc - they are all games primarily or exclusively set within cities and/or where the gameplay revolves around the city itself. Yet these games are clearly nothing alike.

We would have to deconstruct the notion of a "space game" along two axis: topical genre and video game genre.

1. Topical genre: It could be any form of drama set on a space ship. It could be a space western. It could be fantasy (Star Wars and Warhammer 40k are far more fantasy than science fiction). It could be horror. It could be a teenage vampire romance story set on the moon. It could genuinely be science fiction.
2. Video game genre: Look at the examples for "city games" above. Elite Dangerous is a space game. So is Stellaris. And Kerbal Space Program. And Star Trek Online. Yet these 4 games have so little gameplay in common that each of them clearly belongs into a different genre of video game and aren't really comparable at all.

 

[Hellhawk666]

What makes a good space game?

Exactly the same things that make any other game a "good" game:

* Well-considered and integrated control systems
* A satisfying variety of actions in which to engage, and good integration between those actions
* Appropriate graphics and audio design
* A robust and well-developed AI that provides a realistic challenge
* for MMOs, appropriate and sufficient tools to support multiplayer interaction in-game
* Well-crafted and optimized code that has been de-bugged and thoroughly tested
* If appropriate, interesting storylines that challenge the player and draw them in
* a "point" to the game that keeps player interest high and makes it all worth while
* an indefinable feeling that somehow the game as a whole is more than just the sum of these parts
* and finally, a development team that understands, values, and listens to their player audience

Extrapolating from all that, assuming the game has a good development team and is well coded etc, the other requirements for my "perfect" space game would be:

* Well crafted and interesting graphics and audio that are either ultra realistic, or else stylized in a valid manner.
* Both first person and in-vehicle gameplay supported in both cases by well-designed HUDs/input systems.
* A good flight and combat model, a good trade system that provides all the required tools to support trading, and an interesting, immersive and challenging exploration system.
* Missions/quests that are obtained through the course of regular play, rather than requiring me meeting specific "mission givers" at specific locations, and which interlock in a way that encourages emergent gameplay and opens new activity paths
* Support for a wide range of "professions" and/or professional traits/perks
* The tools to easily find and communicate with other players, and form guilds that have in-game support
* The ability to own/build property assets that can be used by myself and other players
* A fully integrated and functional economic and political simulation that can evolve over time in response to player actions

So in summary, I want to feel immersed in a universe that is much bigger than me but which I can still effect in some way. I want to be the pilot, not just control the pilot, and I want the whole thing to be a complex, challenging and satisfying experience that make s me feel somehow that there is a reason for me to be playing, other than "just playing".

EDIT - Reading through what I wrote, my perfect space game would be an amalgum of the best features of ED, SC, NMS and X3. Not hard to please, am I?

 

[Riedquat]

An immersive gameworld.

I would consider this far more important than graphics or realism.

X3TC would be a good example.

 

[Insomnia]

A believable world with lore that is consistent and coherent with itself, independent story lines, the options of chosing sides (chosing sides must bring both rewards and punishments if it's going to be logical), different career paths each with their own progressions, realism coherent with the game world, powerful ingame social tools if we're talking MMO games, big areas to explore but it also needs variation to keep players interested.
Great graphics are a necessity to pull the players into the world, and make them believe this is all real somehow.
With great graphics comes immersion and with immersion together with those things listed above, comes roleplay automatically.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Space?

 

[Ian Phillips]

Things in space, like planets to crash into....