What do I want in a video game?

What do I want in a video game?

I want to be let into the mystery.


I want heroes with a heart and I want heartless villains.

I want the ghost and the shells to scare the shit out of me.

I want time to let things settle in. I don’t want significant plot points to be rushed.

I want character vocals to be audible and clearly enunciated. I don’t what characters to be drowned out by musical effects.

I want DLC that doesn't suck. I don't want to have to download a million new maps a million times.

If I'm flying an X-Wing and I want to feel like I'm Luke Skywalker.

I want details. I want the facts. I want the easter eggs that make sense. I don’t want to have to wrestle an alligator and then fly it to the moon to find that egg though.

I want to be in on the joke but I don’t want the joke to be a lame reference to some dude’s girlfriend who once worked at Hooters.

I want game play to be intuitive. I want multiple options for solving problems. I suck at maths, I don’t want to have to place 5 litres of water using a random selection of clay pots to advance.

I want to have a big fucking shiny gun. In fact guns, lots of guns.

I want to be able to move my character with a fluid grace but if I jump 10 feet down, I want to feel that thud in my boots as I hit the turf.

I want beer.

I want it all and I want it now.

I want my car to have red racing stripes down the side because everybody knows red racing strips makes cars go faster and look cooler.

I want my heroines to have realistic breast sizes. Hulking giant orbs that defiantly object to the laws of physics belong in the comics shouldn't be in my video games.

I want backstory and backbeat.

I want the payoff after playing a campaign for 15 hours.

I want clues to solve it.

I want my character's nightmare to be so real I'm afraid to play with the lights off. 

I’m a worldly person. It’s OK to reference real world history. It’s OK to twist history with fiction.

I want video games to challenge my mind. It’s brilliant when they substitute Andrew Ryan with Ayn Rand and leave me to figure out where I should draw the line.

I want Issac, Arthur, Frank Herbert's Dune and Dick all rolled into one. Here's a great essay on Dune.

What do you want?