Old School/Retro Game Play and Discussion (July 7)

I decided to try something new with our experts during this session for two reasons: 1) I noticed that they have played about 90 percent of the games in the lab and were displaying some boredom at times with those games, and 2) I thought it would be interesting to get their opinions on some of the games I played when I was younger and some of the all-time classics like Pacman and Tetris. I think these games are still popular (maybe not all of them) today so there must be something game developers can still learn from these classics.

I started this exercise with a mini discussion to find out what these experts considered the oldest games they've played. I wanted to see if they had heard of some of these games before or had played them. They had heard of some of the games, but hadn't really played them. Also, some of the games they considered "old" were probably only 5 or less years ago.

I had the experts play four games (which we downloaded free online): Tetris, Pacman, Duck Hunt and Donkey Kong. After playing the games for about 15-20 minutes (each game), the experts filled out a paper evaluation on three of the four games. I felt that this would help them critically analyze the games and better prepare them for a group discussion, which followed.

The group really seemed to enjoy playing these older games and the poor graphics and simple commands didn't seem to bother them. During our discussion, the group came to a consensus that their favorites were Duck Hunt and Pacman (tied for first) and Tetris (came in second). Donkey Kong was their least favorite - they all said it was confusing and didn't have much else to say about it.

They had similar things to say about their favorite games that helped keep them hooked. We discussed the good and bad qualitites of these games as follows:

Duck Hunt
good: different levels, challenging (gets more difficult), time limit, minor violence (but still ok for younger kids), humor (laughing dog), different modes (kill dogs or ducks)
bad: only have three shots, dog mode is goes on forever (no point), hard using mouse to aim and shoot, not realistic ("you can't shoot through trees in real life", "dog picks up duck with hand"), poor graphics (but not so poor it keeps them from having fun)

Pacman
good: addictive, good music (different and loud), challenging, fun, use strategy (can make patterns), unique ("no game like it")
bad: only have 3 lives, hard to turn with mouse, you get ambushed a lot, powerball doesn't last long, graphics (would like to see an updated/modern edition of pacman with better graphics), needs different mazes/more of them

Tetris
good: Addictive, challenging (it's a puzzle and goes faster as you go), you get to see what's coming next, fun
bad: hard to rotate pieces sometimes, frustrating, sometimes get same pieces over and over

Donkey Kong
bad: hard to figure out, confusing who's supposed to be the player's character (the experts said they thought they were supposed to be the monkey)

Graphics: Although the experts all said the older games didn't have the best graphics, in their favorite games (Tetris, Pacman and Duck Hunt) the poor graphics didn't deter them from having fun or being "addicted" to the game. They all agreed that they really had a lot of fun trying out these games and I even caught some of them playing these games again during open game play time.