Gateway games

Yes and no. Some genres might benefit from training wheels. Others just need a decent presentation so people don’t bounce right off it. Rise of Flight is still going to take some commitment.

This reminds me of a debate that Matrix and Paradox had about pricing and presentation and the size of the potential market for serious strategy games. I think listing gateway games is very affirming. It says that anyone can learn to appreciate most genres. You just need a game with the barest concern for new players. The funny thing is how hard that is to find in some of the dark and dank genres. Whereas others, like roguelikes, have entered an era where newbies are embraced. You have a lot of good choices there.

I get it, and there is a place for gateway games for sure. I’m just saying you might not need to start with a Lords of Waterdeep or a super light Roguelike. With strategy and war games there are tons of really intricate designs with bad UI. You’ll probably need to work up to those and a game like Unity of Command is great. That’s also selling Unity short. Even though it has very simple rules and metrics its expertly designed and can be quite difficult. But, Unity can point you towards heavier designs.

The best gateway is interest. Get someone interested enough in a subject and they’ll follow.

Tom M

I have to agree with Shiren the Wanderer on the DS as what I consider the best intro roguelike. Warp Rattler said it doesn’t have perma-death, which I find confusing. Maybe you’re referring to the Wii game or other Mystery Dungeon games? Sure, when you die, items you place in banks persist, but that’s it and never seemed like the game changer to me. Shiren the Wanderer on DS has a fantastic simple interface that allows a new player to experience and explore the game at their leisure pretty easily. It doesn’t require a guide to play because the in-game tutorial / puzzles teach you all the tricks and depth the game has to offer. It has a great balance between a depth of play and accessibility.

I would argue against DoomRL. I love the game to death, but I tried to get a bunch of friends into DoomRL as an intro roguelike and it turned out quite poorly. I had a group of friends where once a month, someone would suggest a game and we’d all play it and discuss it that month (like a book club, but for video games). When it was my turn, I suggested DoomRL to an audience where I was the only roguelike fan. The issue I noticed most was that people didn’t understand the depth of the game. They thought the game was just mindlessly clicking through encounters till you randomly won or lost (like some action-rpgs). The various weird strategies for positioning is where a lot of the depth of DoomRL comes from (in my opinion), and none of them realized these strategies even existed until I pointed them out.

I’m tempted to instead recommend Brogue, as it’s my favorite roguelike and seems accessible from an insiders perspective. But I’ve similarly had issues with friends not understand how to work strategically around enemy abilities. For example, you want to fight the Jelly in a hallway or against a wall. For some people, these tactics don’t expose themselves unless pointed out and the game seems unreasonably cruel if you don’t pick up on them.

As for Eurogames, I like Agricola, but agree with Tom Mc that it seems a bit too heavy for a gateway game. I’ve had a surprising amount of luck with The Castles of Burgundy. It seems like a confusing game, but for some reason people seem to get it pretty quickly. It’s also complicated enough that once players get through it and feel comfortable with it, they’re usually willing to jump into heavier games more fearlessly. But hell, if you can get people started on Agricola, that’s awesome!

If Castles of Burgandy is working out well I suggest Trajan as another fine Feld design.

I think Agricola can work. It’s intuitive. Most of the mechanics and concepts work in a way people would expect. It’s just really hard to get all your moves optimized and the gap between an experienced player and a newcomer is going to be huge. It’s just not my first pick when I like Village so much and it’s easier to see what everyone else is doing.

Tom M

I should have specified that Agricola is best for people like me with no boardgaming friends. Pretty much all the iOS ports are a nice way to experience the rules and elegant mechanics in these types of games. You’ll need friends to really get into it.

Yes, and I argue that gateway games are the best way to do that. Speaking from personal experience, I am curious about all genres but no one will get me interested just by talking about them. Sometimes watching gameplay is insufficient too. I usually have to play to see why others like it.

I’ve put a lot of effort into appreciating a broad range of genres in the last 5 or 6 years since I started playing games again. I had all the hype and buzz QT3 could muster to get me interested. Finding that gateway game was still the hardest part.

Definitely. Trajan is my favorite Feld game, and I think Castles of Burgundy makes a nice stepping stone to it.

No, they’re both console- but fighting games on PC aren’t anywhere near where they need to be yet, especially for Japanese games.

It’s less about “scoring systems” and more that if you’ve ever seen the Giga Wing shield system in action, the vaunt in Jamestown instantly leads to head-scratching; it’s hard to imagine how the devs could see Giga Wing, a game that was designed and balanced around a constantly-recharging reflector shield, and think “hey, we should add that to our game, but nerf it into oblivion!”

I mentioned this, yes. You have to unlock it by playing through the regular one-level-at-a-time game, which I know drove off a lot of experienced players right away.

Yes, and this is definitely a good thing, but there are better shmups out there that also have compelling metagame components. I remembered that Space Invaders: Infinity Gene (iOS, 360, PS3) exists and is not import-only; that game uses a level-at-a-time system, but without forcing you to drop back to a menu constantly if you want to play all the levels straight through, and it does a good job of dripfeeding unlocks and introducing new gameplay mechanics without using a shop system or tutorials that break up the action. Unfortunately, the console versions are also widescreen vertizontals, a strong point against them, but unlike Jamestown, your ship in Infinity Gene moves fast, and it doesn’t have the annoying horizontal scrolling that Jamestown also has.

This seems more like an issue with your friends than with the games themselves. It’s easy to say pretty much any game is a bad introduction to its genre if you give it to someone who mindlessly rushes in, clicks on everything, and dies repeatedly without ever making an effort to understand what’s going on.

Sure, but I think a good gateway game can teach a player how to think about the genre rather then expect them to engage it on its level, especially when players are so unused to the genre they’re not sure what that level is. I think for someone unused to the genre, it’s easy to walk away from a roguelike thinking luck is more important then skill, and if you’d just gotten a warhammer earlier you could’ve dealt with that stupid pink jelly (or whatever the case may be). There’s enough going on in the game that it can easily obscure the parts you actually do control. Plus, I think the aesthetics of DoomRL make it seem more silly and less skill-based then it actually is, though that may just be personal.

Shiren does a great job showing you how to think about it through its tutorials / puzzles. It’s similar to Skullgirls in this respect. If you play fighting games mostly by hitting random buttons and slowly learning combos out of repeatedly playing against equally unskilled friends, a tutorial that explains how to think about mix-up combos (both as an attacker and a defender) is sort of a revelation. Similarly, the Shiren puzzles teach you how many different ways you can effectively use an item. They give you the tools to understand what you could’ve done differently in a game, or what you did wrong, which actually allows you to get better at and appreciate the game (and hopefully from there, the genre).

Yeah, but we’re talking about gateway games, which are by definition for people who haven’t seen the Giga Wing system in action. I’m prepared to concede to your superior knowledge of the genre that there are objectively better systems out there, but coming in with only cursory experience, the Vaunt system was fun. The same goes for the aspect ratio – I can intellectually see that it’s better for the playfield orientation to match the direction of the display, but non-committed players aren’t going to turn their monitors sideways, and in practice it didn’t impact my enjoyment that much, and was certainly more friendly than having massive unused areas on both sides of the screen.

You’re quick to discount the level-by-level structure, but I think it really is an enormous advantage to getting new players into the genre. The traditional arcade model suffers from a couple related issues that make it hard to present a challenging but manageable level of difficulty for the new player. In terms of challenge there’s not really a great middle-ground between going for a 1CC (unattainable until you’re already an expert) or credit-feeding (cheapens and trivializes the experience). You can pick an arbitrary number of continues, but then you’re in the position of having to make your own game balance, which can be unsatisfying. And if you do, by treating the game as something that has to be done all at once, you wind up dying 2/3 of the way through, and playing the earlier levels many more times than the later ones that you actually need practice on. By contrast, playing Jamestown’s final level on one of the upper difficulties gives you a set number of lives to get through that fixed challenge, and I had to practice and really develop mastery, so finally finishing it felt like a significant achievement.

But the bottom line is that I had dabbled and bounced off a few other highly regarded shmups, but Jamestown grabbed me enough to see it all the way through, and then to want to check out more of the genre, which is exactly what you want for a gateway game.

That’s the reason I didn’t recommend the later Mysterious Dungeon games – they don’t have permadeath and lose most of the unique appeal of roguelikes. However, Shiren does have it, since it was only the second game in the series and they didn’t move in that direction until later on. There are some relatively small persistent features (gradually opening up additional resources in towns with donations, storing a few items to pick up in a different run, opening up the chance of having allies join you), but after death you start at level 1 with no equipment. The persistence features do gradually give a little extra edge on subsequent runs (which is a nice middle ground to let players feel like they made some small progress before dying), but they’re not necessary and it’s quite possible for an experienced player to succeed on the first run on a new save file.

I think the lack of a race/class/skill system is actually a good thing for a new player, as it keeps it closer to the original Rogue, and means that players can focus on the core elements of turn-by-turn tactics and long-term resource management, without having to worry if they’re failing because they built their character wrong or picked the wrong class.

The other reason it’s a perfect gateway game is that it has Fei’s Problems, which are 100 individual puzzles that give you a fixed situation and are designed to teach some non-obvious aspect of the game’s/genre’s mechanics, most of which carry over and apply to other roguelikes as well.

DoomRL’s a good game, but also a pretty significant deviation from the core of the genre, with its emphasis on ranged combat and de-emphasis of inventory item management or item-ID. Brogue would probably be my first choice for a PC-based gateway, followed by Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.

However, I have to strongly disagree with those recommending Dungeons of Dredmor as a gateway. It’s amusing and attractive, but relatively shallow and unbalanced and doesn’t do a very good job of showing what’s cool about roguelikes. The vast majority of monsters are straightforward designs that don’t force you to vary your tactics at all. And between the crafting system’s piles of junk and the large, same-y levels, there’s a lot of unnecessary tedium.

I agree, and “RTFM” is a lot more important in DoomRL than in the Mysterious Dungeon games, which could make those better for new players not willing to spend a few minutes looking through documentation before they actually start playing the game. (Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky might actually be the best one for someone who already has a Pokémon background, as they’ll already understand some of the core mechanics specific to that subseries, making it easier to focus on picking up the Roguelike-specific mechanics. No permadeath, though.)

I completely agree with all of this, and it’s a big part of why shmups are so difficult for newcomers to get into; again, my main issue is with the implementation in Jamestown, where they seemingly added the option to play it in a traditional manner as an afterthought, an unlockable bonus mode earned by playing the game the way they want you to. (You could argue that making players clear stages in a proper run to unlock them in practice mode is just the same thing in reverse, but this is seen as acceptable by the people who buy and play shmups, while the other way isn’t.) Space Invaders: Infinity Gene effectively offers the same “level at a time” functionality if you really want it, but doesn’t force you to play it that way if you prefer the 1CC-or-bust approach.

Questions for everyone who’s defending Jamestown as a “gateway shmup”: What other shmups have you played after playing Jamestown, if any? What did or didn’t you like about those ones? What about those other shmups would make you wary of recommending them to someone with no experience with the genre? (Aside from “traditional arcade-style structure,” because that’s going to be a given for most games.)

Please hold your thoughts because I’m going to create a shmup thread. I was already planning on it. Standby.

Any other difficult genres we’re missing? If anyone out there wants to get into one and doesn’t know where to start, make a post so we can brainstorm.

Shmup discussion can go here now. I did want to comment on one more thing because it might be instructive for this thread (if it lasts):

While I agree it’s best to have options, and unl0ckables are usually embarrassing, you’re still approaching this from the perspective of an experienced player. To most new players, this functionality is effectively the same! They aren’t going to try to 1CC it at first anyway. So in their minds, that option doesn’t exist. Jamestown did it the “wrong” way only relative to experienced players. If newbies stick with it – and they probably will due to the reasons we already discussed – they will eventually discover the “right” way to play. They take their existing Jamestown experience to the next level to try to 1CC it. Then they can take that understanding to other games where it’s expected as a minimum.

It’s a gateway game on multiple levels: accessibility, early attraction, and a slow ramp toward at least some semblance of the genre at large. But see the other thread for why it didn’t get me all the way there.

I was thinking more a cardboard wargame than computer (Memoir 44 does have both now that it was mentioned above - not sure if that is significant in some way)…

Well not sure if this is something - but what would be a good console game for a traditional, older player to get better at using a game controller? I am only good with a mouse and keyboard which hurts me when it comes to a lot of modern PC games these days. Not that I am great at FPS type games in the first place but it does stop me playing with my kids on their xbox etc.

I tried on Diablo 3 on the 360 but my control is just really bad but trying to practice while you stink at it is no fun at all.

I need a game controller trainer! :D

That’s a good one. I was always fine with 2D games, but I finally learned to navigate 3D space comfortably after I had to force myself with Dark Souls. I can handle melee games at least. If nobody has any other ideas, I suggest you try to find a game you’re dying to play that requires a controller.

After thinking what it should be the ideal gateway game to Fantasy TBS… I nominate Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

I remember honing my controller skills by first playing Gran Turismo 4 for a few hundred hours (at the impressionable age of 35), then a Katamari game; both these games improved my steering abilities and my ability to yell at my screen. Then God of War for button mashing and the master level of at-screen-yelling, and Psychonauts for jumping. For controller FPS skills, I used Bioshock 2, and for precision training I did stealthy playthroughs of Alpha Protocol.

My platinum trophy on Bayonetta is proof that this approach has worked.

Costume Quest is a nice gateway into jRPGs, for me at least. The story was funny enough to keep me involved, but the combat was too simple, leaving me with a craving for something more complex. I can’t say I’ve found that something yet, though. The principle of “grind some more and the fight becomes ridiculously easy” removes the challenge from the games I tried.

Tim

I know you said to hold thoughts on gateway games for racing sims, but I have to add one for the currently available games.

Racing simulation: GTR2

Includes all the typical driver aids (steering, braking, traction), but also a very comprehensive driving school that both introduces racing techniques like threshold braking and different types of turns, but also encourages improvement by awarding different levels of trophies for performance. Is available inexpensively, and graphically is on spec with the other sims.

Con: While some people still use GTR2 for multiplayer, it is far more limited than other platforms.

I forgot about that driving school. (I do remember the one in Richard Burns Rally.) GTR2 was my personal gateway sim, so there’s certainly nothing wrong with it. It’s still one of my favorites due to the focus on a single series that has a variety of cars to fill the grid. I just thought it might be a little too old.