Q: What's the key ingredient you look for in a game? Challenge, story, world-building or something else?

I was just involved in an interesting thread in another forum topic and thought I'd delve into it further here.

In my opinion, one of the beautiful things about video games as an immersive medium (with varying levels of interactivity) is the broad range of preferences players can have for engaging with those digital worlds.

Some prefer a greater degree of control and opportunities to hone and apply their skills... others enjoy a more guided story experience... or a living, breathing, open world.

What is it that you look for most in a game? And how is that supported by other ingredients?

I like basically any game as long as it’s free roam.

I like the feeling of building something or a character up and I hate most forced linear games. Also done with multiplayer only.

A complete game to me is "fun", good gameplay, keeps my interest a long time, good graphics, good sound, at least a decent amount of freedom, and good engaging story.

I like variety.

I hate stuff like Half Life and Zelda, but love everything else because they have so much variety.

If a game only gets praise for visuals and 'deep' characters; I avoid.

Basically when a game can't get any merits for, you know gameplay that tells me it's garbage. For an audience that should be watching a movie or reading a book.

I play almost anything else, however will admit certain themes and genres standout to me more than others.

Good fundamentals are critical; how does the game control, is it relatively bug-free, does it make an attempt to either a.) meet current visual standards, or b.) express itself visually through creative art design. Things like that. Basically, I don't care how amazing or mediocre a game is; if it can nail the fundamentals of what makes a game a game, then it is a good game.

After the basics, I'd argue immersion is the next most important thing to me. The best games are the ones where you forget you are playing them, forget the world outside and around you, and you are just engrossed with the game. The kind of game where you sit down after dinner around 7 or 8 at night, and when you next look at the clock, it's well into the AM.

@kotariggs: So are you happy with the make-your-own-fun sandbox style games (e.g. Assassins Creed) or do you need strong story/characterisation to draw you through (ala Witcher, Red Dead)?

@todddow: When you say building the character up - do you mean total creation/customisation? Or do you mean collecting gear, upskilling etc.? Because you said you like an engaging story too and I personally find it really hard to buy into a story when I'm the one who made the character, not the writer. Games like Fallout can feel quite diluted to me - like they've had to boil the story back to meet any possible character we create.

@RSM-HQ: Yeh good call. I think good game dev entwines story with gameplay. I hope one day to make a game that tells the story entirely through a never-before-done mechanic

@mrbojangles25: Oh yah I love this. Firstly really appreciate you flagging creative art design as a type of 'quality' art. As an indie developer, I feel sometimes people only see quality in elaborate and expensive graphics. But I think immersion is so special in video games because - in the case of most games - you can return to it time and time again. When I see films like Avatar, I get lost in it for a while. But there was a whole 6 months of my life when I kept returning to the Witcher 3 world. It's like that Inception line - "They don't come here to sleep. They come here to wake up". That's why I called my game dev company Digital Window. For me, it's about jumping out the window into a world you can lose yourself in - where so much more is possible than in our own.

Challenge is the most important thing. What else will keep you coming back? Graphics age, and so "immersion" (whatever that is) needs top be updated constantly, but you never hear that challenge has been left behind by technology.

I agree that graphics are really important - one that keeps me engaged so that I'll continue to go back to it.