I’ve been asking myself the question, what’s a good game.  It’s a hard question to answer.  Most of the time it comes with a reference, like XCom, or Civilization.  The problem is what makes a good game.  To some it must be graphically amazing.  Some people a story must grab them personally.  It is so personal, that no two people are alike.

So for me, I love a tactical game.  It can be real-time, it can be turn based, but I love strategy and besting an opponent.  I hate multiplayer though.  I want to crush an AI that does not tell me how bad my mom is.  The thing is, I think that good games are probably more generic than this.

Can we take every game and say if it is good or not?  The problem is every game is liked by somebody.  So we can at least say there are never any truly bad games to 100% of people.  So what makes a game good?  Have you ever told anyone about a game that you thought was awesome that you only played for 2 minutes and never will play again?

So, at least one characteristic of a good game is that people play it for a long time.  But, then you look at Steam and see that tons of people are playing games for a long time and reviewing them poorly, so why is that?  So if you play something for a long time but hate it was the game bad?  I don’t think it really was.

You put your life into a game, if you play it for hours, it was good.  Even if it strikes you in the end as not being that great, it grabbed you for hours of your short life.  You were giving it a shot, it had enough greatness in it to have you give priceless time.  So I contend that your final thoughts on a game don’t really matter if you played it long enough.  That could be crazy to state, because you could wish you never bought it, but if it made you feel something, isn’t that what a good game does?

What do you think?  What makes a great/good game to you?  Try to not use a reference to describe it.  It’s a challenge to nail down.  That is why I love making games.