In the background, one of my little sub-projects is writing a big book of game design tips and hints. One section of this guide is about identifying issues in games. What I want to do is generalise some games into their biggest issue, because it's a bit easier for the audience to digest the problem if they can relate to a specific example where that issue was a fairly big part of the experience.
Usually, when we think of "The X Problem", we're thinking of a maths problem that needs to be solved. That's kind of what I'm doing here, but I want to let the readers solve the problems themselves; I only give them insight into what the actual issue is.
What I'd like is for people to post some examples of "The X Problem", followed by a description of what the main fault of that game was.
Two examples:
The Minecraft Problem: A game which lacks an end goal handed to the player, meaning that most players will become bored and quit once they feel they have nothing to work towards. While this is a common occurrence in games, most games have a relevant goal handed to the player at the beginning of the game, and thus player interest decays at a slow pace and is continuously spiked up with new player motivations, such as story content or the player unlocking new game mechanics. A game without a goal, like Minecraft, entirely relies on the player being creative enough for them to learn enough mechanics to then set themselves with a goal to complete using the mechanics they've learnt.
The issue lies in that most players don't know what they want to do, and have an expectation that the game will give them a specific task to accomplish. This is the natural order of how the brain works, and prior to video games, every single game since their creation has had a goal as part of the experience. Players in Minecraft are not told about The Nether, so unless they do prior research, it is unlikely they will be able to stumble into the specific steps required to progress towards the end. Many players describe Minecraft as "boring" after a while, which can also be said of games like Garry's Mod.
The Saint's Row Problem: In order to add a selling-point to the game's box about the length of the experience, developers add "padding" which stretches the game-time. These usually come in the form of collectible hunts, side missions, special tasks (Achievements/Trophies) and other non-critical-path activities. The Saint's Row problem occurs in SR2 when the game will not allow the player to progress through the storyline (called the "critical-path" as it is the least amount of steps required to complete the main game) unless they complete a number of these non-important activities first. Players who find difficulty with specific mechanics or are solely interested in progressing on the main story goal become frustrated and quit, as they cannot progress as they intend.
A thing to note about the SR problem is that it counts as a type of rail-roading, a much broader concept whereby developers force players to progress through the game exactly as they designed, without the player's consent or decision.
