Beating the game

I found myself reading a few posts on the Fallout 3 gamefaqs board(that place is pretty horrible) and I was shocked when I discovered a trend in the messages. Everyone seems hell-bent on finding ways to do every quests in the game and not interfere with others in order to get everything in some kind of first round. They ask "did I just fucked up that quest", "will it affect this other quest", "how can I do both and get all rewards", "is it a bug?", etc, etc... . It is as they forgot that, like in real life, some choices needs to be made and opportunities are going to be missed.

But beyond the thematic of the game, I fear that these "over acheiving gamers" are just missing the fun of the game. Instead of enjoying the story the game provides or the stories the players can make for themsleves, they just go from quest to quest, get as much rewards they can, skip unuseful texts, complete the game, get the acheivments if they play on XBox 360 and get to the next. I sadly feels it is more of a symptom of consumerism than anything. I'm not saying they are not having fun. They probably are having fun getting 100% game completion. My problem is that I feel they are missing on other levels of the video games. They miss on the narrative level because for them "story gets in the way of gaming". For them, it's only a game that needs to be beaten, consummed, before getting to the next and repeat the cycle.

Richard Bartle distinguished four types of gamers : killers, acheivers, socializers and explorers. Of course, Bartle was seeing this through the lens of virtual world making the socializer and the killer types a little useless when talking about single player games. Sadly, there's no definitive list of gamer types and it's something I'm sure future gaming theoretician are going to explore. But for now, we see there's a clear opposition between acheivers and explorers. The first wants to get everything out of the game and collect every rewards the game can give, and the second wants to see every little details of the game world and immerse himslef in the fictional universe the game provides.

In the end, it seems like the best thing a game can do if it's goal is to get the widest range of gamer type as possible is to give something interresting to do and choices to make them that will please the most type possible. Games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion did just that. they gave something for both acheivers and explorers. It's important to remember that there is no "better" type of gamers. Altough I might feel like acheivers are missing on the narrative of the game, they can play however they want. I feel like this because I am not an acheiver like them. I am an explorer. In those type of games, I prefer to take my time, get myself involve in the story and universe provided to me, explore large worlds, even if it means I am missing some quests and not getting every rewards I could get. The important is to enjoy a game, no matter what you enjoy in it.