Hey everybody, welcome back to the Game Club! Weâre about to start our second discussion about Diablo III. Itâs been over a week now, so I imagine that many of you have gone to hell and back and lived to tell the tale. If youâve been waiting for a place to tell your tale, youâve come to the right placeâŠ
On the other hand, it hasnât been that long: If you havenât finished the game yet and youâre worried about spoilers you might want to come back after youâre done. Then again, based on last weekâs discussion it doesnât seem like most of you are especially concerned with the gameâs plot.
Joining the Game Club for the first time? Check out the Game Clubâs original mission statement. Donât have the time? Hereâs the quickie version: The Kotaku Game Club exists because no one wants to experience a game alone. Even when weâre playing individually, games are always more interesting when we share our thoughts and hear other peopleâs perspectives. The Game Club picks a different game every month or so to play as a group so we can meet to discuss its narrative and mechanical themes and reactions to them.
The Game Club meets on Kotaku every Thursday at 4pm Eastern, and our discussions take place in the comments section of designated Game Club posts like this one.
Weâre here to hear all kind of ideas, but if youâre looking for an idea to get your creative juices flowing, hereâs a jump-off question for you to answer:
Does designing an RPG to be played multiple times take away from the moment-to-moment experience?
As I mentioned earlier, last weekâs discussion was peppered with remarks about how the plot of Diablo III isnât a particularly important part of the Diablo experience. Thatâs understandable: Diablo III is a game about loot, customization and, in a weird way, the never-ending pursuit to create the perfect version of ourselves.
But, from what I understand, itâs impossible to get about 70 percent of the gameâs loot on the first playthrough. Again, itâs an idea that makes absolute sense when you consider how many players keep beating the game over and over and over again. However, I canât help but feel that thereâs a backlash to designing the game this way. Beating Diablo III a single time isnât nearly as much of an accomplishment as beating other games because itâs not actually the end. In fact, the game never ends: Itâs an cycle that we can descend deeper and deeper into until either finding loot derives absolutely no satisfaction or until our characters are absolutely the most powerful they can be.
In that way, Diablo III straddles the line between two generations of gaming experiences: The older âhigh scoreâ mentality where we play games repeatedly for the chance to do better than we did before, and the newer way of âplaying throughâ games, where the goal is to experience a game from start to finish. Diablo, as a series, is a âhigh scoreâ game trapped in a âplaythroughâ gameâs body. If our characterâs stats are the âscoreâ, the way we actually gauge our progress, wouldnât Diablo III be more gratifying if the game was shorter? Short enough that fervent players could complete the cycle, and consequently reassess their their skills, more often?
And thatâs it, everyone! Weâre moving on! Thanks for contributing to the Diablo III chapter of the Game Club. Weâll let you know the details for our next chapter in a few weeks.
Enjoy!
