are "boring" games more fun?

[Darren Dirt]

or at least games with "boring" parts available for the player to temporarily lose themselves in?

http://kotaku.com/5895888/id-rather-play-a-boring-rpg

My favorite part of playing a game is getting lost in its world. And worlds are not constantly exciting. Sometimes they're tedious. Sometimes they're boring. To absorb us completely, a world needs peaks to its valleys, low lows to its high highs. Aimlessly wandering among the nooks and crannies of a dungeon or city can be just as valuable as shooting monsters or watching dramatic cut scenes. When you don't have a boring moment or two, something feels missing. ...Mass Effect's abandoned ruins and dark valleys can be a ton of fun -- but they don't feel real. They don't feel like worlds.

Out of budget restrictions or a deep fear of boredom -- probably both -- most modern games don't give you access to sprawling worlds or massive cities. You're guided along tightly scripted paths and hallways that are almost always packed full of action. There's no time to wander. No time to contemplate. No time to be bored.

Interesting perspective. I kinda agree, most of my "10/10 fun" gaming experiences have been when I had maximum comfort immersed within a coherent "world", where I had a lot of freedom to keep repeating and grinding within a certain context until I was "ready" to move forward in the story. But I didn't think that kind of "boring" stuff actually made the overall game experience better, more rich ... but I look back now after reading the above, and think it actually did. Immediately coming to mind are both Deus Ex, and Sun Dog (one of which was an FPS/RPG hybrid with a semi-linear storyline, the other was almost a space-freighter simulation with a TON of micro-managing that somehow made it a more complete gaming experience even though there was tons of "boring" stuff).


Thoughts?

[Mr. Analog]

Well I guess it depends on what's fun for a person. Fun can be running around shooting lasers, fun can also be solving puzzles, fun can be where those two things intersect.

I think the second part is a little unfair, it's very difficult trying to tell a story in a non-linear world. In a total sandbox game like Minecraft your deeds are the story, it's all about the journey. In a game like Portal 2 there is a very specific story that unfolds as you play through it. Both games are fun even though one is on a rail and the other is totally open.

I think getting into the game lore is where being a fan kicks in, its quite a lot of fun getting into some of the worlds and mythos developers plunge you into. I mean you could be a hardcore Street Fighter champ and only care about the game strategy/mechanics whereas another player might get into the backstories that provide the flavour. Again both players enjoy what they're doing but on fundamentally different levels.

If you give people something interesting without a lot of explanation they will use their imaginations to fill the gap, of course this can backfire (as was seen with Metroid "Other M", up to that point Samus hadn't really been given any character development and fan reaction when it was finally developed was polarizing to say the least ).