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Off the Clock: Tending Someone Else's Garden

A Good Gardener and Show Me A Hero both explore frustrating, seemingly unavoidable cycles.

Welcome to Off the Clock, my weekly column about the stuff I've been doing while out of the office. This weekend, I spent my free time playing...

A Good Gardener

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I grabbed A Good Gardener last month, then totally forgot about it until a reader reminded me to play it yesterday, and I'm very glad he did. A Good Gardener begins with the sort of Futura Bold title card that's become a signature of Wes Anderson and then introduces the player to the sort of clenching, mid-level bureaucrat that you might find in one of his films. From now on, says the bureaucrat, you'll live in the ruins of this bombed out house and it will be your job to plant a garden with seeds provided to you.

So you get to work. You grab the seeds from their box and plant toss them into the lump of dirt in the middle of the living-room-turned-courtyard. You grab the watering can and wet the soil. When you're done for the day, you head to a door marked "Your Quarters," click on it, and cycle through to the next day. You run out of water in your can and worry--then a nice rain comes and refills it for you. You spend one day pulling the weeds from the ground. You do this all accompanied by a quaint little music loop that recalls Wish-era Cure pop songs, if a little more minimalistic. The instruments slide into the track one at a time--it's a nice rhythm to work to, so you keep going.

Then one day, maybe after it rains, some of your plants bloom. But (without getting too specific), they're not exactly what you hoped you were growing. They're still beautiful, but they're decidedly undesirable, and that stings a bit. Your bureaucrat comes back with a whole lot of praise for your work, and that's when you realize that you're not an employee, you're a captive--or really, you realize that there isn't much of a difference to this man. And what a harvest you've brought him.

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And this repeats: You plant his seeds, tend to the crops, and then he returns. If you're like me, maybe you decide to stop planting new flowers and to stop watering the ones you've already planted. But then it rains again, and they grow against your will. Then the bureaucrat shows back up, and maybe you'll feel the hint of panic that I did: Does he know that I've been trying to sabotaging the garden? Maybe just plant a couple of seeds so he won't know. And sometimes, a strange, guilty sort of pride at the beauty of your terrible garden.

And so on and so on.

This loop is like a strange inversion of Porpentine's Skulljhabit or With Those We Love Alive, Twine games that somehow create a feeling of self-discovery by combining motifs of repetition and heavy doses of grim, sloshy fantasy. A Good Gardner, on the other hand, presents itself as saccharine and upbeat, but carries a message much more bleak. The little walled in garden is claustrophobic in a way unique to open air places: The towering factory is a metaphorical extension of the walls and the hint of an outside world rubs your face in your surroundings. And there's no escape, no way to move forward without continuing to plant the seeds they want you to plant.

Why not resist? Why not refuse to plant the seeds? Because if you do, nothing happens. I looked for a savior everywhere: I tossed seeds into the concrete where they would roll away fruitlessly; I watched as birds dug out freshly planted seeds; I let weeds overgrow my garden; I refused to water the growing plants. But none of these things brought about any change. The rain would come and the flowers would grow, and my choices were to wait forever or else plant another. A Good Gardener is fundamentally fatalistic: There is no resistance, just progress towards a goal you don't want to achieve.

There's no explicit punishment for refusing to do what the man and his country want you to do. I've seen some players complain that this is a missing feature: There has to be a way to be a noble martyr, right? The sad answer is "No, not really." Your character has no name or face or voice, so to this bureaucracy you (and any attempt you make at resistance) barely exist. Just imagine that there are another thousand gardens like yours out there, another thousand captive workers with no way to communicate or organize or resist together.

What's one bad gardener to a machine like that?

You can grab A Good Gardener for five bucks from itch.io.

Speaking of distressing political cycles, I also spent my free time last week watching...

Show Me A Hero

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I spent my flights to and from San Francisco last week watching the entirety of HBO's Show Me a Hero, a mini-series that dramatizes the efforts to integrate Yonkers, New York through a series of housing policies throughout the 80s and 90s. Co-Written by The Wire creator David Simon and scribe William F. Zorzi and directed by Paul Haggis (Crash), the show would depict the rise of politician Nick Wasicsko alongside the lives of those stuck in the city's projects. It's a hell of a premise, but I came into the series with ambivalence.

Over time, my love of The Wire has become more and more complicated, and a big part of that is about the show's failure to spend much time examining how civilians working in Baltimore's inner cities struggled to right the same problems that its police force and local government fought. Nailing that would be key for a depiction of Yonkers' troubled history. Seeing Haggis' name attached only made me more skeptical--for all of its awards, Crash's handling of racial tensions only ever felt naive and detached.

But Show Me A Hero (mostly) worked for me.

Like A Good Gardener, it focused in on a series of painful and seemingly-unavoidable cycles. Characters (both in the projects and in city hall) are punished for decisions made above their heads. They're often unable to build coalitions with others even when everyone seems to have the same big picture goals, and the result of that is a fragmentation that leads the city to repeat the same fights over and over. Worse, these cycles lead to the cynical view that nothing can ever change, which in turn leads to a frustrating breed of political opportunism. Someone's gotta grow the garden, may as well be you, right?

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And like a Good Gardener, Show Me A Hero combines open spaces with claustrophobia. The show's cinematography contrasts the narrow hallways and cramped workplaces of its racialized working class with the cool, airy lobbies and courtrooms of government buildings (and the spacious homes of the people who work there.) At key moments, this contrast inverts: When one character leaves Yonkers for the Dominican Republic, we're treated to broad streets and scenic coastlines, while during contentious council meetings in city hall, the screen fills with angry, shouting citizens. The sensory overload makes it literally, physically hard to continue watching.

The end result is a human take on a institutional issue. Show Me a Hero uses the (real) stories of the residents of Yonkers as an illustration of the way structural problems like segregation work. It's valuable, since these things are so often depersonalized so that they can be turned into talking points.

I do wish that Haggis, Simon, and Zorzi felt more comfortable in the projects, though. It's a shame too, because in the rare moments where they get it right, they really get it right: Children playing in the streets, an adult son playfully bickering with his aging mother. But these sort of moments are too rare. One of the key conflicts in the show is that many of the residents of city's overcrowded affordable housing high rises want to move somewhere safer, so framing the projects with some degree of "threat" is necessary (and accurate). But the show rarely feels like it understands these places as homes. As The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum says "Springsteen dominates, while hip-hop leaks through doors."

Still... much, much better than Crash.

I've Also Been...

Reading:

Listening to:

I didn't leave you with a question last week, but I do want to make a habit of it so:

I spoke a lot (above) about the gameplay "cycle" of A Good Gardener, and I've spoken at length lately about how much I love the "loop" of Fallout 4. These sorts of design elements can be big or small, but they're very common in games. They can be as short as Halo's repetition of Look->Move->Aim->Shoot->Look or as broad as Anno 2205's sprawling arc of resource gathering and infrastructural improvement. So tell me about one "gameplay loop" or "cycle" that has stuck with you. Doesn't have to be your favorite, just has to be one that popped into your head and that you have some thoughts about.

See you here next week (and maybe even on time!)

127 Comments

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stratofarius

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The Sims' loop of build>play>buy. The fact you can change those around made it worse for 12-year old me. Oh, all those nights spent decorating houses I never got to play in...

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BBAlpert

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Edited By BBAlpert

The clicker/idle loop of clickclickclick>buy>clickclickclick>buy (up until you have enough automatic facilities for the loop to be buy>wait>buy>wait>buy) is always an interesting one to think about.

THE NUMBERS KEEP GOING UP

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retrovirus

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To be honest, the first thing that popped into my mind was the loop of playing pinball. The constant war against yourself and the machine to keep the ball going. When you're good at a table, being able to nail precise shot after shot in a predetermined order creates a very zen state. And if you're not feeling it or just learning, just shooting and trying again is still fun, each time thinking "I've got it now!" as the ball hurtles toward the flippers.

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kasaioni

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I actually really enjoyed the MGSV loop of mission->administrative activities->mission. At least that's how the loop worked out for me when I played it. Peace Walker had a very similar (if not the same but on a smaller scale) gameplay loop.

Fallout 4 has a similar loop too, depending on how you interact with the game. Go out, do a mission, come back, mod a weapon/piece of armor, go out, do a mission etc.

I remember ACIV having the loop of city->boat stuff->island stuff->boat stuff->city stuff. The city stuff was definitely the weaker part of the game, but have all the pirate stuff there on the seas made it feel more unique.

Minecraft survival mode also has a good loop of exploration->building->exploration.

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fenic_fox

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Edited By fenic_fox

Stealth games observe->pick tool->act captivates me every time. For me it's the perfect combination of puzzle and dexterity challenge (when done right).

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moondogg

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Edited By moondogg

Path of exiles, RNG loop.

'Get weapon with potential, farm currency upgrade items, attempt upgrade on weapon, not get what you want, return to farming currency upgrade items.'

It's annoying, I'm not even sure it's something that can be made easier by paying either. I think that whole game could be made less random by decreasing the amount of currency upgrade items in it.

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Pezen

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A Good Gardner sounds fascinating, I'm intrigued.

One that just popped into my head; the process to uncover as many videos as possible to get as much out of the story as possible in Her Story was a fascinating and engaging gameplay loop. I think it works because it's at such a small scale (limiting itself to words and a set number of videos) but the complexity is so great (because every word in every video is tagged) that it helps you build your narrative in some way. You find yourself using certain words as keys to unlock a new set of videos only to find that they link back to other videos with other words. So the loop is simple when you boil it down; watch video, search a word, watch a new video. But the results of searching with a good word compared to a less useful word is so big that it's always in your favor to really look for the details, which in turn makes you pay more attention.

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BitbyBitPrime

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Edited By BitbyBitPrime

A gameplay loop that has stuck with me is the "Modern Narrative Adventure game" loop of Conversation -> Decision -> Exploration -> Conversation which games such as Tales from the Borderlands and Life is Strange use. This convention of the genre really reduces the amount of ludo-narrative issues games tend to have(E.G. Nathan Drake the unremarked upon mass murderer) The format fits well into the model of serialized fiction these games generally take and makes me excited for the future of the genre.

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sweep

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sweep  Moderator

Your experience in A Good Gardener reminds me of Paradis Perdus, which I've always loved for it's blurb:

The game is about not belonging. You are the bad guy, you are killing everything you touch. The world you are in is beautiful and green, but the moment you get into it, you start infecting everything, and the world starts decaying, until it eventually ceases to exist. You can choose to exit the world, and then it will heal itself, but then you don’t get to enjoy it of course, because you’re not there any more.

Same.

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RickRockmann

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Agility orbs in Crackdown. You jump around an area, collecting all the orbs you can. The orbs give you experience, and eventually you level up your jumping ability. Then, you jump around the same area with your newfound ups collecting the orbs that were just out of reach before.

There's something extremely satisfying about how immediately you see the benefits of that agility upgrade. No matter where you are when you level up, there's bound to be at least one orb in your sight that you had to "let go" because you couldn't reach and now you can.

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Mento

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Mento  Moderator

I'm trying to separate "loop" and "routine" in my head, as it pertains to doing shit in a video game. Routine would be something like Animal Crossing or Theatrhythm: Curtain Call, where I would check in every day to grab fossils or see what songs were tagged as score-boosted Daily Specials. Cycles would be more like the constant loop of loot/open-world RPGs, going back to town to sell vendor trash or drop off valuables at the ol' homestead before heading back through the Town Portal once again.

I'd have to say that some great "cycle"-based gameplay would be that found in Dark Cloud 2 and Persona 4, which are two of my favorite games for that very reason. Both are heavily invested in their dungeon-crawling, which might well be considered the "core" gameplay of the two of them, but they'll also offer you a lot of opportunities to take it easy outside of the randomized-floor-by-randomized-floor grind should it ever threaten to overwhelm you. With Dark Cloud 2, it was working on your little Georama towns with whatever new resources you found and maybe fishing or playing golf for a while, whereas in Persona 4 (and 3) it was all about hanging out with the social links and enjoying the game's low-key "slice of life" moments between all the high-tension, end-of-the-world main story events.

The cycle in this case would be doing some dungeon-crawling for useful materials and cash, leaving the dungeon for a while to pursue what else the game has to offer with the resources you'd gathered, and then heading back in again once it was time to continue the plot. Works surprisingly well, and is a far more satisfying break than just five minutes running around a hub area selling crap and acquiring new fetch quests.

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HadesTimes

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Really love the column, thanks man!

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steellasagna

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The cycle in the original Hotline Miami really sticks with me.

Wake up, listen to the messages on your phone, bang your head against a level, get back to your car, a surreal interlude of buying pizza or renting a movie, repeat.

The music of the game also corresponds to this quite effectively. The washed out jam that plays when you awake in your decaying apartment instills a feeling of haziness and some amount of comfort, before you are thrust into an unfamiliar level with a new, intense music track.

Same for when you complete a level, the pounding music fades into ominous ambiance, while you wade through the now quiet viscera you've created on your way to the top floor, you approach your car, the door pops open, and you are greeted with glowy, victorious music as you drive away.

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Hayt

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I suppose I won't be able to answer this myself until/if I play it but how much of that fascinating narrative about A Good Gardener is actually intended and how much was just something that Austin invented as the game failed to react to anything he did?

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hassun

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I'm not a fan of repetition in general and definitely not in my entertainment. That means it's usually a bad sign if I notice a/the (gameplay) loop in/of a game.

On the other hand I have absolutely no problem at all with the system of dying and retrying in video games. Take a Souls game for example (or an old school platformer if you're into those). The whole objective is to go through a relatively unchanging level over and over to master it.

This is also one of the reason the limited spawns in DSII were a bad idea.

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Dhutch

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Quest games and lineage- Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics:
-Play a map, strategizing with your units.
-Upgrade classes and abilities and equipment through menus.

- Play a new map with maybe one or two changes to your team.

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ichthy

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@mento said:

The cycle in this case would be doing some dungeon-crawling for useful materials and cash, leaving the dungeon for a while to pursue what else the game has to offer with the resources you'd gathered, and then heading back in again once it was time to continue the plot. Works surprisingly well, and is a far more satisfying break than just five minutes running around a hub area selling crap and acquiring new fetch quests.

I think that's why I like Etrian Odyssey series. It strips away practically everything superfluous in most RPGs. The town is just a bunch of text menus, the dungeons (or in most cases dungeon singular) are just 3D mazes broken up into floors and discrete blocks, the combat is simple turn based menus. The game just moves. Kill stuff, get drops to sell to unlock better items, to go deeper in the dungeon and kill more stuff, until you get to the final boss.

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zandravandra

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Ridiculous Fishing's three-part gameplay loop (avoid fish, catch fish, shoot fish) works so well because each step feeds the next. The further you can go without touching fish, the more fish you can catch on the way back; the more fish you catch on the way back, the more you can shoot for money; the more fish you shoot for money, the more upgrades you can buy so you can go further and avoid fish better. It's very elegant and mechanically rewarding.

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JDavidsen611

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I have 2 in my head.

First, since it's in such recent memory, is MGSV. I loved the loop of going out and doing missions, collecting soldiers and resources, then seeing the fruits of that in all the new equipment I could develop. That's is, like, the ideal "video game loop".

Then, I can't help but think of Minecraft which is very different, but also kind of exactly the same. It's been a while since I've played it, but a few years ago I was super into it. There was something satisfying about going out and exploring to find materials and new areas, and then making sure to get back by nightfall and using all the stuff you've gathered to make new materials in order to expand your home or be able to make camps in new areas and defend yourself.

There's something so appealing about going out into the world of a game and collecting things that will help you expand or create new gear, especially when you have to get very specific things in order to make what you want. Setting those goals to get those items you need is super rewarding, and I love when it's completely a choice you make, rather than the game going level by level, putting the next power up in front of you.

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bVork

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I am particularly fond of the all-encompassing loop in the Rune Factory series, especially in Rune Factory 3 and 4. Every single mechanic in the game feeds into each other. It all starts with growing crops. With the crops you grow, you can earn money. You can also cook with the crops to make restoratives. You use the money and the restoratives to prepare yourself for dungeon crawling. You go dungeon crawling to acquire materials and tame monsters. You use monster produce and materials to craft items. You use these to better equip yourself to go dungeon crawling, or you give them to people to befriend them and then take them along on your expeditions. In the end, everything you can do in the game ultimately either feeds into your money pool to continue expanding your house and purchase essentials like animal feed, or to better prepare you for the dungeons. This means you ultimately want to try everything, because everything gives you an advantage.

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VickyKillz

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My favourite loop in any game is in playing limited format magic the gathering. Getting packs -> Drafting -> Deckbuilding -> Actual playing // Getting packs - > Sorting sealed pool -> Deckbuilding -> Playing

Doesn't matter what set or if it's cube or whatever, it's always just a little bit different but it's always enough of the same to keep me feeling like I'm learning and being able to be competitive

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baltimore

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Mega Man's game loop of ChooseLevel->SlayRobotMaster->TakeTheirWeapon has stuck with me for nearly 30 years. Why hasn't anyone else tried that formula?

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clagnaught

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One loop that popped into my head was Sid Meier's Civilization V.

The way I like to play those games is through city building and expansion. I don't want to be the civilization that wins by conquering everyone else. I don't want to invade another civilization with crossbows and chariots. If anybody tries to do that, sure, I'll fight back. And then try to bleed them out with peace treaties. I don't need to be a brute and I am a man of patience. At first, I'm just the guy who has access to crabs and gold, who is building wonders and researching technologies like crazy. But give me a thousand years or so, and I am the man with every city state in his back pocket. I'm the head of the United Nations. My religion is the world's dominant religion. My culture is the world's culture. And if anybody still doesn't like me, I'm so rich I can pay off other Civilizations to pass treaties that will hurt them. If anybody goes to war with me, I'll just buy a couple of Giant Death Robots and stomp them into submission.

...Well at least that's the idea. Sometimes I lose interest or the situation changes as such that my master plan isn't going 100% as well as I thought it would. When it comes to that, I'll just create a new game and start over from the beginning.

(According to Steam, I have 100 hours in Civ V. Number of games I finished...Maybe 4 or 5?)

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myheadsonfire

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Roguelike games such as The Binding of Isaac or Risk of Rain have an amazing loop where you start a run, build your character up to a powerful level and try to win, end the run, possibly unlock something, and start again from the start. The randomisation of every run makes the loop very addictive.

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Chillicothe

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I used to do loops in gaming a ton, but for several years that's dropped off rather far; I don't like artificially cultivated gameplay loops that feel "cynical", if that means anything to anyone.

It's valuable, since these things are so often depersonalized so that they can be turned into talking points.

God, ain't that the goddamn truth about political bickering now.

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nate3470

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Does Blitzball in FFX count? Because at one point I just stopped playing FFX and just focused on playing Blitzball over and over again, using pretty much the same team, I think I was too young to understand all the bullshit surrounding it. Just a fun little weird sport game thing.

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mostboku

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I think my favorite game loop is the type that shows up in Monster Rancher, the sort of "breed-->raise-->fight-->raise-->fight-->...-->retire and start again". Building up lineages by combining your old monsters to create new baby monsters, slowly seeing your babies start out with better and better abilities. Weirdly enough this is what drew me to horse racing sims like Winning Post or Champion Jockey, because they essentially follow the same loop as Monster Rancher but replace monsters with horses and battles with racing. Seeing as how Winning Post and Monster Rancher are now both Koei Tecmo properties I'd love to see a new Monster Rancher with the ridiculous simulation depth of recent Winning Post games, but I doubt we'll ever see that.

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climax

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I think my favorite loop would be Counter-Strike. From 1.6 to the current iteration of GO, its always been similar.

Start Match -> Shoot, Teamwork, Build Economy -> Win/Lose. Repeat.

I think since each match can be such a difference experience, the loop is familiar, but varies each time. Also, the feeling of improvement and learning how to play the game is great.

On another note, your music choices have been on point every time. I'd love to pick your brain on some stuff. Favorite albums or tracks of 2015?

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iam3dhomer

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In the main Pokemon games, after I beat the main game I would just fight the Elite Four over and over to level up different pokemon. It was a loop I was super comfortable with and found relaxing. I also enjoyed the arc of having a new pokemon go from being weak and not being able to fight, to being able to hold its own, and then with the great breaking point of when they could start taking out opposing pokemon with one hit.

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DurMan667

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The Shadow of the Colossus loop is the most powerful I've done.

Receive hint > Venture across the landscape > Platform puzzle > Boss Fight > goto 10

Fantastic sense of exploration and problem solving before massive cinematic battles. It's a game that can convey feels.

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MikeLemmer

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Ugh, it's really tough picking a cycle that doesn't boil down to "adventure, get loot, return home". That's stuck with me just because 90% of games seem to have some variation of that cycle.

Actually, I'll go with Sid Meier's Pirates! version of it, simply because it's a well-made 3-layer cycle that adds a lot to the game. Here it is, in a nutshell:

  • You go out, raid & pillage enemy ships/towns, then dock up at a friendly port again to repair, sell loot, and do various other urbane things.
  • Every 1-2 years in-game, you have to divide the loot or else your crew gets cranky from staying out on sea too long. It takes 4 months for you to prepare for the next expedition, and you only keep your flagship, a few hundred gold, and a small crew. This prevents you from snowballing with a large armada & crew forever.
  • After pirating for several years, your health begins to fail and the gameplay gets harder as a result. You choose when you retire that character from the pirating life; your final score gets tallied up & you begin a new game.
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ShadowSwordmaster

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Love this column, Austin.

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Death_Metalist

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For me any cycle in a game can be good if it has something to reward me with or is just plain satisfying. Looking at it from a general viewpoint can make it seem tiresome or repetitive but it's always about the moment to moment gameplay, for me atleast.

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Songhunter

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Edited By Songhunter

Hum... If I have to stick with one, I'd say X-Com type games with permadeath/ironman modes (x-com, Hard West, Mordheim, Xenonauts, Massive Chalice, Fire Emblem and any game with one save, autosave and permadeath. Hell, I'll even throw Final Fantasy Tactics in there for good measure). I love the loop of Building a Squad > Going to Battle > Rebuild Squad with new loot/levels/survivors.

I'm a sucker for a game with a good story, but I've found (and this was a complete surprise to me) that there are a few games with this type of loop where all I need is a proper setting and the right stakes, lemme build the rest from there. I looooved how in X-Com, for example, all the plot boils down to: "some alien shit's going down, fixt it", and there are like 2 cutscenes in the whole game. Yet, that Loop of building up a shitty squad, going out to battle an overwhelming force with no way of going back, and rebuilding my forces with the survivors, allows me to create a whole narrative in my head and makes every single run unique. It makes me care about the guys I'm sending in, and that satisfing loop allows me to control the progression of that narrative. Hell, by the time I finished the last mission of my first run in Impossible/Ironman mode, I felt like Coronel Motherfrikkin Hammond from SG-1, and the fact that the soldier that ended up... "having to go the extra mile" also happened to be the sole rookie survivor of the very first mission of the game, turned a simple cookie cutter story into an epic moment for me.

Same thing ended up happening to me with Massive Chalice, another game where I ended up with a whole game of thrones type heraldy of marriages, alliances and sacrifices in my head (although I WISH we could've also fought between the Houses, that would've been soooo amazing).

So yeah, I guess for me what does it is a loop where the real risk is not a game over, but a permanent change in your savegame that forces me to advance that narrative I had in my head in unexpected (sometimes cool, sometimes tragic) ways. And I guess the format that enables me to face said odds is the turned based strategy games. But as long as the core experience I'm looking for is there, I'll take it in any form it comes.

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StealthRaptor

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I've been eyeing Show Me a Hero, so I'm glad to hear it's worthwhile. I'll probably check it out after the holidays.

My loop would be from Final Fantasy Tactics: Accumulate.

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thurbleton

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Edited By thurbleton

a Loop / Cycle I really really enjoy(ed) is the act of reloading as a form of anticipation? Most notably with Half Life 1.

I guess this goes into the meta loop with the Half Life series bouncing back and forth from quiet puzzle / exploration to frantic firefight, but you get a feel for when the quiet is about to stop - be it a corner with soldiers talking or boarding an elevator that slowly moves. Going through each weapon I had and checking / reloading it acted as sort of a hype booster and very few games have that these days either in favor of presenting the player with an already reloaded gun or having a very limited set of weapons.

This can also sort of be seen with the Metro series and their Frankenstein guns but falls short for me due to only being able to carry 2-3, and their level design seems slightly reigned in if only for budget reasons.

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YummyTreeSap

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Edited By YummyTreeSap

So you're this kind of worm creature, ok? And you eat things, all things, which allow you to stretch out longer. And so this stretching you do turns into food for this girl in space who uses it to stretch across the Solar System, letting you visit new planets as she reaches them. You, you just keep on eating and farting and stretching for your endless curiosity of what lies ahead. Such is life.

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Blackout62

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Wow, going through the comments I'm seeing a lot of cycles that I do enjoy but don't immediately think of. Why oh why isn't XCom 2 out yet?

Well I'd be lying to myself if I said I wasn't a slave to the FPS standard of kill -> unlock -> equip -> kill but I do enjoy the thinking person's conundrums of stealth games. The old observe -> maneuver-> escape plays well with my honed life wisdom that none of my problems will be solved just by defeating something.

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jopon

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The gameplay loop that I fell into with Persona 4 on its release will always stick with me, because of how it mirrored and motivated my real life routine. In high school I was always involved in extracurriculars and had a tight group of friends, but my schoolwork suffered for it. When P4 debuted and I got it as a Christmas present my 3rd year of High School, I saw in the games cycle of (bullshit with friends/power through a dungeon chunk/bullshit with friends) my own RL cycle of (bullshit with friends/power through a bunch of tiresome homework/bullshit ad nauseum).

It really made me reexamine the time I spent studying/doing homework and how I approached it. I didn't like the dungeon delving aspect of the game, to be honest. It was perfectly competent, but I wanted to be back at school, hanging out with Kanji or making Yosuke feel bad about himself. It was like...work. Like homework. But, you can only dungeon delve as long as your SP lets you, and the same goes with applying yourself to schoolwork. Once I got that loop figured out, I had an easy time with the game. Also, I'm pretty sure P4 got me into college.

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MechaMarshmallow

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When I think about gameplay loops it's less about a single loop and more multiple loops, interconnected in some way. Civilization does the best job of using this to create a nigh-unstoppable compulsion to continue, because between your 'research > new options > plan > research' loop, your 'settle > grow > scout > settle', your 'build up > war > consolidate > build up' loop and so on you're always without fail on the verge of tipping just one of those loops into the 'payoff' phase with every turn you take, and then once you manage to earn that big payoff and the loop gets back to the dull build-up/wait part, you're suddenly just one or two turns away from a separate loop's payoff.

Insidious. It's why I still play those games after so many thousand hours.

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Willtron

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Edited By Willtron

It's so damned nerdy, but the loop of "tinker with tactics in Football Manager, play a game, lose, curse like a god-damned sailor because you can't figure out what's wrong, buy players in hopes that they'll fix your tactical ineptitude, still lose, rinse, repeat." The gameplay loop in FM of eternally tinkering with tactics and thinking you're hot shit and trying to snatch up "wonderkids" is immensely satisfying year in and year out. Honestly, in good sports games, this is my favourite thing—tinkering with systems and fitting in players to said systems and seeing how I can develop said players and systems in tandem. Building a starting eleven in PES or Football Manager around a stalwart, young centre mid with a screamer of a long shot and awesome passing ability to bomb balls to some lanky-ass ginger Scottish kid I've pulled out of obscurity or the next young Brazilian superstar I've snatched up on the cheap and brought to whatever club I'm playing with is immensely fun. There's something immensely satisfying and RPG-ish in seeing your players progress and utiziling their unique skills. And seeing how players can improve your team and just how they play differently and how their strengths can cooperate and they can make up for each other's weaknesses is rad. Basically, when a sports game gets its player types right and dudes feel unique, it is immensely satisfying to fuck around with signings and strategies and build a team that feels all your own.

Something like PES or Football Manager or even NBA 2K16 feels like you've got players that feel unique and getting to know player's strengths and weaknesses and signing the type of player that fits your needs perfect, for me, is awesome. A game like, say, NHL 16, while fun to play, just doesn't scratch that itch for me because players just don't feel all that differentiated. It's just like... well, this dude doesn't lose the puck as much and this goalie isn't so shitty at giving up rebounds. Players don't feel too unique like the games I mentioned above. And that's a shame.

It's funny, too, because I don't much care for watching a lot of sports, but I love playing sports games because I can get so, so invested in the Franchise/GM modes.

I also very much love this article too, Austin. It's some great stuff.

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BladedEdge

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Edited By BladedEdge

I'm not sure there is a cycle/loop that describes my preference in games unless you allow for there to be an end.

Story, I want a good story. And thus at some point, the cycle, loop, whatever it is I am doing in order to progress the story, has to end, right?

Lots of games have fun mechanics, but its the same reason I never got into WoW (aside from social anxiety). Loops=grind in my mind, and grind without story is meaningless to me.

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Jericu

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It's not really one that's stuck with me as much as one that's on my mind since I've been playing it lately:the Revelation Flow system in Rogue Galaxy. Mostly how it doesn't seem to work as intended.

The Revelation Flow is how you unlock skills in the game: if you've unlocked the prerequisite skills, you can put specific items into a new skill in the Revelation Flow. Once a skill gets all the items it needs, it unlocks, and you can use it in battle and start putting items into the newly available skills. In theory, this leads to a loop where you find a new item, and carefully consider which character gets it for which skill. But the skills require exact, specific items, and there's such a wide variety of items used, so the loop actually ends up being find a new item>see if anyone needs it>plop it down wherever it can go.

It would probably work out better if it had a FFXII like system, where there are just points you get, or some other nebulous currency used. But there aren't nearly as many skills available in Rogue Galaxy (at least, per character, everyone has a unique Revelation Flow), so finding items is the only way in which it feels all that interesting.

To be honest, it's just one more flaw in a fairly flawed game. I'm still enjoying it a bunch, probably as much as when I played it when I was like 13 or something, and a lot of the issues seem to stem from the time the game was made. But the Revelation Flow feels like something that's not an issue of the time as much as an idea they couldn't quite make work. I haven't played many other Level 5 games, so I'm a bit curious if similar systems are used in other games.

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Redhotchilimist

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Edited By Redhotchilimist

A Good Gardener reminds me of MGSV. I wonder if anyone bothered to not kidnap soldiers or build a bigger platform to slow the growth of their global spanning PMC out of bad conscience. It's one of the game's successes that they made the player want to do so because it's fun and gives you more abilites and options. The kind of indie games that seem to not want you to play them is fine by me, because I don't want to play them either. But I think it's nice when a game makes you want to do something that's ultimately a bad idea because it would be engaging to do so. It doesn't feel like preaching anymore, because I'm having a good time.

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My first thought about the question is that "gameplay loop" is mostly used by Brad to describe the sort of loot games that make me sleepy just to think about. My second is that Henry Hatsworth had the most unique one I could think of! Not a ton of games where you do hard platforming one second and puzzle games the next, and they influence each other in more ways than opening a door to the next room.

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baka_shinji17

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I really liked that piece on Rosa Var Attre in the Witcher 3. The ending to that part of the quest took me aback. It seemed true to life though, sometimes you think a relationship will go somewhere and it doesn't, you just have to move on. I felt similarly about what happened to Tamara Strenger at the end of the Bloody Baron quest.

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audiosnow

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That sounds an awful lot like Sunset.

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For me it's the original Planetside. Specifically the meta-gameplay loop. It would go like this: battle between your base and the enemy base with tanks and aircraft -> fight immediately around and inside the courtyard of the base with vehicles and infantry -> battle inside the base with just infantry -> capture the base (or defend the base from capture) -> repeat. Of course that loop could change at any moment, since the other faction or a spec ops team from the empire you're fighting could get behind you and try and take a base you weren't paying attention to.

No other game has ever given me the feeling of "this battle actually matters" as Planetside did. It was usually a slow, methodical push towards the enemy base, and you could actually see the front line shifting back and forth every time you respawned. Eventually you'd push them back to their base, and someone on your team would have to set up an AMS (mobile spawn point) while others took the tower and still others tried to take out the enemy's vehicle pad. Five to ten minutes later you'd push in to their courtyard and they wouldn't be able to get outside anymore, so you'd set up outside the main door or the backdoor and every few minutes a wave of teammates would bust though and try and make headway inside. Your empire would slowly inch their way towards the generator or the command point, but you still weren't done! Now you have to defend the base for 15 minutes while the army you just pushed out tries to stop you from capturing it. Then you do it all again until you've captured the entire landmass.

It was simply amazing, and something I feel like Planetside 2 never quite figured out. I almost never felt like we were moving the front line in PS2, it was more of a stroll from base to base with a few skirmishes here and there. Battles inside of bases felt more like a deathmatch instead of a defense you had to slowly crack through. It was all too hectic. Planetside 1 felt like a never ending war that crept across the planet, while PS2 felt like a series of disconnected battles over land I don't care about.

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glass_flame

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The gameplay loop that immediately comes to mind is from the Souls series, specifically Dark Souls since it was the first one I played, and as such the first time I came in contact with it. That was the first time a game had really struck me as being a learning experience, where you die frequently and aren't allowed to progress until you had effectively mastered a section of the game. When I was playing Dark Souls I didn't yet have the understanding that you can just run past the majority of the regular enemies the games throw at you if you don't want to deal with them, so I had this wonderful image in my head of restarting from the bonfire and rewriting history until I achieved the best possible version of reality with regards to my performance in that area.

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So the only gameplay loops I really think about are in games that I really don't care about the story in. My podcast games, basically.

The two that come to mind are Path of Exile and Warframe.

Path of exile is interesting in that it opens up to you so gradually, not by any means of gameplay restrictions or anything, but with knowledge restrictions.

The first character you make in Path of Exile will most likely have a hard time progressing past the second difficulty unless you have some intuition for hack and slash games and know what to build. The other option is that you follow a guide for some basic build and get along fine that way.

In both cases you are probably going to feel somewhat constrained, either by the rigidness of the build you chose, or the difficulty of the game with your homemade one. The lessening of that feeling with every new character you make is really the part of the gameplay loop that is interesting to me in that game.

Sure I like killing loads of monsters in any Dioblo-like hack 'n' slash, but what keeps me coming back to PoE over Diablo 3 for example is the freedom that opens up to you when you understand how all these complex systems work together.

Warframe is another fun example, although not as involved. Warframe has a fun gameplay loop because of all the things that isn't the basic Look-Move-Aim-Shoot that a Halo, for example, would have. It's fun because you can fit other things like "Run on this wall and jump and shoot while slow motion diving" or "holy shit I'm a Mech Space Ninja look at me." in between them.

Good article Austin. I really like all the stuff you do on the site.