07. Great Games Outlast Their Era

A genuinely good game has a core pleasure that cuts through the era it was made in.

I read that line in an article and agreed with it immediately. A good game can be replayed endlessly, and the choices may lead somewhere different each time. That is what fascinates me.

In 2023 my wife and I finished It Takes Two, and we still take it out to play again. Its story is only part of what makes it fun. It has core gameplay elements that make you want to keep exploring and practicing.

After a loss, if I can see where my judgment went wrong, I have something to adjust next time. Even with the same inputs, a different timing, position, or choice produces a different result, and that keeps me thinking about it. These are ways to look at where a game's fun comes from.

Chess is a case in point: nothing flashy, just logic and a zero-sum board. If you have felt the strange pleasure of the eight queens puzzle or the knight's tour, the appeal of chess is not hard to explain.

I still play a lot of old single-player games: Heroes of Might and Magic III, Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX, eFootball PES 2021. Their core gameplay is far more complex than chess, and the pleasure of replaying them is hard to put into words. I keep going back anyway.

An old game still being fun today may also come from familiarity and memory, or from whether I am willing to put in the practice again. What I am really choosing is to recall and re-experience the plain, simple joy of days without much to worry about. Maybe that joy is what cut through the years and stayed with me.