Minimalist effect in the maximalist market ~ ANTREPO BLOG / A2591
I wish more products took advantage of a minimalist design.
The need for instant gratification…
I just gave up playing Need for Speed Hot Pursuit on PS3. Why… well it wasn’t very engaging for starters, and the second reason is the point of this post. I didn’t really need to work hard to unlock a car I really wanted, or do that one extra race one night to unlock a new level, I was unlocking stuff faster than I could use it.
The one thing that stuck me the most about the game (and a trend in recent years) is to reward me with new cars almost after every race… I had so many cars I didn’t even have enough races to drive each of them, let alone make a connection with any.
Previous versions of Hot Pursuit game on PS1 and PS2 had a much smaller variety of cars, but it allowed me to make a connection with a few which were my favourites. I knew how each handled, and the pros and cons of using them. In recent games I find there appears to be small incessant need to give the player as many cars as possible, because you need to keep up with the latest and fastest cars to continue, you do not really get an opportunity to drive most cars more than once or twice.
I would prefer to see development resources spent on gameplay or detail than creating an unnecessary amount of content that will not be used by most people.
