I’m not sure if I wrote it clearly enough here but what is fundamental in the choice to go twitch is to incorporate progressively gameplay elements that aren’t too abstract and that MAKE SENSE. Like adding elements that can give the perception of the space a decent value. And this only because we are human beings who like games that simulate experiences that we can understand and relate to. This isn’t about fancy design hypothesis, this is a nature we cannot negate.

Twitch is good not because you have to break your mouse to play effectively:

Ethic:
I aim and left-click on a trooper and my laser pistol fires and hits. Click, click, click as fast as I can.

It feels like it will be a click-fest during combat.

But because it integrates a pattern (you have a pistol, you have to aim at target, and shoot) that people can relate to. That is somewhat visceral. Not made up, constructed or abstracted.

Now there’s a video that has been linked and that shows what I fear about this last change. But this “danger” goes beyond the problem pointed in that video.

In fact a decent (and fun) simulation of ranged combat isn’t just about the one element of aiming. That’s probably the less important one. The combat in “Jagged Alliance” (a tactical game) was great and realistic, but it didn’t include aiming, or at least not directly. But it included many, many other fundamental gameplay elements that are totally missing from SWG. Like arcs of fire, rates of fire, positioning and range. In particular the environments become a strong part of the gameplay and don’t just sit there as empty boxes with walls. The place sets the strategy, the situation. You can use walls and objects to take cover, hide, barrage fire. And then camping a zone, sending out other people while you cover them and so on.

ALL these elements are what make a game fun. Often just a different environment and layout is enough to present a whole new situation that you’ll have to study and solve. But this can happen only because there are *many* elements that come into play and that you have to consider. The good FPS aren’t those game that limit the action to a dull but frenetic clickfest, but are those that integrate all those elements right into the gameplay. The “first person” becomes then an optimal way to remove the abstractions and feel and understand directly the scope of the gameplay. These types of games are more successful because of the lack of abstraction and the presence of gameplay elements that are felt more natural.

Now the core point is about trying to integrate all those basic elements that the players expect from a situation like the ranged combat. It’s totally irrelevant if we build a system that is twitch, or one that is turn based or something else. We still need to integrate those elements that make sense, that the players can understand and use easily.

So it’s a terrible, superficial mistake to consider “twitch” as just “aim and click”. The player who made the video is complaining about the blaster bolts following the target, but he is not complaining because it’s simply ugly to see. But because this implies that the movement, positioning and range are elements completely irrelevant in the game.

This is why I believe that the very first priority should be about readding some of the elements I listed above to the gameplay. And it’s also the reason why the current games try to incorporate more and more of those visceral elements of the reality, like the physical consistence and all the new physics engines that are now trivialized as nothing more than a trend. And this is also why I believe that Prey is an extremely interesting game that will introduce some truly new and interesting patterns into the genre.

Which also brings back to my: “The graphic is the game”

These games need to renounce progressively to interfaces and abstraction to incorporate those elements (that cannot be lost or discarded) as a direct feedback and type of gameplay.

“Twitch” doesn’t mean that the game will be dumbed down. But a superficial implementation of twitch could do that.