I think that this “simple things are hard” is one reason that people who’ve never played games are put off by so many of them. If you grew up playing “Doom”, then you might not be the best at some FPS, but you have a basic idea of what you’re doing. If you didn’t you end up walking into a wall and getting shot. You’re not even good enough that it seems possible to learn, and you just don’t play.

I think you were right at the beginning, when you said that adventure games and action games were opposite. I disagree that simple actions are hard in adventure games. In a good adventure game actions are easy. The challenge becomes deciding WHAT to do instead of concentrating on doing it. All of the details are abstracted away, and when you think of trying something, you just do, and the result happens. You can’t do irrelevant things, because it’s too hard to make a game where anything is possible, but anything that makes sense just happens, usually when you click a relevant object. Bad adventure games, I think, primarily suffer because the actions the user wants to perform don’t match the actions the designer thought the user would want to perform (all of your adventure game cons except “too slow”, and maybe “extremely limited game world”).

I have to say that even though I said in the last paragraph that I thought you were right and action and adventure games were fundamental opposites, that this clearly isn’t purely the case. I’m thinking, specifically, of “Another World”, which I just found sitting at my parents place and decided to play again. Wikipedia says it’s a “Cinematic Plat former” which is clearly a form of action game, but much of the game is actually about deciding what to do. Then, once you’ve figured it out you have to practice a couple times to actually do it in an action sequence. A great blend, as long as dying doesn’t ruin your suspension of disbelief.

You may have detected in my previous paragraphs a preference for adventure games. That’s because I have one. That may make me, perhaps, a bit biased, so keep that in mind.

Good reviews on the originals made me happy.

The fans made me happy.

The friends I made making the game made me happy.

I’m happy I have a career, and that’s in big part because of Ratchet.

So there’s a lot about Ratchet that makes me happy, but it tends to dredge up some painful stuff too.

All things in balance, I suppose.

I can’t wait to see what this prototype is for !