Games that require serious non game skills to play?
Games are often seen as tests of various skills, however most that everybody knows tend to test a fairly consistent set of them which most would be game players can learn and adapt to fairly quickly.
However they often shy away from asking people to use skills found in many but not necessarily anything like all. Here we want to know what you have either encountered in a game and came to a dead end with, or even sought out as a game as you have or wish to develop the skills in question.
Sometimes use of these skills are impractical to simulate in a game but other times they are eminently doable but few game developers would make such a thing, possibly for fear of limiting their audience.
Darlings of the first wave of PC CD games the 7th Guest and 11th Hour were often noted for wanting quite considerable maths, word and logic skills the likes of which have seldom been seen in games since then.
Should I wander around in a game and a game then asks me to play a 16 note sequence in something like real time from this piece of sheet music... that is going to involve me generating a key to do it and will take hours for something someone that can play and read sheet music might do first time in 15 seconds flat.
Rocksmith could see a mention in this sort of discussion but as its goal is clearly stated as being a music trainer it might not count.
Ever played a sniper game and not been taught what all those lines inside your scope mean or how to use them? Sometimes you might be taught about bullet drop/ranging, and wind or leading a moving target but rarely how to use mildots or other aim assisting aspects.
Fez was a fairly notable platformer for its rotational world mechanics but some of its secrets, easter eggs and bonuses were incredibly obtuse and saw people recreate QR codes, decipher very long form binary.
The hacking minigame/bonus game for enter the matrix was something of a recreation of DOS, as opposed to the usual simplified version of an old arcade classic or item consumer.
Are there any skills you would like to see explored more in games in the future? Fiction is replete with examples of clever detectives solving word puzzles on ancient tombs (something rather lacking in games despite such a scenario being far from unexplored in computer games), and likewise it is not short of fiction depicting computer games with clever puzzles for people to solve to unlock a secret job or government contract. ARGs and hackme contests are arguably this as well but might not quite be a game you are going to complete by yourself or with a few mates.
This is part of a discussion series in which we discuss and ponder things about games, be it individual games, aspects of the game industry, gaming culture, mechanics or gaming concepts. Previously we discussed What technologies in 20 years will seem unfairly held back.
your best story from free form games, when your mental cutoff for "old games" lands, games and media franchises you know mostly from offbeat and forgotten sources, game franchises that rose from the dead, and those that should have stayed dead,Back in my day we didn't have X but did have Y. Gaming edition., what would $20 get you in your preferred gaming genre, games you play by your own rules., the state of VR and 3D and whether they had once more failed to take hold, the last game skill you unlearned, The game you invested the most money in, times where people said gameplay styles would not work for a platform, the value of online play, emulation vs hardware, a favoured game style that might have become less common in recent times, skills one might have learned or honed because of a game, games on the PS4 and Xbone that will stand the test of time, games that got better after launch, cancelled games and shuttered devs, and story canon in games.
