Fifteen years ago my brother and I purchased the world’s best game (’95 was the one we actually had, it was like ’94 but with some small gameplay improvements – graphics were the same). We played the game all the time in head-to-head mode. At some point we played the game every day for several hours – we waited for the school to end to play the game. We didn’t play the league, but mainly the 1 versus 1. (Also our big brother joined the matches every now and then).

Even though there was certain tricks on how to score against AI, those same tricks weren’t so easy to do since there was human player whose way of playing you knew inside out. Often both of us had players stopped exactly the same time. Often we could knew where the puck will go next. We knew when a pass would come.

It was bloody addictive, but eventually (like after 3-4 years of playing or something) we slowly faded away from that game and tried the newer versions (none of the newer versions ever could match with 95 version).

Years (more than a decade) passed, until some time ago my brother hinted that there’s the emulator available for the the world’s best game. Nowadays I’m slightly less available to play games (much more time goes to making them), but occasionally I take time to play something. Now we have played NHL94 online, and it’s still the world’s best game.

It’s bit strange, but almost nothing has changed: the same old graphics and (almost) the same gameplay is just bloody addictive. What’s different that now we play it online instead of sitting next to each other.

To me, NHL94/95 has given me one of the best gaming moments in my life, and amazingly the same game (now with online multiplayer) is still easily in TOP2 of the games I enjoy (Left 4 Dead being the other game – multiplayer of course).

I guess to me the best experience comes from playing together, rather than from the actual game features.

I suppose games can be bit like a food: best served in good company.

Like a week or two ago I found about this browser based zombie game Urban Dead. I joined the game, created a character (zombie of course) and then stared a screen that said where I am. There was an available action “attack barricade”, and I started clicking like 30 times or something until I run out of action points.

I thought… okay, what’s this game? I get to join and click 30-50 times some button and then I have to wait for the action points to restore. I noticed my experience points increasing and spotted that for the next skill I would need 100 points. I thought I wouldn’t never touch the game ever again.

The day after… I knew my character action points were revived, so I thought to have a quick login. I spotted that somebody had shot me in the head, so I needed to stand up (cost 10 action points out of maximum 50) I moved couple of blocks away and again started attacking some barricade. All this happened in like 3 minutes or something. Again I gained some experience points.

Again I pondered: what’s this? Why would people play this?

Some reasons:
Some days later I still came back to gain some experience. I moved around, and even attacked and bited some other human characters and I really started pondering what was the reason I still come back. According to the Wiki and forums, some people seemed to complain about the 50 action point per day limit, but I think that might be one of the reasons why people come back as often as possible. After all, since you can only have 50 points per day, if you don’t spend those you are kind of like missing an opportunity (and spending the action points – and receiving experience – takes like a few minutes so there’s really no reason not to play the game).

Third reason – and perhaps the main reason – for me was the fact that I gained experience points and noticed that when I get 100 points I will get something fun. I know that gaining levels and experience points are like the oldest trick in the design, but I kind of felt that “I’ve done and seen this ‘gain experience, gain levels’ like in zillion games, why would I be interested about this any more?”

But, it doesn’t go like this. Even though I know that gaining experience and then gaining levels is as old as a Santa Claus it doesn’t mean it should be used. I believe that this “experience point gathering” (even if it’s as stupid as “come here every day and click button 20 times”) was like 90% of the reason I logged in again and again.

Are you a level addict?
What about you guys, do you think gaining experience points is fun… or is it a dull mechanism that needs to be replaced with something else (I know some people prefer skill based experience gaining: “by using a sword your sword using skill gets better”).