Imagine this situation:

You are in the middle of a boss fight, fighting a boss in the manner that bosses are usually fought. During the battle, you notice a guard. After a while, the guard looks at you, you hear the sound of a whistle, and a message comes up to the effect of "you have been caught, try again". At this point, you are thrown out of the boss fight and have to start it over.

How would you react if a game did this?

Also, do you know of any games that actually did this? (I wouldn't do this in any game I would make, except maybe in an optional no-reward mission as a joke.)

With all due respect dt, what are you smoking? :P

Happened to me in Battle Chess.

Sounds like a insta-kill QTE. :P

that's pretty dang cheap.

I would uninstall and refund the game in question and subscribe myself to a life of deriding the developers of such an atrocity.

RULE #1 of Games: afford the player agency in your virtual world and then respect said agency to the highest degree. These extrinsic experiences are the intent for which your design should strive to invoke as a game designer.

If your's in a linear recounting that punishes the player for stepping outside your arbitrarily prescribed bounds--then i would suggest that video games is not your affinitive (I invent new words so you don't have to!) medium--try writing or film-making.

A boss fight where if you don't win after x amount of time you are given the bum's rush by some hired goon? That doesn't make sense to me. I can't really think of a scenario where that would happen.

I think you don't quite understand what is happening here. The game isn't punishing you for going off the path; rather it is punishing you for not noticing the guard while you are busy trying to fight the boss, or for not realizing that the guard can see the specific spot. It's still something that I would consider poor game design, and something I would refuse to put in a game, and that might ruin a game for me.

Anyway, one question: What if the linear game, instead of punishing the player for stepping outside the bounds, simply doesn't allow it to be done? In other words, instead of the game saying "you shouldn't have gone there", the game instead has a physical obstacle in the way?

(The example I am giving in this topic is *intended* to be an example of bad game design.)

Are you high?

No, I understand.

Ultimately, we have games that respects player input and celebrates their contribution and is a more complete endeavor for these efforts

and then we have linear narratives that solely exit as a masturbatory edifice to some person in need of an excuse to find a greater understanding of being through the soft imposition of like ideas under the preface of "FUN"

People be people (true story!)

I can make this situation even worse. After many tries, you kill the boss, go to pick up the item the boss dies (which is needed to progress to the next level), and get seen from the guard, throwing you out of the boss arena and forcing you to kill the boss *again*.

Even worse, what if you had to escape without being caught by the guards, and if you are caught, you have to fight the boss again.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if some game developer actually did such things. Every now and then, I learn about bad game design and wonder "what was the designer thinking?".

Laugh; completely remove the game from my life; prepare for upcoming hilarity on YouTube about how edgy and hip the game is; add developer to blacklist of 'cool devs who make things interesting'.

When I read the thread title, I set my hope up for some authentic game design fail, so I'm a bit disappointed.

Still, that would be a plenty awesome screwup! :D

Incidentically, the idea has already been used in the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Wow so, Darkest Souls?

bad games can be created, it's no mystery and should not exist as any doubt or romanticism.

making a game on the premise of being bastard-hard for bastard-hardness sake is a failed endeavor out the gate

ultimately, a game needs to be fun=even if it's for a distinct minority.

what needs to be respected is your prescribed player base's willingness to invest in to your arbitrary TTF

Game designers need to remember that their works are meaningless without people to appreciate them

and the creative apparition aside, they are innately affiliated with the audience they hope to achieve.

Depends on your auditory.

If the auditory are adult people, who have maximum of 2-3 hours free (3-4 topmost on weekend) to play, increasing grind, adding a lot of condition checks and mechanics will not appeal to them. They like games to be games, something to spend limited time with pleasure.

The whole class of games with such mechanics can be most observed in online(only) mass multiplayer RPGs with transactions and grinding so high, even "bot-farming" is inefficient. The only buyer of such games will then be possibly schoolboys/girls with massive amount of time to waste and little/lacking self-respect/capability to reason as to why they do this to themselves.

You seem to be well-adjusted and articulated, and I really would like an answer from you, as I'm quite inquisitive:

Why do you see common sense as the opposite to science?