@Matt – Sweet. I love hearing about people’s gaming experiences. And because I hope I don’t buy another game until March (barring any unexpected indie releases with excellent trusted reviews) next week might finally be the week I answer questions. Maybe I’ll make the last article in every phase a Q&A session. Or maybe I’ll make the entire fourth phase a Q&A phase. Who knows, man!

My Question(s) for this week are: what, if anything, do you think of Fire Emblem Awakening and Bravely Default? I’ve played only a very little Fire Emblem and am wondering how much deeper it gets than rock-paper-scissors on a map, and Bravely Default looks like paper doll dressup time instead of hat party and what I’ve seen reminds me of Final Fantasy III DS – so do you have a better sense of what it is?

There are a number of theories that bounce around my head on the subject, but I in no way present these as fully formed assertions. The first is focus. The games that I’ve found to have the most impact tend to have great focus. Most, if not all, elements serve a core group of themes, and players feel like they have arrived somewhere when it is complete. It’s why I believe that shorter games have had the most success with impact recently. Not because an expansive game with tons of distractions can’t be given focus, but because I imagine it must be far more difficult to do so.

And, well, that’s the main one, really. The rest stem from it. One such subtheory pertains to environment. Not just in relation to mood and aesthetic value, but also the way in which environment interacts with gameplay. The environment can slowly teach a player how to get better at a game without even realizing it (returning to the “easy” version of a challenging remix level in SM3DW or Galaxy 2 are great examples) and if this process also ties into a game’s story or themes (as in a game like Braid or Journey), the game is far greater for it.