Making games is hard and taxing work. Coming up with interesting systems, seamlessly implementing them into the core product and then polishing them up to retail standard- it's a trip. So much work goes into getting that central product working, balanced, shining to a brilliant standard, that very rarely is there time then to think about 'minigames' that go attached with the project. Who has the time? The Capacity? And even then, what exactly is a minigame within the context of the development process? What makes it mini, but the containment program macro? And why bother with the development and implementation of a product that does not directly reinforce the central ethos of the delivered product? Isn't that, by and large, a betrayal of the tenants of design and storytelling? Clutter is the death of poignancy, afterall. And if not, why not? Questions and queries that could sink and drown for all most care, but I am the kind who ponders the pointless.
First off, we should acknowledge the truth that game design, or rather interactive design as a whole, has fundamentally different aims than most other forms of media, in general. Books, movies and TV shows- by their very nature, need to rely on the backbone of focus to be effective. Focus on the themes, the message, the environment- there needs to be some element that brings together all the aspects of development coherently otherwise the final product can feel meandering and disorganised, and the message becomes lost and muddy. This expectation of focus does start to drift, however, with the length of the product in question. TV shows are usually permitted more time to faff about with non-essential side narrative than a movie would be. Books can get away with twisted alternative plots that weave around the central plot when they want to. And games, arguably the longest form of media in their most bloated forms, can tug at the very boundaries of cohesion without rubbing up against it's audience's patience.
In this way the precedent for the implementation of minigames seems feasible, but let us further define the topic just to be safe. Minigames are self contained units of a game separate to but contained within the core game. A world within a world, so to speak. A minigame is perhaps best defined by it's complete distinction from the core game in that the effect that the player has in manipulating it's world bears no significant effect on the wider world. For example, winning a game of Virtu-Fighter in a Yakuza game might help you succeed at a side quest, but the fight within the minigame of Virtu-Fighter does not resolve any narrative situations within the game, it was merely a vehicle through which the side-game was played. Whereas the 'side game' of micro-managing purchasing various businesses around town in order to save the locals from greedy venture capitalists, would be considered a 'meta game'- because it takes a consequential world event and gamifies it. There's your distinction, Meta versus Minigames.
So Minigames are by design side content. Which makes them inconsequential then, right? Perhaps, but I'd argue it really comes down to the scope of what you are trying to make. Solidly narrative experiences that prioritise the delivery and presentation of every single square second of their game can probably safely steer clear of the very idea of Minigames- but those titles that want to instead simulate the feeling of being in another world, like many games do, would be better served by paying attention to exactly how minigames might aid that pursuit. A well designed and well placed minigame can, in the best scenario, better flesh out the fiction of the world you are trying to build. How better can you create the feeling of a world that people live in than by letting players engage with unwinding within the context of that world? A metatext under the core text.
Perhaps the biggest poster child for the supremacy of Minigames would be the Yakuza franchise, a series of games built around the premise of capturing the spirit of various Japanese districts in order to tell a dramatic gangster story around them. Yakuza prides itself on dozens of minigames all framed around the sorts of pastimes one would find in these sorts of areas. Hostess clubs, Pool bars, street Shogi players, Sauna's with Table Tennis attached, Batting parks, Karaoke, Bikini Wrestling betting circuits, gaming halls, bowling lanes, arcade stores that feature actual complete Sega games in them- You can essentially get lost playing a dozen other styles of game whilst playing your Yakuza game on top. And the effect builds a unbreakable image of Japanese culture so robust it makes these the ultimate tourist games, and that's not even the genre this franchise was built to cater to. All of that without sacrificing the quality of the main narrative- truly magical what they built.
Final Fantasy 7's Remake is also doing a solid job leaning into the world of Minigames in order to buff out it's gameplay loop, but here they serve a slightly different purpose. Building up the world of Midgar is important, but in the structure of an adventure game portraying a vast journey of character and distance, brief little Hub areas packed with different styles of minigames serve as opportunities for the gameplay to sprinkle a little variety for the player's benefit before things get too stale. Final Fantasy VII Remake's gameplay is solid, cinematic and punchy supplemented by a fantastic soundtrack to boot- but that doesn't mean the player won't start to find cracks if you leave them with it for too long. Maybe character switching feels a bit redundant when Cloud is the best damage dealer, maybe there's not quite as much responsiveness as one would like from the 'hold down to combo' gameplay style- but now I'm doing a pull-up competition as Tifa, or playing a quick mini-tactics game of Fort Condor as Yuffie- and now I can't remember what it was I had complaints about.
Not every game marries itself to the idea of Minigames quite so staunchly, but you'll find their like popping up here and there. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was well know for it's own unique minigame in the form of the competitive card-game Gwent- which proved to be such a worthwhile distraction to the whole 'world wide Witchering' scene that it eventually evolved into it's own game. Fallout New Vegas featured a whole bunch of minigames featured around the gambling life-style that Vegas Champions including the infamous Caravan which is so ludicrously simple it's almost a joke that most people write it off as painfully complicated and beyond possible comprehension. And even the most recent iteration of Mount and Blade featured it's own set of boardgames, one for each culture, each based off of medieval boardgames of the era.
Minigames are often discarded as extra fluff atop the core package of a smoothed and finished game, but in my mind the level of understanding and forethought it takes to intelligently conceive of, and then implement, a worthwhile gameplay ecosystem within the grand structure of the full product demonstrates a degree of design synthesis worth building a soul around. I'm not saying that any game with a minigame automatically has a soul that makes it worth playing, but any game that does have a soul, probably could sustain a minigame or two. Very few games are made worse by a little deviation off the beaten path- and beyond that who doesn't love the twisting implications of choosing to unwind within an unwinding activity? You'll start feeling like Ryker in that mind prison if you think about it too long. Dreams in dreams.
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