Minigames: The Game Within A Game

Oftentimes games will have shorter little games to play during your adventure to acquire loot or access to certain areas.  Bioshock had hacking, Deus Ex had...hacking, Skyrim has lockpicking, Mass Effect had bypassing, etc.  Personally, I enjoy these diversions (when they're well done), especially if there are abilities to make them easier (which there usually are).  However, after awhile - and especially once you've maxxed out your stats for that game - you kind of just want to skip it and get the loot.  It becomes less fun and more of just something tedious to do.  Mass Effect lets you pay omni-gel to skip the mini-game and I think that's a good start, but personally, I think if you've proven yourself capable of solving the mini-game enough times before, you should have the option of just skipping it altogether with no cost or penalty whatsoever.  I would equate it to a transformation scene in cartoons, anime, or television.  The first few times this happens, the viewer gets a long sequence showing everything happening because it's an important thing that hasn't happened before.  However, as the show progresses, this sequence becomes shorter and shorter because the viewer has seen it and doesn't want to waste their time watching it again and again even though for the creator, it's a cheap, easy way to get more content made.

While thinking about these minigames, I also thought about crafting items in MMOs and that they could use a little minigame like this.  Currently, when you craft items, your avatar plays an animation for some amount of time and then you get an item with a random chance of a better item.  What if, instead, you could play a short game to determine the quality of item you get?  And if you started to get bored or annoyed with the minigame, you can have the option of skipping it for reduced chances at the same items?  So that way, if you really wanted to super awesome item, you can play a game and earn it through skill, but if you just don't care, you can just create an item without any worry and maybe get lucky?

I also think minigames could work in board games as well.  While the main game is going on when it's not your turn, you could play some side game of some sort to try to get some resources or somehow affect the outcome of the main game.  Obviously, I have not thought this part out enough to get details (or I just don't want to share them...MWAHAHAHA), but I think it's something that could warrant further thought.