Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Just realised why games are dumbing down...
GTwander
Member UncommonPosts: 6,035
Generation clash.
I, for one, was born in 83' and had my hands on an NES by the time I was two. I still have memories of playing Metroid and having absolutely no clue as to what to do with it, but eventually kicking the shit out of that game at a *very* early age. Regardless of the age you were when you played the incredibly difficult games of the first generation of home consoles, you likely have a skillset I would consider 'superior' to modern gamers, that is, unless you were never able to get over the peripheral challenge that came with PS2-era controllers.
Gamers indoctrinated at any point around say, the N64, have no clue how difficult games used to be, and if confronted with one, they would pull hairs out. I've actually seen this in many of my younger friends that had an older brother's NES and never got into it, but jumped right into the first Xbox easily. Likely because it looked better, and not much else... but I would definitely argue that simplicity/ease is the hallmark of the later generations of gamers, while those around at the inception of the industry will constantly search for something more challenging.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Comments
My entry point into gaming was PONG, Atari 2600, and the Magnavox Odessey. One button on the controller. It was amazing at the time -- hand-to-eye coordination in its purest form. Up the difficulty until you could simply not react fast enough. The early games didn't end. You played until the game kicked your a**...and you knew it eventually would. That's the way games worked. Very simple fun, but also harsh. Games like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, KC's Crazy Chase, etc.
Later came Colecovision and Intellivision (holy crap Intellivision had lots of buttons). Though there was color, the games didn't really change much. Same old..play until you could not surpass the speed of sound and light, your brain could not react as fast as objects on the screen.
While this type of level-difficulty design is still present in video games today, many games do have an actual end and a larger variety of games are available. I have an 8 year old here that can absolutely hand me my a** in any Xbox 360 game. However, I have noticed that most of my kids tend to stray away from difficulty challenges. Instead the difficulty comes in the form of more complex controls, themes, and the multitude of genres available today. Interaction, in itself, is more challenging and the mind processes entertainment in ways that become increasingly closer to reality.
I do agree that challenge is less of a factor today with games, but the challenges are still out there should a gamer wish to seek one out. But that's a natural progression, don't you think? Not everybody is a competitve gamer? It just means more people are playing video games.
I disagree. I've felt that games have become simpler because developers keep chasing this pipe dream of making "movie games". Interactive cinema. They sacrifice hand-eye coordination in order to mimic movies and appeal to a larger audience.
I remember Metal Gear: Sons of Liberty getting blasted by hardcore gamers for being little more than an interactive movie. But you should revisit that game now. By today's standards, that game is challenging.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Well, besides the hand-eye coordination side of it (to which I DESTROY all my friends, comparably), I was leaning more towards the 'thinking man's game' side of hte argument. Abstract logic and whatnot, as needed in an exploration game like the original Metroid, or the various adventure games of old (Maniac Mansion ftw).
It seems to me that games, as a collective, have moved towards having to think less (thusly, less complicated and challenging in that regard), and being much more competitive - which turns me way off - because I can't stand a sore loser... and I have seen my share of them over the years, progressively getting worse as games get more simple, strangely enough.
@Danny
Nobody in their right mind would argue that MGS games lack enough cutscenes. It's a difficult game when you can actually make them all STFU (!!!) and just let you play the damned thing. So it's hard to determine what people stopped playing because of the blabbity blab, and those that stopped because they were getting their ass handed to them. I have a friend that was psyched about MGS4 until he got his hands on it, and I can't figure which part of it made him stop playing... he is as impatient as he is stupid, so it's hard to tell.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
It isn't a generation clash, it's a broader appeal to the masses. Think about how much revenue basic games like CoD generate vs. anything more complex. Gaming is not for a fringe group and children anymore, it is the most viable form of entertainment. With that comes a price, and that is accessability, controls need to intuitive, not innovative.
~but when I was a child, I was playing games meant for said "fringe group".
Perhaps because that was the choice at-hand back then, but there were still plenty of kids games that simply didn't interest me. I wanted what the adults were playing, and I think that's a sentiment that still exists today - even when those games meant for adults are aimed at a broader audience, as you say.
Again, a game that aims at a "broader" base of players doesn't make it good, it makes it a potential seller. We could argue all day about the Transfomer's movie franchise, which made more than it deserved to, vs Donnie Darko, which absolutely flubbed in theaters and didn't make the money back until it hit DvD.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Nostalgia bias: the first game we play always feels more complex than the second one we play.
Wrong. EVE feels much more complicated than Mail Order Monsters did on my dad's Commodore 64.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
True, but yet false.
Can anyone argue the complexity of early MMOs vs todays? Difficulty was also part of the discussion, and can also pose the same question for just about any genre.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Games are simpler because the pinnacle of game design isn't complexity. It's simplicity.
Chess is not a complex game. It's deep-yet-simple. The rules can fit on one piece of paper. That's good game design.
It's good to strive for simplicity, but you have to also implement deep systems. WOW accomplished that (despite naysayers seeing the skin-deep simplicity and assuming it was a shallow game, when it wasn't,) and that was a big part of the game's success.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I quit playing WoW in early 2006 and when a friend talked me back into it a few years later everyone was using ummm I think it is called Quest Helper or something like that, so all the quest text became pointless and everyone was just following the shiny thing on their mini map in the optimal route that was automatically generated. I was flabbergasted.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
Hmm, but I know people ([mod edit]) that would disagree.
The rules fit on a piece of paper, but the applications thereof are thesis-worthy. Give people the option of choice, mixed with the chance to make a poor one, and they will seize up... maybe even flip the table at some point.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
i think games are easier for the older generation because we have had tons of practice with them. console and pc commands are almost at a set standard. how many games use WASD to move? M is open map. J or L is quest journal. or on console (havent owned one since SNES) but, B was run faster. A jump...etc. as we got older we got more familiar and new game designers adopted the standards set by their predecessors.
are some games really easy today? sure. but i think companies market games toward a younger audience. like they marketed towards us when we were young. so a combination of us growing up, marketing staying young, and our familiarity with the concepts and control schemes we grew up with, have all contributed to how easy we percieve games to be.
lol...I guess my nostalgia is just different, and perhaps the OP is right -- there are significant generation gaps and you can relate that even to the games we play. The games I started on were just simple stupid. Games today are more complex in operation, construction, design, and with way more variety.
Though I see where the idea of "dumbed down" comes from, the brain processes so much more information than early games. Even what one person might consider a simple game, can be very stirring to a child's imagination and even what we might perceive as skill level.
@OP - I see where you're coming from as far as "thinking" games. Then again, there is an entire strategy genre out there that simply did not exist for my generation.
I disagree that they are being dumbed down. I certainly don't recall early MMO's being difficult, just long and tedious. There were old gamers then, there are old gamers now. There are 8 year olds playing games now, there were 8 year olds playing games then.
The difference? You. Your different. Your more experienced.
edit- I do consider some games difficult: Early Kings quest and Riven come to mind. However they were the excpetion, not the norm.
I accept the validity of your criticism of my use of the word "always".
Mainstream appeal for the mainstream IQ.
*shakes fist*
C'mon! I could have been referring to my personal friend, the same guy mentioned in the part on MGS4, who IS "stupid" and simply refuses to play chess because of it. It wasn't aimed at any poster ffs.
I know I'm on a watch list and everything, but daaamn..
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Careful with the "S" word, the "N" word, "C" word, "F" word, "R" word, "M" word.... Gotta keep the lingo as sterile and inoffensive as possible.
Perosnally gamers today quite frankly don't even have 20% of the skill that older gamers have, which is why the devs have to cater to the biggest group, which is the no-skill gamers of the last generation or so. I haven't played a game in the last 15 years or more that I'd actually consider hard. Yet people these days whine about any sort of a small challenge in their games. Ahh well its the times I guess. MMOI's are also dumbed down and made near stupid-proof for the stupid cattle that are casual gamers. WoW was the first mmo to really cater to casuals and now its destroyed the genre, because ever mmo that comes out now is overly simplified and bascally ends up being wow in a new skin. I've pretty much given up on mmorpgs, everyone pretty much that has come out since wow, has pretty much been the exact same game with the same or very simmlar combat, same on rails quest grinds to max level, and worse of all... They bascally are single player games with an irc chat system. I miss the old days when you had to team up to get things done at all levels, these new mmo's where you can solo to cap have gone to stop imo. I mean I can just play a single player rpg (which is prob better than any mmo now a days) if I wanted to play something solo.
Games in general have gone from, games being made for the players to have fun, to being: how much of a cash cow can we make with a minimum investment needed. Current crop of mmo's and most games fit this, alot of them just feel like low budget moneygrabs, diablo 3 especally fits this, for how long it was in devolopment is this piece of shit blizzard delivered the best they could do with a near unlimited budget due to wow subs? I got bored of D3 fairly fast, because the game was a very shallow experence, no decisions to make, etc, I'd have to say its even more boring than a korean grinder, cuz at least in kr grinders you have decisions to make about your char, where as in d3 everything is done for you. [mod edit] they just aren't worth buying anymore till the devs smarten up. Only games I have bought in recent years other than diablo 3 have been indie titles, because indie titles actully are unique, and a nice change from most devs just releasing the next rehash of their main game series.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
I can tell you're an old timer, and you had me at hello. Statements like this, however, make me side with the devs. It is only good business sense to not put more into a product than you can get out of it. In this regard, every game is a cash grab if you tend to view your leisure time & cash with such negativity.
That said, the pirating of games really does nothing for the advancement of gaming as a whole...other than to force devs to create methods of copy protection. That comes out of your pocket and enjoyment, one way or the other.
I realize that doesn't directly relate to the topic at hand, but if a business needs to get more out of a product due to loss, the end result is lower quality products or higher prices. Theft is one form of loss to a dev/publisher, and that does not contribute to the production of higher quality games for the skilled player.
I believe it's more than this, though I loved your post. I am 42, btw.
MMORPGs were created to stimulate a market of gamers that spent some evenings every given month (or week even) playing Dungeons and Dragons, and various other pen and paper tabel top "live LARP acting" RPGs (I was part of the CLC or College of Lake County Gamers club in Mundelein, Illinois, I was also a member of Don's Dungeon in Seattle Washington and the Dragon's Nest in Albuquerque, New Mexico).
Some of those gamers went on to create Everquest and Dark age of Camelot, Ultima (of course!), and so forth. The developers of those titles learned how to work together on these gaming nights, accomplish complex tasks, and compete against a human adversary (the dungeon master). They brought that into the mmoRPG market (which they created anyway) and brought like-minded gamers with them.
We played our characters as they would have lived and breathed. No we didn't sit and spit out poorly contrived Shakespeare, but we did leave out the "dude" speak and what was going on in the States at that time.
When this community of gamers transitioned from table top to mmoRPG, they brought with them that same sense of play excellence and community building. They brought creativity and a willingness to want meat to their mmoRPG.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have to say that until World of Warcraft released in 2004, you had two types of online gamers. The fantasy players who brought the old community online, and the FPS guys who were playing Counterstrike and RTS games.
WoW brought the the FPS folks into the mmorpg world and overnight we had communities of DUDE-SPEAK and LEET-PWN-YOUR-FACE- etc type talk. The community of the FPS mingled with the mmoRPG and before you know it, like an incoming virus, the older gaming crowd was consumed.
Today's MMOs (I won't even add RPG to today's mmos) are the fat taken from the meat of what once was. The games are dummed down and overhyped with equal enthusiasm. Hordes of players support these games for 1-3 months and then the games nosedive and the fans move to the next big download.
The age of the mmoRPG has died, Gandalf and the Elves have taken Frodo and Bilbo into the West, and now is the time of the mmoVG the massively multi player online video game.
Sauron should be pleased.
Too me it just seems like all the games aren't dumbing down its that we are being able too control the games better and more easly then in the past its more of the better and smoother the game is the "Easier" it is but its not its that our rection and the whole game is better made too respect the fact were humans and not perfect shot machines so yes in some ways games have dumbed down but they have also became more human like as if they were real.
My point exactly.
And Turtle, what you said about Kung Fu Panda being produced long after Mists of Pandaria was in the WoW RPG was awesome /salute. I wish more folks realized that
It's pretty simple really. I started at pretty much the exact same time as the OP and got into PC gaming during the 486 DX era. The games I played back then were made by developers that saw there wasnt a game like they wanted play, so they made it. The fondest memories I have of those days were playing syndicate, xcom, doom, theme park and sam and max. Those first in the series games didnt have many if any simillar titles, they were groundbreaking games no one had seen before.
Skip forward to today and we have developers trying to make the biggest profit, hence making games for a broad age/inteligence range. No longer are games about what "nerds" want, its about how many kids/low iq people can you get to buy your game without scaring away all of the adults/intelligent people, which usually always fails. The industry isnt about inovation and making cool things made of win, its about making money.
Zillion for the sega master system. Youll pay your dues trying to beat that game.. get in and get out before you either lose your 3 continues or the self destruct goes off...no save game. That game had challenge.
way too much for kids nowadays...