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Games Are Supposed To Be Fun, Right?
The Game Chair has up an editorial examining the increasing complexity and learning curve that pervade todays games. He examines the reality that, for many people, games are becoming simply unfun. From the article: "As a Gamer, I am amazed and delighted that games have advanced as far as they have. I'm still blown away everytime a new Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda game comes out, and I look forward to spending hundreds of hours with them exploring all of their intricacies. That being said, the same things that attract me to these games might repel others who are casual gamers or non-Gamers. The importance of the 'pick-up and play' style of games, for me, lies not only in the nostalgia that I feel for them, but also in the importance of having games that are accessible to everyone."
More complex games, while harder to learn, usually entertain me longer than simple games. I still enjoy Starcraft, but I got bored with Bejeweled long ago.
At the same time, a complex game has to really attract my attention if I'm going to devote the time to learn it. When I started playing EQ, I was nearly overwhelmed with the learning curve. However, the premise was so inviting that I took the time to learn my way around.
Still other games just didn't look fun enough to figure out how to play.
Math has become increasingly more *unfun* stated one high school student...
...not Pac-Man.
seriously though... gamers have evolved... games have to evolve with them... what once held a challenge to the average gamer... no longer holds tru for today's gamer. Those kids are getting alot smarter...
I once thought Super Mario Bros. was *too hard*...
There are still plenty of *easier titles* available out there for the casual or non gamer. What you will notice however is those games tend to be cheaper... Most gamers who are the ones willing to spend the money today's games command... are the ones who want a challenge...
Of course I could be waaaaaaay off base here...
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
As a rule, games should be easy to learn, but difficult to master. This is accomplished by making the basic game play not require many various button presses at the start. Hense the easy levels. But as the player goes on in levels, more special equipment is picked up, and the game play becomes more challenging.
God spoke to me.
There is a similar dichotomy in board games at the moment. The casual board gamers (i.e., the typical American family) continue to buy "classic" games (Monopoly, Risk, Yahtzee, etc). Anyone can put these things on the table and play them (albeit, frequently not as the rules actually are spelled out...)
Meanwhile, there are several "hard core" gaming communities (Eurogamers, Grognards, etc) that demand games that fail to generate any interest at the Toys 'R Us level. The *interesting* thing is that (at least in America) the mass market controls board games (i.e., war-games are not sold at toy stores, nor are eurogames). In the computer game community, the Hard Core gamers seem to still control the gaming direction. Which seems a little weird to me, but enjoy it while you can, because once the development houses figure out they can sell 50 million "generic-easy-to-play" vs 5 million (if you are lucky) hard core games, the game industry will be nothing but forgettable tripe like the American board games available in the average store. I guess the only thing that keeps this unusual situation possible is the larger free time pool that the "hard core" can expend and the fact that $50 x 5 million looks acceptible compared to $10 x 50 million (especially with cost of shelf space, etc). If casual gamers continue to gain marketshare, expect that calculation to change.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Difficulty Levels. In the case of puzzlers, or shooters, it allows people to make the game as easy or hard as they feel they can and want to handle. For RPGs (or even FPSes), add a few hidden features and other "cool" things to make it worthwhile to play at a reasonably hard level (options and features you can't get at the easy level, or without completing a difficult side-quest). Maybe more than a few.... but this allows newer gamers to "enjoy" the fundamentals of the game without becoming frustrated that they can't get anywhere while still making it cool to be "good" at the game. As far as complexity in control goes, it's going to continue to be more difficult to learn commands as games become more.... "real" - you have literally a million things you can do with your body - simulating those in 6-20 buttons and a stick (I fully expect to get the obligitory pervert jokes from this one.... ) can't help but be complex... but it can be made easier with good instructions and the OPTION for a tutorial (I -hate- forced tutorials).
As an amateur/hobbyist game developer and game student, I spend a lot of time examining interfaces and trying to put myself in the shoes of a non-gamer. I think the poster is both correct and quite wrong. Some thoughts:
1 - Games, as a whole, take too much time to learn how to play and enjoy, ESPECIALLY for non-gamers. Too often, "learning how to play" means learning how to avoid pitfalls and problems that are due to sloppy execution or short-sighted production, rather than genuine "rules" of the game.
2 - Counterpoint: All games should not be Katamari Damacy. All games should not be Steel Battalion either. It is OK to have complex games, simple games, long games, short games, etc. VARIETY IS GOOD. IF we demand that the industry make everything accessible, that is just as bad as making every game inaccessible. Choice is king! (is that a burger king thing?)
3 - TFA uses the Zelda and FF series as examples of nice, easy to learn games. I don't think the author is stepping back quite far enough; these games, to non-gamers, are incomprehensible and confusing. Do your parents play Zelda? Do your parents play FF7? Games like Bejeweled or Rocket Mania are much closer to the point.
4 - In response to many of the posts that have already been put up, Pick Up And Play does not mean Simple and Boring. Super Smash Bros (both iterations) was a pick up and play title that offered successively deeper levels of gameplay and strategy the more you played. It required zero to little instruction and was instantly fun. I admit that most current Pick Up And Play titles ARE simplistic and get boring more quickly than complex games. However, I hope that the example of Super Smash Bros sheds a little light on the possibility of avoiding those problems in the future.
5 - I think that fixing this problem is easier in multiplayer games than in single player. Most of the examples listed previously (starcraft, etc) are still interesting not because of their complexity (or at least not wholly) but because they are a way of competing with friends or strangers, something people love to do anyways. Multiplayer gaming has a chance to really "lead the charge" here, as it were. Super Smash Bros is an almost invisible interface that allows you to fight your friends; Starcraft is the same, though with a steeper learning curve.
6 - Here are some things non-gamers don't understand:
A - If there is a blue key, then there is a blue door.
B - The big key is the boss key.
C - Red bad guys are harder than blue bad guys.
D - In all likelihood, your avatar is nearly invincible by real world standards.
E - Invisible walls are commonplace and accepted.
F - Animation isn't a real reflection of your interaction with the game world (is changing though - compare Prince of Persia: Sands of Time to Onimusha: Moonwalking In Place).
7 - I call at that stuff in #6 "game grammar." It's something that everyone who reads Slashdot has schema for, its hardwired in after 1000s of hours of Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It is a much larger stumbling block for non-gamers than many people realize. That's why the Sims was such a HUGE hit (and also a good candidate for pick up and play with complexity).
This is a lot of unorganized crap. But I hope it speaks to some of the concerns related to the topic at hand.
I think that there's a place in the world for both simple games and complex games. Simple games are great for casual gamers or short gaming sessions. More complex games are better if you want to have a longer, more involved session. Too many simple games just don't have the depth that the more complex games have. While Nintendo games are a lot of fun, most of them don't have much in the way of strategy or tactics. The most complex genres, FPS, RTS, and MMORPG are the ones that have the most depth, strategy, and tactics. You get to experience games in those genres on a more cerebral level. I don't know about other people, but the most fun that I've had gaming was playing FPS games with a half dozen friends at a LAN party. 2v4 Q3CTF was as much, or even more fun, than any Nintendo games that I've played. Still, when I play with friends, I play Nintendo games more often than complex PC games.
Steep learning curves and complexity add a richness to many games, maybe at the price of "pick up and play" qualities.
Tedium, however, sucks the fun out of games and adds no great stimulation to make up for it. Sometimes it's unintentional tedium, like bad inventory management systems or lack of non-repetitive content.
Oftentimes though, the tedium is artificially added. The best examples of this are in MMORPG's where "timesinks" can literally account for DAYS of gameplay over a long enough period. In WoW, for example, you can expect 15-20% of your gaming time being spent travelling.
If you want to make games fun, don't bother with the learning curve- just get rid of the tedium.
FTA: He cites the complex, inaccessible, and time-consuming nature of today's most popular games.
If they are so inaccessible, etc... then why are they the most popular?
This is a non-issue. The sky is not falling. There are games for all types of people. Also, o one should feel left out or need to contact their Governmental representatives to enact legislation to stop this sort of thing.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Football games will NEVER be "pick-up-and-play." The first time I played a football game, I thought, what the hell are these colored lines on these little mini-reperesentations of the field? Bother even explaining it? No. They just assume you already have prior knowledge. Its worse than a game that has a 15 minute tutorial, because it doesn't even offer a way to figure it out, other than trying things over and over until you understand it.
What the rest of the world calls football, THAT makes a pretty easy game to pick up. Stick moves player, A kicks, B shoots, C steals the ball, with another button perhaps to avoid being slide tackled.
NOTE: This is coming from an American with little interest in sports.
So you have casual gamers, hardcore gamers and non-gamers all playing games. The hardcores want the latest and greatest stuff and are generally satisfied. The casual gamers can usually pick up a console game and most PC games and be happy. The non-gamers that use their PC for solitaire or bejeweled -- why aren't these games on a console?
I personally have had enough of fixing people's PC's that are used for online games like Bejeweled. These are the people that mess up their PC's with spyware and adware quite a bit. So where the heck is the relatively cheap console that plays Bejeweled for $20 and Solitaire for $10 ? It doesn't exist as far as I know... Knoppix or some bootable distro with a bunch of games you say? Well I either haven't found the right distro or I'm just looking in the wrong place. Someone please - do enlighten. I want to put something together, or find something that my Uncle or Mom can sit down and play with for 45 minutes or 2 hours before the kids get home.
-Adam
Games *are* supposed to be fun, but they seriously start to lose their appeal when they hard crash and force your computer to reboot for the *third* time in the same fricking mission, and because it's a console port you can't save whenever you want to.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
As said before, it's good to have a mix of simple games and complex games.
But if you're going to make you're game complex, then teach people how to play. Most games will attempt to teach you controls in the first level of play (or training mode), but most of them suck at doing so.
Example: Timesplitters Future Perfect. When you play the first level, it will tell you really basic stuff like how to move move, shoot, switch weapons, etc, but it neglects to teach you a lot of important controls, and gives you zero information on what kind of tactics you should use. In other words, people used to FPSs made this game, and the obviously don't understand what it's like to not be an FPS player.
In short, companies really don't spend enough time on tutorial modes, especially when the game is of a common genre.
(Personally, I love playing tutorials, even when I'm familiar with the game).
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
The problem isn't the length of the game, but about interface complexity and learning curve. If you put it in terms of time, it's the length of the time needed to learn even the basic controls or interface, i.e., time _not_ actually spent enjoying the game.
I figure I might count as a die-hard gamer, having played computer games since 1983 and currently totalling some 60+ hours of gaming a week. (Ok, so I don't have a life.) But even for me a lot of games are basically non-fun because they expect me to devote a few days just learning what my options are, wtf I can do and how.
I can think of games that were long and yet had a gentle learning curve, and which basically you could play right away. E.g., Diablo is the classic example.
E.g., I once nagged mom into trying Tropico. The game isn't short and isn't simplistic. For that time it was IMHO _the_ most complex city-building simulation. And yet lemme tell you after the tutorial and a few hits from me, mom was playing like a pro and enjoying it. Sure, didn't yet know _all_ the options and subtleties, but knew enough to build a city and learn more gently along the way.
E.g., I decided to one-up that experiment by introducing grandma to Sierra's "Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom". We're talking an 80 year old woman who is completely computer-illiterate and doesn't even own a computer. Ok, so it took a bit more tutoring, and every once in a while she'd hold her fingers wrong and use the left mouse button instead of right or viceversa. (Ok, Apple fans can feel vindicated.) Well, it was the first time she ever held a mouse, so can't blame her. But still, she did get the general idea, was doing an adequate job of building farms and roads, and most importantly was having fun with it.
That's basically the point: a game can be complex and it can be long (mom got about 2 months of playing out of Tropico) without having a vertical learning curve. It just takes good design, you know.
The trick Sierra's city building games did, for example, was to flatten the learning curve along the whole campaign. You start with just needing to build a well and houses in the first mission, and every subsequent mission gives you just a little more complexity, and a little bit more to learn. You can start to enjoy your game long before you know half the possibilities.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They're only getting easier for those of us who grew up on old-school die-hard kick-me-in-the-pants games with insane difficulty levels. We already know what to do there, and have already seen worse. But here's the scoop:
1. You're then talking about someone with 20+ years of experience, not about a new player. It's like saying "but the Unix CLI is very easy to someone who's worked as a Unix admin for 20+ years." Well, yes, very true, but that's not the experience someone brand new will see.
Humans are still humans. The species hasn't seen any evolution in 20 years. There's barely time for a new generation in there, so no time for natural selection or anything. And being a l33t gamer wasn't a natural selection factor to start with.
So basically what was difficult to a new player back then, will still be difficult to a new player today.
2. Perhaps more importantly, back then a game only had to sell a few thousand copies to be a success. Selling 10,000 copies was a _huge_ success.
Basically at that point it was ok to catter to only an elite (or elitist) minority, even at the expense of driving everyone else away. It was OK if a game was not appealing to 99% of the potential market, because we didn't need their money. We'd just look down upon them and laugh at them.
So for a while games were made by l33t boyz for l33t boyz, and alienating whole market segments was ok. Those who weren't l33t boyz should (and did) just stay away from games.
(E.g., here's a thought about alienating market segments: in the days of Pong the gender distribution of gamers was an almost clean 50-50. Then at some point the l33t boyz making the games decided that "chicks don't play games" and it was ok to make whole games where the _whole_ purpose is to see pixelated boobs and put women in demeaning roles. After all, it's only the 16 year old boys who play games, right? No point in worrying about women, since they don't play games anyway, right? Well, it wasn't true, but after enough games like that, the balance did start slanting in that direction. The game industry cheerfully gave away half the market. But again, that was ok, since you never needed more than a niche for any game.)
The problem is that it's a model that no longer works. With production costs in the millions, and sometimes tens of millions, you have to sell a lot more copies. And the number of masochists didn't increase.
That's why there's all the talk about casual gamers lately. The industry can no longer afford to make games only for the l33test boyz. They have to also sell those games to those who _don't_ find an insane learning curve fun, nor an insane difficulty level.
So what's the point of this long rant? The point is that the average skill or patience of the average gamer didn't "evolve", it actually went downwards. Some 20 years ago "gamer" meant one of the die-hard masochist minority. Now it also includes moms playing "You don't know jack" or Backgammon online, couch potatos playing "Deer Hunt", etc. The industry can no longer afford to catter only to the 1% far end of the l33t skillz Gauss curve. Far from counting on an evolving market, it actually has to lower the bar enough to get those too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.