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Are Games Getting Easier?
grumpyman writes "A Tom's Hardware article posits that game are getting easier and less satisfying.
From the article: 'I've had Super Mario Bros for about 12 years and every time I pass that final Bowser stage, I still get a great sense of satisfaction. In contrast, when I conquer a game from this era, I just feel relieved that it's over.'"
Exactly. Even in the old days, with a classic like Contra, a lot of people played with 30 lives, but you could choose not to, and the game becomes much harder.
:)
And people do still care about this today. Witness the endless debates over hard-coded save points (ala Halo) vs. save-any-time. In fact, even in Halo, there's that differentiation in co-op mode between respawning once you're clear of enemies, and starting back at the save point once either player dies.
I do agree that games are easier in general, though. I get frustrated by the fact that I've never gotten past the first few levels in games like Galaga, and I'm curious about what the later stages look like.
We hear this same shit every six fucking months. I swear that there is only a handful of game-related articles that can be written.
1. Games are too easy.
2. Games are too hard.
3. Games objectify women and it sucks. Stay tuned for coverage of Bloodrayne and Tomb Raider next month.
4. New games aren't fun.
5. The new consoles are too expensive.
I just summed up gaming 'journalism' for the past ten and next ten years. No need to post any more gaming articles.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I'm having difficulty with the conclusions the author of this story has drawn. He's comparing console games with the quarter swallowers from the 80's. He mentions grief as a result of seeing the words "Game Over". Of course there was grief. "Game Over" means "Not only do I need another quarter, it also means I have to start over from the beginning!" Modern games didn't become easier just for kicks, they became easier because game developers got rid of that frustration. Some game developers even figured out how to guide you through their games by taking giving you little 'exercises' to perform to strengthen your skillset. Super Mario 64 comes to mind. (Good time for this to come up really, as I'm playing it now on my DS.) There was a platform I needed to reach in order to advance in the level. It would have taken a fairly daring jump from another platform to get to it. But then I noticed something a little peculiar. There are a few coins in that level right next to that platform that go straight up! The implication being that I can jump from the ground and get all of them. I worked it out, they were telling me I should do a backflip from there. Wee! It worked! Now the backflip is part of my arsenal and I use it regularly to get to other hard-to-reach areas. I'm pulling off neat little trcks to get through the game, and that's quite satisfying.
San Andreas is another game that used this idea. Seemingly unimportant little missions rewarded me with techniques to simplify the more complex ones down the line. On the PS2 version of this game, manually aiming your gun is not a great experience with that controller. You end up relying on the targetting system to take care of your foes. One mission, though, was pretty obnoxious. You were standing behind a fence and you had to shoot out a fuse box or something to open it. That was mildly annoying, but not much later in the game I found myself taking advantage of the manual shooting in the game to take out enemy cars. Didn't like that mission, but I did like what I gained from it.
I don't miss the difficulty of games from earlier eras. They usually felt difficult because the control was clumsy, not because you had to be a master of technique to get through. Not all games fell into this category, though. Super Mario Brothers was a great ride. It was, however, an arcade game, not an adventure like Super Mario 3 was. SMB3's goal wasn't for me to hand over all of my quarters. SMB3 was arguably a much better game.
Modern games may have lost some of the appeal of older games, but is this really worth the bitching?
"Derp de derp."
Asimov also said that good sci-fi isn't about sci-fi: good sci-fi is about people.
Battlestar Galactica is a WW2 soap opera pretending to be sci-fi, and is one of the best shows to come out in years. Firefly was an old western serial pretending to be sci-fi, and was also one of the best shows of it's time. They're about the human condition, exploring what it means to be a person under duress. Nightfall, arguably one of Asimov's best short stories / novels, could easily have been set in a fantasy world, or a modern day world in a different culture. The Ender's series was a classic coming-of-age tale. Rendezvous with Rama wasn't about technology, but how different people react when their world is turned upside-down. It is the same story, basically, that was told in the movie "Cube," though with less blood. Hell, you can't get more human than I, Robot (the book).
Star Wars was an excellent example of sci-fi. It wasn't about technology, it was about people. It really was the personified hero story, a tale that has been told for thousands upon thousands of years. That it had poor writing and moments of Shatner-level acting yet became one of the most popular movies of all time just prove how much the story resonated with people. Just because it was a story older than Jesus, and exactly the same story as told in the Matrix, doesn't make it any less appealing to us as human beings, or any less important to our culture.
50 years later, we're still the same human beings.
The ______ Agenda
Playing Max Payne, I absolutely believe their claim that the game constantly self-adjusted to my skill level. Either that game was programmed for exactly *my* sweet spot, or they had some bad-ass AI going on behind the scenes. I never felt outclassed, and I never felt like I was breezing through. It was awesome.
The author mentions strategy guides as one source of downfall - specifically, that bumping into a puzzle that's too difficult simply inspires players to go to the guide, so there's no incentive to make tough puzzles. That may be true of puzzles that are statically designed. My question is: is there a class of puzzle where the solution must be dynamically approached, and is therefore different every time based on comprehensible mechanics?
Maybe the guide can only tell you how to approach the solution while leaving the nuts and bolts of it to the player in his particular instance.
Not like I could program such a thing myself. Just askin'.
As for his gripe with RPGs: check the link below.
The author made many assertions of the form "we ought to do this" and "we should do that", but the reason is largely missing. Why should we? Does a hard game make for fun? A recent counter-example that comes to mind is Donkey Konga: Jungle Beat. I played through this entertaining game, unlocking everything, and don't remember ever "dying" in a single one of the levels. But did I have fun? It was an absolute blast playing from start to finish. I definitely felt satisfied playing this game. Making it more challenging wouldn't have increased my satisfaction level.
More fundamentally, there's a reason why games today are less challenging. It's more than just catering to casual gamers -- the reason is that games like Pac Man and Asteroids were about introducing novel game play mechanics while games today are often about exploring a world. After playing a single level of a game from 20-30 years ago, you've already experienced practically everything the game has to offer. However, I perceive that game authors love creating new and wonderful worlds for gamers to experience. I'm betting that, having sufficient resources, game authors thirty years ago would have made worlds to experience just like game authors of today. Game creators want the player to *experience* their world, not slough through it. It's trivial to tweak a game's stats to make the play harder. But that doesn't give the player anything new to experience, so there's little motivation.
If only I had a Kewpie doll to send out to you.
Folks forget that the early console game designers came out of the world of arcades where at least part of the design paradigm was to reduce the playtime per quarter. Videogames had a tendency to ramp up in difficulty quickly, and they would often force situations that were virtually impossible for the average player to surmount. This continued into the console era and lasted for a very long time, partially because the style was part of what defined videogames as a medium and partially because it was difficult to add the subtle gradiations in gameplay that might allow a player to think around a problem instead of getting by on awesome reflexes.
That being said, there are still games that are hard. In addition to your own example (NG), I found Splinter Cell plenty hard the first time through, Pikmin had some controller-tossing areas to learn, and even licensed games like Buffy The Vampire Slayer (a game I really liked) can make you weep at times.
Something else that I think makes some games seem easier is the easy access to help through the Internet. Back in olden times, you often had to just keep going at it and going at it - sometimes leading to giving up - until either a friend helped you or maybe one of the very few gaming magazines gave the answer. Now, of course, if someone feels stuck all it takes is a quick trip over to GameFAQs and virtually any current game will be thoroughly documented within a week of release - not to mention the videogame guidebooks that so often launch day and date with the game itself.
All of these sorts of articles are written from the perspective of someone who's been playing games for a long time. It stands to reason that anyone who has been playing games for years is going to have an easier time with a new one than someone for whom the new game is their first...
We see a lot of evolutions in games, some good, some bad. But, the one thing to think about is where do the money come from ?_ 01.shtml is the gap between the people who buy games and the people who evaluates games (and later write articles).
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The game industry is a business, there are clients who buy goods with earned money. If you don't produce anything who appeals to the ones who have money, you are then a dead company
The problem, as stated in this article about interstitial gamer http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050809/eilers
I was an hardcore gamer, but now, if I can play 3 hours during the week, I consider myself happy (and I don't have a kid yet !).
Random difficulty, sparse savepoint, limited continue are just a mean of frustration. Think about one of the greatest game ever : Monkey Island. You can save when you want, you cannot die (unless you really want it, but you have been warned) but it is challenging and fun The real difficult game is the one who is challeging you and it is not about limited continues but about player profiling, configuration and choice. The player shouldn't have to learn difficult combination or replay the level 42 times if he don't want too (or don't have the time to).
Another reference :
Games Are supposed to be fun ? http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/20