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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.'"
Yes, but who cares? just crank up the difficulty and set your own limits(try playing all the way through saving only at the beginning of each map, for example). People that do speed runs are a good example, you have to become almost godlike at a game in order to do a good speed run, it's challenging and competitive.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
The story has a bad example because Super Mario Brothers is one of the greatest games ever. It's like saying, "I just watched Star Wars again and that movie still gives me the chills, science fiction movies of today aren't as entertaining." I'm willing to bet that if you were to say "an average game from 15 years ago is harder than average game today" I don't think that is true. I can think of some really challenging games that are out now, super monkey ball 2 for the cube is tough, beating the developer ghosts on mario kart dd is hard, etc.
This reminds me of the poorly-written essays I wrote in high school. Some author gets the idea in their head that, after playing video games for 15 years, they've become "too easy", and sets out to tell you why. I can tell you that while I found Metroid Prime and Super Mario Sunshine to be fun but hardly insurmountable challenges, they are real struggles for my 10 year old, who can barely make his way through them.
The author needs to remember that he's a grown-up, and I'd prefer that it's reflected in his writing.
(And how could anyone say that the first Legend of Zelda is some immense challenge compared to any of the later ones?)
You know, for every person who beat Super Mario or whatever, there were half a dozen who just got frustrated and stopped playing because they couldn't make it past a certain point. I think to some extent, game developers have realized this and are targeting people who want to have a bit of a challenge, not drive themselves nuts.
... It _may_ be satisfying when you win, but it's very annoying to get there. Are 15 hours of frustration worth the rush when you win? Games 'back in the day' had a poor balance, often because of technological limitations.
Compare how many times you've thrown an NES controller in frustration to the number of times you've thrown an XBOX or PS2
And sometimes tedious repetition just because you keep flubbing one jump, or the boss uses cheap one-shot-kill tactics detracts from satisfaction. When you finally get past it, you're more irritated than triumphant, and you never, ever want to pick up the game again and have to get through that part.
Anyhow. Unrelated to the above, but related to my subject, the author has clearly never _played_ The Adventures of Cookie and Cream, if he thinks it's just some kid game. It's an innovative two-player game that requires coordination and a fair amount of puzzle solving and skill. Bosses require thought to figure out how to harm them, and the courses are timed; you can't just dally for an hour figuring out puzzles, or repeating it until you get it right. And it's quite exhilirating to squeak past the finish line before time runs out. If he hadn't dismissed it as a degraded platformer, he might've realized it's more or less everything he'd been looking for.
Judging from the article I'm a casual gamer (Despite the fact that I can and have played through HL 2 and Doom 3 as soon as the came out. Without cheating. I have also played a lot of very cerebral games. Rarely using a hint guide.).
I think it's good that most games allow me to save before important fights. I think end bosses are a stupid idea in the first place (Just like I laugh at any Pen&Paper GM who places them at the lowest level of the dungeon. Ridiculous.). I don't think the player needs to be punished when he makes a mstake, rewarding him when he does right is better. etc.
Well, I thought, he does sound like a very bitter gamer, who knows he's right and can't believe someone might disagree, but I don't think he should be left without games he likes. So maybe I'd suggest again the idea of having difficulty settings for allowing to save. Or hope that more publishers would carry what he called "old-school" games. A sensible compromise, based on the demographic, can surely be reached. Then, I read this:
"There has to be some kind of compromise that we can reach. We certainly need those casual gamers to add to the mix of the gaming community, but we can't let them dominate the kinds of games that are released."
Any you know what?
I think he's an asshole, because he thinks the overwhelming majority of players shouldn't be deciding what games get made in the majority? Don't tell me he believes there are more hardcore players than casual ones either, that would really screw the meaning of hardcore, y'know?
So, I conclude, choice is good and people like to play their games differently, so there ought to be more of each type + new and experimental ones, but having the hardcore gamers as target audience near exclusively, as he suggests, is dumb (Because it doesn't pay), arrogant (because he is right and the majority would get it wrong, because they like it wrong) and, foremost, insulting.
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."
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.