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Can Video Game Accessibility Go Too Far?
A piece at GameSetWatch questions whether modern game companies are taking accessibility a step too far in their rush to attract people who don't typically play video games. This worry was inspired, in part, by the news that Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. Wii would have the capability to play itself in order to let a human player get past a tricky part. Quoting:
"Bigger audiences finishing more games is certainly a worthy goal, and Nintendo has shown that accessibility is the servant of engagement. History has rarely — if ever — dared to disprove the wisdom of Miyamoto's foresight. History has also never disproven, however, the principle that any medium and any message degrades the wider an audience it must reach. Art was never served by generalization, nor language by addressing all denominators. Entertainment for the masses ultimately becomes empty. There must exist an absolute point beyond which greater accessibility means less engagement. Making a game so easy it can play itself for you at the push of a button just might be that point."
"Bigger audiences finishing more games is certainly a worthy goal"
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In my opinion this eliminates any kind of challenge, if you are stuck, you let the game play itself and that's it, no worries. I remember when I was a kid playing Super Mario Bros on NES, I liked it because it was a challenge, it was difficult and when I was stuck it kept me trying to play more and more to get out of that part instead of letting the game play itself and be bored.
Is it just me, or did that quote manage to use a hundred words without actually saying anything?
So... As near as I remember ever single player game used to come with a whole slew of "Cheats" to be used by whoever, whenever and for any reason. Commander Keen had things like screen clipping where you could fly through the walls in the level, or fly mode. Age of Empires had things where you could turn the birds into dragons, get babies on tricycles with shotguns or cars with heavy weaponry. Since when is this new? Heck I remember some games having an "I win" button. Can anyone tell me how this is different from the age old era of 286 and 386 video games? Heck now that I think about it, what about game sharks and other such devices designed to unlock cheats in the game? up up down down left right left right a b b a.
"Mario does the weekly shopping" "Peach picks what to wear 20" "Mario house Party 52"
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
There's nothing more frustrating (in the gaming world) than playing a game for hours just to unlock a part of the game I already paid for! Slogging through a dozen crappy songs just to unlock Anthrax and Megedeth was no fun at all. I paid for Guitar Hero. If the very first thing I want to do is play Free Bird on Expert then it's my right. (Or at least it should be.)
A lot of game companies don't seem to understand this, but a lot of gamers are adults with other interests and responsibilities. Spending hours "practicing" so that I can master a video game is not in the cards.
... the game companies need to do something in order to continue selling their wares.
Just because the option is there does not mean you have to use it. Nothing is makeing you turn it on. You want the extreem chalenge never use it. However, if because you have a problem pushing the buttons fast enough due to a disability then this feature enables you to enjoy the game.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
"Animal Crossing" "Animal Crossing: Wild World" "Animal Crossing: City Folk"
There's nothing more frustrating (in the gaming world) than playing a game for hours just to unlock a part of the game I already paid for!
It's to prove you paid for it, either full price new or half price used, not 1/10 of the price rental.
If you want a challenge then pick up Starcraft II (when it comes out) or Virua Fighter 5. Learning to be competitive in either of those games will require hundreds of hours of practicing the games, reading about games, watching tournaments and taking notes, or learning maps or matches. Of course the video game 'journalists' are not willing to learn how to get good at RTS or FGs so they instead complain about a game of low difficulty (like Mario Brothers) being made easier. If you want to play games to be challenged try getting good at Starcraft or Virtua Fighter.
This new Mario Brothers with its auto-level completion (tm) or whatever is not a hardcore game and it's not even a hardcore genre. If you want more difficult platforming try Ratchet & Clank, God of War, or perhaps even Nintendo's own Mario Galaxy. But don't say it's the end of the world for hard games. I doubt those 'journalists' who complain about games not being hard enough for them haven't touched competitive Starcraft or Virtua Fighter or Counter Strike.
The more you try to gain mass appeal, the further you dilute the core qualities of the experience. This guy is saying that if you make games that can play themselves, they quickly cease to be relevant as games.
How is this different than everyone's beloved game Braid? I mean if you messed up you just rewinded and tried again. Isn't this just the next step?
I also understand that Braid used it in a unique way that didn't solve the puzzle for you, but at least it kept you from having to start over every time you failed.
Conway's "Life" plays itself, player pianos play themselves, soccer matches on the TV play themselves (as far as we're concerned) — what's new here?
I can't for the life of me find the image right now, but there's a classic photoshop of a Gamecube controller with all the buttons on the right side replaced with a giant, green WIN button. This reminds me of that.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
This masochistic mentality about how challenging video games should be is new to me. As has been mentioned, there have been cheats as long as there have been difficult games. Who really beat Contra without the code? And considering how many weeks of allowance were sunk into those things, is it really so horrible for a kid to want to see all the levels? All Nintendo is doing is saving kids the trouble of buying Game Genies and typing in the damn codes.
Yes, there is something to be said for overcoming a challenge, but not everyone buys games to be challenged. Some people buy them to merely have fun with friends and/or family!
In my opinion there is more than enough room for both camps.
Seems like it is full circle. It now becomes a book, movie, show what ever you want to call it. You interact with it at some parts but then when you want the story to move along and you do not want to be stuck you let the game play. It is not a bad thing for games it is also not something I would want to use. The fun would definitely be gone for me and other gamers I am sure however the folks that want to have the story over the play would definitely enjoy it. I foresee this leading to many "choose your own adventure" games. Developers would love that as less time would be needed for game control programming. One could reach other "non-traditional" gamers. Replay values would be high but still the play through would be quicker than other games I would think.
Score one for the "Everyone's special" crowd. However, this could be good for the regular gamer.
We have an entire generation of employees entering the workforce that can't think for themselves. A step like this in the video game world is not that surprising.
It USED to be that you had to think to solve puzzles, complex puzzles, to continue a story - not just finish the game. This has been diluted over the years to give the end-user more flashy graphics without really challenging them.
Now imagine if a developer could create mind-bending puzzles that would cause even the most experienced gamer problems - but not alienate the "I'm special" crowd. It COULD be a great step in the evolution of gaming.
However, it probably will just be to assist those people that can't even handle the mediocre challenges that we currently see.
"You... Are... Fags!"
"Making a game so easy it can play itself for you at the push of a button just might be that point."
No no and no. If anything, this is the [b]reverse[/b] - it means more difficult sections can be added to the game, without endangering less experienced players (by showing them "how it's done" and letting them skip the harder bits completely if they want to).
This means each demographic gets what it wants - hardcores get a game with some nice tricky sections, and casual gamers get a fun game where they skim over the bits they find too difficult/tedious.
The quoted article is just alarmist turd, and skims over the fact this is, effectively, difficulty levels on crack. There's absolutely no difference between this and selecting Easy/Medium/Hard - this is just a clever hybrid.
A statement that somehow the message of art 'degrades' as it reaches more people is something I assumed to hear from some art snob complaining about reproductions of the Mona Lisa, not about a video game starring Mario. The whole notion is insanely elitist, and I'm frankly flabbergasted that someone saw fit to print it.
Especially considering that they got the whole idea wrong - it's only a demo mode that shows you how to beat a section. In order to progress through the game, you still have to play it yourself!
It's really all about the goals of the player. Personally I'm glad they added this feature - I've always liked the traditional style of mario genre - but because they're so frustrating the only one I ever finished was SMB2/Galaxy. The performance goals were always so steep and never gave me a measure of how I was improving. This is a nice compromise between the two that'll keep players playing longer. It's better than putting down the controller and giving up - which is what I would normally do by the third "Game Over". Miyamoto made a good call IMHO.
This is no different than old-school games (ie, the ones I played growing up) like Wolfenstein or Doom, each of which had a "God mode" which everybody knew. Those codes would give you invulnerability and/or unlimited ammo.
Sometimes it was fun just to use them and just go berserk, but one of the main uses of them was to get through portions of the game that you simply couldn't beat. I used them occasionally when I was just unable to beat some monster. As such, those codes (which have been used in many games by many gamers) are no different than the current feature in Mario, except that it's more interactive.
I've favored games that automatically level the difficulty level so the user still does all the action rather than watching it. That's easier with combat style games than it is for platform-style games. Maybe they need ways of making the *physics* more forgiving as well - say make Mario jump farther/higher, have something rescue you if you fall, etc.
It is how I look at most games. I like a challenge, but I do not want to have to allocate project management, tons of research, and bringing my A game every time I play it. This is just a new easy mode, same as a cheat for God mode, or turning down difficulty a ton like a combat slider in Oblivion.
I want to be involved in the game story, get some enjoyment out of it, and not miss some part of the game because a different minority wants me to suffer through a game to get the best items or game play experience just because they had to.
I give Progress Quest as an example of the game will play itself, you will watch it, and you will be amused as an example of this. http://www.progressquest.com/ It has a following, so maybe there is some truth in the matter.
When I was your age we didn't have music file sharing utilities. We had to go out to a store and shoplift the CD.
As far as art goes, there's art for everyone. There are extremely simple drawings in children's books and highly abstract pieces for the intellectuals among us, and everything in between. Because the market for art is so large, everyone can find SOMETHING that they like. Hopefully, with a broader audience, video games can achieve the same segmentation. The larger the audience as a whole, the larger the market for niche or fringe type games that wouldn't otherwise stand a chance.
My only fear is that this will further indoctrinate children that there should always be an easy button. As it is right now, too many kids quit when things get difficult, and this may end exacerbating that trend.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
How is this different from the difficulty slider in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? If I get to a part that is particularly pissing me off, I drop the slider all the way down to easy and kill those pesky Dremoras with one swipe of my Sword of the Divine Crusader.
There are those of us that do not want to be overly frustrated with video games; we simply want to have fun. While I enjoy a bit of a challenge, it's nice to know that if I fail at something 5, 10, or 25 times, I can just click a button and make it easier (or skip it).
I have a bad feeling about this...
Are paintings, sculptures, music, photography, cinema (and so on...) challenging? For the one who receives them. Or perhaps it's more about what was in the mind of the creator and how do you receive this particular cultural artifact? (which might include challenge)
Well...you decide that.
So - decide, let others decide, don't yell "consoles are dumbing our games!" (I can see that bs already in this thread...), you still have and will have a choice. Sure, more "mainstream" games will appear to hijack the whole show, but you should know better.
Plus it might bring some new talent. Also, I assure you - there is already enough past games which you'd love that you have things to play for the rest of your life. Sure, technical side of their visuals might be "obsolete"...but in this case who's "mainstream" now?
One that hath name thou can not otter
As a parent, these things bother me because I don't see the kids getting an opportunity to be challenged and learn to overcome. Legos. We go bowling, and the kids whine if they don't get to use the rails on the side the prevent gutter balls. We play Legos Star Wars, and they make little effort to avoid the toons getting killed because there is almost no penalty.
How are they supposed to learn to overcome the frustrations of life if their games offer no frustration?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
"...taking accessibility a step too far in their rush to attract people who don't typically play video games..." Reminds me of a game called Spore. While it may have sold a lot of units, many people here would agree with me when I say this: I want my money back!
God of war for difficult platforming??!
Mario Galaxy, the easiest 3D Mario game by a longshot?
Did you really play those games?
You seem to like to use words like hardcore game and hardcore genre, but that's all a bunch of bologna. There's no such thing as a hardcore genre. The concept of hardcore game is meaningless, and only a way for stupid teens to claim that other games don't have enough childish violence to appeal to them.
and get rid of that pesky "game" thing. It was just getting in the way anyway.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Are you saying that God of War I and II on Titan difficulty are easy? Please.
This is more symptomatic of the rising ubiquity of on-line play than the degradation of the medium. In the past, beating the game was the only verifiable accomplishment and source for bragging rights. These days, with XBox achievements, PS3 trophies and whatnot - there is much more fine structure to what you accomplish in a game. It is fine if there is a self-play option for the first-time gamers, as long as there are hard modes and special challenges for experienced gamers to show off their skills with.
All Nintendo is doing is saving kids the trouble of buying Game Genies and typing in the damn codes.
Almost the same software (Bannerbomb + Homebrew Channel) can be used to run homemade games, to apply Game Genie-style cheat codes (Gecko OS), and to run infringing copies of game discs. By including built-in cheats, Nintendo reduces demand for Gecko OS and thus for Bannerbomb + Homebrew Channel, making it less likely that players will learn about warez.
I've 'played' it. http://www.progressquest.com/
Man, Gabe and Tycho were prescient.
Not so prescient. A Super Mario game developed by Square Enix using a turn-based menu interface has been around since the second quarter of 1996.
But it also points to a problem in our society... the need for instant gratification rather than trying to put some effort into it.
First, I don't discount Nintendo or Elder scrolls for putting in options to make things easier for some people, like a difficulty slider. A difficulty slider allows people to have fun at their own pace and own skill level, as not everyone is the same. I do however, take slight exception to the idea that you give yourself a cheat to get past a hard part. Either you are too lazy to try getting past the hard part yourself, or the game wasn't designed well enough and this is just a "workaround" to that problem.
This "play the level" for me feature is just stupid. Instead of a player trying to improve their skill, just let them hit the cheat and enjoy the game playing itself? Lame! It's indicative of trying to garner a greater audience to buy the game. They'll buy the game, play it a few times, use the cheats, then finish the game in a couple of hours and move on. Nintendo still got their $50 for selling the game. That's the insipid part... that a game maker would try to push and advertise a feature which will potentially make the game be less fun in the long run. It's hard to get interested in a game you feel is too hard and then cheat past every level and then try to work yourself up into playing again after you cheated all that time to beat it.
I approve of using a difficulty slider for most of the game, but I think being able to use the difficulty slider to get past a hard part denotes a problem, in my book.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Stuff like this makes me think of really religious people.
"Someone, somewhere is having fun? We can't have that!"
I'm surprised they don't have mass burnings of official strategy guides. These are the folks who write reviews like "The game made me want to smash the controller into a puppy's skull! My blood pressure peaked to the point where my eyes were bleeding. Score: 10++!"
"It was never meant to be a game! -- Line from Rollerball
In Zelda Wind Waker, I got to a point where I had to swing on ropes and land on barrels. I tried for hours and couldn't do it. So, I couldn't get past that point, and I traded in the game. So I don't consider that a good game. I didn't get to see much of the content THAT I PAID FOR.
The worst is driving games where you are only allowed to drive a junk car and have to win dozens of almost-impossible races against computer cars, in order to unlock content THAT YOU PAID FOR. Personally, I think that's consumer fraud.
Games that play themelves and let you watch are not games. They are machinima.
This sig is false.
"Video games will become lame if they become too popular." -- Video game enthusiasts
Congrats, gamers. You've now joined the fine art snob, the classical music afficionado, and the indie music twit in the ludicrous belief that nothing's any good if someone else has heard of it. And ya know what? Nobody gives a damn what *they* think either.
Popular things are popular because people appreciate them. And since art is purely subjective, the only useful way to define good art is to ask, "do lots of people think it's good?" Anyone who thinks that popularity always leads to a loss of quality or intellectual content has apparently never listened to the Beatles, seen Star Wars, The Matrix or The Godfather, and never watched Lost or the Sopranos.
Popular art can be good. Video games are no exception. Quit whining.
I dunno. In principle I can't see a problem including a "game plays itself" feature if the developer wants to go that route. Let them put in whatever they want--it's their game.
As a practical matter though, if "accessibility" comes to mean "player is now a spectator," it's not clear to me how you're attracting people to gaming. If you remove the interactivity, you have a film, not a game. In the case of Mario Bros., it's an extremely boring, linear film with shallow characters and only one possible conclusion.
On second thought, maybe Nintendo is trying to make some sort of existential statement...
Mod parent up. I've put down games before because of one particularly difficult part that I was tired of beating on. That's where I am on both of the DS castlevania games I have (those bosses don't screw around!) I'd be there right now on the Slash battle in Guitar Hero 3 if the game didn't - guess what? - let you win that after a few tries.
I just have better things to do with my time than get frustrated over a local maximum of difficulty. Some of those things are play other games that I can actually get through.
You know, what's ironic is that it DOESN'T play it for you. It shows you how you can get past it, then rewinds to where it was when you turned the feature on, allowing you to do it yourself.
Of course, this style of gameplay has existed for years in the form of Progress Quest, the fire-and-forget RPG.
http://www.progressquest.com/
This is hardly new. I played fighter games 10 years ago that let you watch two characters battle each other. must be a slow tech day
Zone of the Enders 2 (PS2, 2003) was and is a great action game. It was a marked improvement over its predecessor, felt more like a finished product than a proof of concept (you could tell they were testing the waters with the first installment) and was generally a blast to play.
And I only ever play half of it.
Because about halfway through the game there's a boss battle that is so infuriatingly difficult that it outright removes any desire I have to play the game anymore, at all. This is despite my knowing full well that the best parts of the game take place after this battle. I've finished the game once or twice but don't have the patience to do so anymore because of this idiotic difficulty spike. What's worse is that on subsequent playthroughs, wherein you have the option of keeping your superpowered robot from the first playthrough, the fight actually gets harder as a direct result of your power increase.
With a feature like this, the battle could've been a minor annoyance or just an opportunity to grab a drink while the game takes care of itself. As it is, however, it's resulted in my avoiding like the plague anything with Hideo Kojima's name anywhere near it. Having played Lunar Knights briefly on the DS, I feel most certainly justified in my avoidance of his games as it has similarly impassable and fun-killing parts as well.
As I said in a previous post on a similar topic, does this make me "lame" or "not hardcore?" Fine. Good, even. I'm glad to be called "casual" if that's the case. I don't feel like dealing with hypertension arising from idiotic game design anymore. I had enough of that shit in my teens, I don't need it now.
Same goes for the despicable practice of including "unlockables" in games. I don't care if it enhances a single-player experience. My ideal single-player experience entails doing what the hell I want with the game I bought and paid for. Bought a racing game? Cool, let me race the "bonus" rocket-powered flying car as the very first thing I do. Bought an FPS? Give me the BFG from the get-go if I want it. Bought a quirky JRPG like Ar Tonelico with conspicuously attractive female characters? Bring on the priestess/healer's skimpy lingerie outfit already. These things are all going to be witnessed anyway, and it feels like a ripoff to have the game's +10 radiant pack of tasty doom available only for the last half-hour of gameplay when it hardly does any good anymore. Because I'm realizing something, however slowly, as I age. Games are often a metaphor for life, or they can be. People get kicked around and treated like shit in life a lot of the time. It's certainly a reality of office work if nothing else. It's therapeutic to be able to come home, fire up a game, and absolutely crush the opposition without the opposition having a snowball's chance in hell of stopping you. At some level, subconsciously, you're crushing the people who mistreated you earlier that day and taking out aggressions. It's the very reason that violent videogames reduce the likelihood of actual violent behavior. It's the "save haven" argument in action. So to be told "no" by a game because I haven't proved to it that I love it enough to be deserving of the +10 ball o' awesome is just another perceived injustice that elevates blood pressure and worsens mood. Attention, game. I paid for you, I bought you, you are my property. You don't tell me "no."
The only kinds of games where I can even remotely see it as being justifiable to limit resources are strategy games, since figuring out how to operate with limited resources is kind of the point of the game itself. But even then it's questionable, and I'd still prefer to have a big, bright "I just had a shitty day at work, unlock the nukes, release the hounds, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" button ready for the cli
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I wish more games had this feature, just sit back, spark up, and watch a "movie".
If the program kept track of sections people were skipping the game designers could then take another look at them and possibly tweak them to make them more enjoyable /playable, etc.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
I paid for GT4 to noodle around with the cars and tracks I bought.
GTA has cheat codes. You enter them into your cell phone.
Gran Turismo 4 is not a Grand Theft Auto game.
I used to play video games. I stopped. That means I stopped buying games. In simple terms, they got too hard.
I enjoyed the Baldurs Gate / Icewind Dale series, and the mech-warrior series, along with fallout 1 and 2. However, I haven't even given serious thought to buying fallout 3. I know that to wow the new generation of gamers (and more importantly, game reviewers) it will be unplayable to me. The last games I purchased were Vampire: the masquerade, something with the Clive Barker name attached to it , and Half Life. I never finished any of them. They were simply too hard for me.
The result is that I stopped buying games; after all, why should I purchase an story that I can not finish. Now some are thinking "wait, those games came out ten years ago." That's right, over ten years of not selling games to me.
One of the basic principles in purchasing stock in consumer goods manufacturers is that you probably are within the bell curve. If you see there to be a problem a problem with a product, you are probably not alone. I see my friends playing ten year old games instead of new ones. I see a trend. The trend is a lot of people who like games but are not buying new ones.
Now, I am not saying that this trend is absolute, obviously, there are people buying new games. However, there is a huge untapped market in the people who play games but haven't purchased a game in years. I used to, lightly, tease my wife about pre-purchasing games that hadn't even been released. As it stands, she hasn't purchased a game in years. She enjoys the games she has.
When you ask this 35+ crowd what happened you keep hearing the same two things: first, they don't have the time, and second, the games have gotten too hard. This is a large market that has literally been lost. They used to purchase the product and they no longer do. To any business, loosing customers that they spent money to get is a disaster. Nintendo is doing the right thing from a business sense.
Not wanting to turn this into a post of favourite cheats, but all the Mario Partys (the grammer there doesn't look right but I suppose it is) have an interesting work around. When I realized that I would need hundreds of stars to open up all the maps and characters, (and therefore many many games and hours) I used the following: start a game, and pause, and make all players computer controlled. Then go have lunch. When the game is over, you'll have stars, with no work. Rinse and repeat. Why make so many things unlockable? Can't I just play the game with all the goodies? If the level, map, or song is that good, shouldn't it be available immediately? On the flip side, I suppose an adventure game's point is the progressive story and gameplay...