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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"
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.
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.
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
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.
"When I was a kid...I liked it because it was a challenge."
/I'd kill for that power in the rest of my life...
Exactly. But as an adult life has enough challenges already. Games are the only thing where I even have the option of saying "this is too hard, let's skip it."
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.
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?
If you want a challenge, don't use it.
Personally, while I enjoy a challenge, I don't enjoy playing the same level for hours on end, and never getting any further. I'll be using the "I'm bored, please let me play the next bit" button sometimes.
Personally, while I enjoy a challenge, I don't enjoy playing the same level for hours on end, and never getting any further. I'll be using the "I'm bored, please let me play the next bit" button sometimes.
Exactly. There was one of the Metroid Prime games where I got to one of the bosses and I had a bitch of a time fighting it. Never did beat it. I spent several hours going through the same routine of reloading the game, skipping the cutscene, finding the boss, skipping the next cutscene, starting the battle (this process of just getting to the start of the fight took something like 7 minutes IIRC), fighting for a few minutes, getting my ass wiped all over the floor, lather, rinse, repeat. I eventually just gave up. It's a shame too, cos I really liked the game. But putting one part in there that I couldn't get passed ruined the experience for me. Honestly, I think the best approach is the one where after 3 or 5 failed attempts, the game gives you an option to scale back the difficulty for that fight.
This guy's the limit!
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.
Nintendo did something new. I can't praise it without being labeled a 14m3r fanboi, and I can't criticize it because it'll probably turn out make them even more pots of money and then I'll look like a doofus. So I'll just talk around the issue to fill the space between these important messages from our sponsors.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"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!
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.
The World Ends With You for DS does exactly that. You can change the difficulty of the game at any time (except in battles), which affects the items and XP you get from fights. If you lose a fight, you have 3 options: Quit, Retry, and Retry on Easy. Great system.
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.
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...
The difficulty of some boss battles is one of the things that pisses me off about the FF games. I've heard good things about The World Ends With You. I should definitely look into it.
This guy's the limit!
Personally, while I enjoy a challenge, I don't enjoy playing the same level for hours on end, and never getting any further. I'll be using the "I'm bored, please let me play the next bit" button sometimes.
Exactly. There was one of the Metroid Prime games where I got to one of the bosses and I had a bitch of a time fighting it. Never did beat it. I spent several hours going through the same routine ... my ass wiped all over the floor, lather, rinse, repeat. I eventually just gave up. It's a shame too, cos I really liked the game. But putting one part in there that I couldn't get passed ruined the experience for me.
Exactly2!!
I gave up Metroid Prime 3 after attempting the same stupid boss like 50 times. No doubt it was my fault -- I just suck too much, and I'm not very good with the Wii controller -- but I play games for fun, not to brag how hard-core I am. I know it feels great to finally get past a hard bit after having honed your skills through endless attempts, but sometimes enough is enough.
Of course there are alternative approaches:
Anyway, I'm glad they're doing something, because I like games, but I'm not always very good at them!
We live, as we dream -- alone....
You can blame Penny Arcade for giving them ideas. Except their version was more interactive...
Well, most DVD players also have a "Fast Forward" button so you can skip all the dialogue thingie and just get to the next action scene, so games certainly aren't alone in that respect. I'd still consider that to be intelectually lazy, however.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
The purpose of a video game (for most people) is to have fun. I'd hardly call skipping the parts that aren't fun "intellectually lazy". It's more like "pragmatically efficient".
I don't think the facts bear you out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/09/games-dvd-music-downloads-piracy
Notice the bar for games sales and how it rises almost every year since 1999.
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.
First of all, I think your argument has more or less merit depending on the artwork in question. For something like The Lord of the Rings, perhaps you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't slow down and experience the whole thing. But if you're watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, fast-forwarding is simply efficient. (I thought it dragged in fast forward.) Your argument presumes that all parts of all artwork are equally worthy, but I don't think this is always true.
Second, there's a time for thinking and a time for not thinking. It wasn't until my third child that I realized why America's Funniest Videos is on at 8:00 on Friday. It has no plot to remember, no characters to keep track of, no storyline that lasts more than 30 seconds, and it mostly consists of sledding accidents and people getting hit in the crotch. There has never been a show that demands less from its audience. (So as to retain some shred of credibility, I don't watch AFV (my kids do). But I've seen enough of it to appreciate its utter simplicity.)
Third, in this particular case we're not always talking about skipping something because it's boring or because you want to get to the good bit. If I need to spend hours "practicing" a game to get past a difficult mission then it's the game that's flawed. Demanding that I pay $50 for the right to play a game is one thing. Demanding that I spend 50 hours of toy guitar practice before I can play all the songs on the disk, or demanding that I play 50 boring quest or racing missions before I can unlock Las Venturas and play virtual video poker is...poor customer service? Poor game design?
The fundamental argument is the right of the artist to control how you experience his art vs the right of the consumer to experience the art on his terms. By your logic, it would be lazy to skip songs on a CD to get to the song you actually want to hear. Certain artists may agree because they carefully wrote and sequenced the songs to achieve a certain effect. But ultimately I believe that I should be the one to make the decision.