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The Grown-Up Video Game
Phaethon360 writes "Now, more than ever, we're seeing many Mature ratings (M+, 17+, 18) being distributed by various national media regulators. But that isn't the only indicator for a game's intended audience. It doesn't take a thousand swear words, scantily clad women or gratuitous violence to differentiate a ten-year-old's game from a twenty-year-old's. The spectrum of human emotions encompasses a wider palette than just revenge, fear, and loss, but the games that shy away from these are frequently mistaken as being for a younger audience. From the article: 'The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person. However, that same experience is also filled with joy, love, laughter, family and friends. ... These so-called “grown-up” games need not be relegated to the category of niche gaming. In fact, at times we find that these video games are capable of reaching mass popularity among the gaming community. It is here that we find one of our generation’s outlets for the expression of conflict.'"
you just lost it.
liqbase
>>The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person.
I think the authors have confused real life with video games!
There's certainly a lot of bad things that happen in life, but if you run your own life wisely, you can minimize the pain and maximize the pleasures.
I really like a lesser-known saying by Machiavelli: "Life is half random, and half under our control." While we can't control whether or not we get cancer (beyond doing certain things like not smoking and eating veggies), there is a lot we can do that is under our control, and with planning you can attempt to minimize the random events that come your way. You shouldn't expect to completely eliminate them, but if you do your best, you can get pretty good odds for living a happy life.
How about games for 40 year olds? No, not Pac-man and Pole Position, but games adults can play and enjoy now. Apologies to the middle aged that play FPS and others of the new genre, but there is a market for less intensive product.
... I don't believe there is such a thing. I've seen grown men in their 40's+ rushing out to get the latest Call of duty or Mass effect 2. Games are NOT movies this call for emotionalism or "emotional depth" in a game is nonsense. What does final fantasy's story have anything to do with being a grown up? It's probably one of the most graphics heavy and story laden game series and yet their stories have nothing in common with anything one might consider "grown up".
I don't play games for emotional storytelling, I can get that in movies. I play games to be a participant in the world, kill stuff, shoot stuff, solve puzzles and indulge my imagination. I want games to be FUN, what does a plumber stomping on a bunch of mushroom people have anything to do with being grown up? Yet many millions of grown ups certainly enjoyed playing mario, I can vouch for the fact that my own mother got into playing mario kart series from 64 onwards.
Seriously. This sounds like nothing but a stealth advertisement for Heavy Rain. Yay it came out today! Just say so and be done with it instead of trying to sneak it in with this self-important navel-gazing.
It doesn't take a thousand swear words, scantily clad women or gratuitous violence to differentiate a ten-year-old's game from a twenty-year-old's.
No, but it helps.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This on the day that Heavy Rain is released. Preliminary reviews seem to say that it's much more adult-oriented, and not just in terms of the things that cause more adult ratings.
So.... It's time for text adventures / IF to come back?
Looks like he skipped spelling and grammar.
The difference between adult gamers and younger gamers is partly a factor of time pressure, and partly a factor of content.
The time pressure element is obvious. Aside from a typical work schedule for an adult taking more hours then going to school, an adult has more demands on their time. A 14 year boy old does not have much beyond school and some minor chores. A 24 year man old has a work day, probably has a girlfriend, and possibly has children, in addition to some amount of chores and errands. As much as the 24 year old may want to pull a 6 hour world of warcraft marathon, he probably has to make sure he has groceries, that the bills are paid. While holding onto the girlfriend is optional, it probably takes precedence over the games. The same applies to children. On top of that, the adult potentially has the money to do other activities (ie, going out to a bar, going to a rock concert, hockey game, going skydiving) that may also take precedence over video games.
The content factor is trickier. The 14 year old and the 24 year old will have a great deal of overlap for what they like in general terms. The only difference is that as the 24 year old has less time to waste, the content must be of a generally higher quality. Having mature themes is probably going to be the difference here if it is done right. The 24 year old wont play a game just because it has "hot horny nympho sex and buckets of blood". While that is still pretty sweet, it lacks the novelty value it has for the 14 year old. Having moral shades of grey, believable characters, and solid writing will help.
But gameplay is still king. Nintendo has pretty much proven beyond all doubt that if you can deliver good gameplay (Mario kart, wii sports, Mario Galaxy), you can hit the mark pretty solidly.
END COMMUNICATION
I'm pretty sure this topic is in reply to the recent release of this amazing game.
My kingdom for a donkey!
Now, more than ever, we're seeing many Mature ratings (M+, 17+, 18) being distributed by various national media regulators.
In your lucky, sensible country perhaps. Here in Australia, this man thinks that any game other than Mario and Puzzle Bobble is evil, so we should PROTECT THE CHILDREN at all costs.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
It's time for PINBALL to come back as a big thing and THEY ARE STILL MADE IN THE USA!!!
For a while, I have been waiting for truly "adult" games to hit the market. And before our 3 female readers revolt, I'm talking about more than just "borking" in ME2, or the advent of sexy photorealistic ladies. After all, leisure suit larry was already chasing pixellated tail "way" back in the early nineties.
Games have long been associated with children, and since we young-ish adults have grown up with videogames, games have sort of grown up with us. I say sort-of, because game technology, graphics, and gameplay have evolved. But most games are still targeted at tweens and teens, no matter what their ESRB rating claims.
So where are the games with truly adult themes? I'm talking about the breadth of human emotion here. Something more than just saving the princess or killing space marines. Mainstream cinema has no problem producing stimulating dramatic stories which balance artistic integrity, depth of plot, and mass market appeal. Yes, Transformers 2 still makes tons of money, but we still see Avatar and The Hurt Locker on the big screen. And moves like Precious or District 9 get made, even though they won't sell millions of bags of popcorn or action figures.
Network TV has embraced the least common denominator with it's plethora of reality shows. But American Idol and Biggest Loser are still balanced by The Wire, Mad Men, Lost, and 30 Rock et al.
I understand that console and handheld game markets are dominated by children, and many buying decisions are made by parents. However, adult game purchasers are a large and ever-growing demographic, so it seems obvious to me that game developers should be targeting adults with adult games.
I accept that PG-rated "sex scenes" are a step towards mature themes in games, but i don't understand why more developers aren't targeting truly adult audience. The obvious argument is that development dollars will cater to the largest demographics, so as to increase game studio profits. But where are the "independent" yet well-financed game studios that can rival "indie" film studios? 20 years ago "sex lies and videotape" defined the low budget crossover indie movie. Now "independent" movies can command a large production budget and can expect a modest return on investment. So why aren't there more game studios coming out with Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, and Heavy Rain?
Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win.
- Robert Heinlein
The idea that stuff that should be unavailable to children is automatically more mature, has been spectacularly antiproductive.
Example of logic: "Wow, Bobby got drunk and slept with the teacher, and he's only a sixth grader! Awesome! I'm gonna ask him how he does it!"
Labeling things "M" adds about 25% interest among young teenagers, because we advertise sex and drugs as too fun to be legal. People reach for things they think will be useful in making them happy. For inexperienced people looking for fun, illegal looks like a pretty good start. If you're looking to make a game for an adult you're taking a lot of assumptions for what you think they will be reaching for. Any masterpiece you create to charm an adult audience will be virtually unadvertisable, and likely will be a commercial failure. Anybody looking should buy Okami. They would be in the first 500 people to do so, for effect, drink a Tab soda with it.
Child Gamer
14 fully automatic weapons that can be carried at once and ready to fire in any order within a second of each other.
Immense piles of (crappy) enemy armor, clothes, weapons, potions, and lunch monies
Dead Hookers that pay you
Complete physical dominance over a physical world
Self respect with occasional awe
Control over an economy.
Really funny stuff.
Charming stuff that makes you a little happier.
A compliment that actually pleases you
Video Games End Here
Office Software Starts Here
Spousal apologies
More free time/money
Inner Peace/Contentment
Dead Gamer
Fitting that SotC would be the first game he mentions. It was the first to pop into my head. Also, props to whoever tagged this story "Mother 3." Definitely a grown up game, and it's a damn shame it never officially left Japan.
Not on topic but I'd want to mention the stock market as a good game for adults. I played computer games in my teens and twenties but now, in my thirties I find them quite boring, predictable and repetitive.
For three years now I picked up a new hobby: stock market. I watch CNBC, I read business newspapers, i follow a ton of finance blogs, I think, I make hard decisions, I put my money at risk, I master my impulses and emotions. I throughly enjoy it.
You mean the kind I can put one a USB-stick and can hide realy quickly when the boss get near me?
Now do you need a fake ID to buy ultra-porn type games when you are 40+?
I love a rich storyline as well- been playing RPGs since, well, "Adventure" on the 2600. :-) Hey, OK, some of the early games required some imagination on the player's part. I had all sorts of tales spun about those duck-dragons and that bat.
However I'm not looking for any emotionalism. I really liked Fable 2, but I felt nothing for the dog. And when I had to choose between bringing back the dog and bringing back thousands of dead people, I brought back the dog. Why? Did I get attached after all? No, but the dog was useful in closing out a few remaining XBox achievements.
I was NOT affected by the death of Aerith. :-) At least not beyond "Oh, crap, I liked using that character." If I recall she was a good healer.
OK, I do have a crush on Tali in Mass Effect, but other than that...
IMHO as a "grown-up" myself, the best video games include the simple ones: Pac-Man and Galaxis at the local Pizza Hut for a quarter. Either that or some BASIC on a console hooked up to your TV.
C|N>K
Sure, it had some D&D-obligated women in skimpy clothing, but everything else that made it good was clearly targeting a mature audience:
- 100,000+ words of text to tell the story -- sure, kids read books like that these days, but at a video game's pace? Not so much.
- Your character could do almost anything to anyone purely out of self-interest, and most of it wasn't physical. If you didn't manipulate a particular someone to your own ends over the course of the game, you probably didn't talk to them at all. Like in the first Fallout, you could talk the final boss to death if your stats were high enough.
- The best way to build up your companions' strengths was to help them explore their pasts and personalities.
- You never actually find out what it is that you did to curse yourself with immortality...but it was so heinous that your continued existence is threatening the fabric of the universe. Just try to imagine what it might have been. Go on, I'll wait.
Modern games, though, are getting into "show, don't tell".
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
Personally I always wished that MMORPGS had age segregated servers available.
Not because of adult content (as somebody pointed out in another story, naked pixels are only really tillitanting when ur a teen), it's simply because an environment where teens can run around anonymously controlling powerfull avatars and there are no adults in supervisory positions tends only be fun - if at all - for the teens themselfs (things like griefing, being loud, obnoxious and showing off which look cool when ur 13 and have no life experience just look like signs of social/emotional desperation once you become mature enough to understand people).
I don't want all servers should be age segregated, I just whish there were such servers available - with, for example, a 25+ age limit - for those that want the option: I would even be willing to pay extra for it.
Who the hell tagged this story 'astroturf' and 'flamebait'? It's neither. Several different games are compared, and Heaqvy Rain is only mentioned once. I'm submitting the opposite (see my subject line) and would urge everyone else to do so as well.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Is there an app for that?
You just announced them.
http://www.vpforums.org/
MMO's do need to have over 18 servers. I can get pretty vulgar and I do not want to corrupt a young mind. However, I do want to have fun and play the way I want to.
Adult Toys For Less