Do Gamers Want Simpler Games?

A recent GamePro article sums up a lesson that developers and publishers have been slowly learning over the last few years: gamers don't want as much from games as they say they do. Quoting: "Conventional gaming wisdom thus far has been 'bigger, better, MORE!' It's something affirmed by the vocal minority on forums, and by the vast majority of critics that praise games for ambition and scale. The problem is, in reality its almost completely wrong. ... How do we know this? Because an increasing number of games incorporate telemetry systems that track our every action. They measure the time we play, they watch where we get stuck, and they broadcast our behavior back to the people that make the games so they can tune the experience accordingly. Every studio I've spoken to that does this, to a fault, says that many of the games they've released are far too big and far too hard for most players' behavior. As a general rule, less than five percent of a game's audience plays a title through to completion. I've had several studios tell me that their general observation is that 'more than 90 percent' of a game's audience will play it for 'just four or five hours.'"

Comments

What if their games suck

[mvar]

Have they thought about it? In the past you could play games like "Baldur's Gate" with 200+ hours of gameplay and not get bored and even go through it again a couple of times.

Most absolutely not.

[mjwx]

I do not want less complex games.

Games don't need to be dumber, the average age of a gamer is over 25, we aren't morons so stop treating us like them.

I like a bit of complexity and puzzle solving in my game, I absolutely hate the hand holding and linear corridors of recent games.

Complex does not mean harder or longer it means that it is meant to provide a player with a challenge and after that challenge was defeated a feeling of accomplishment

Anything that could force the player to make hard decisions or challenge them slightly has been removed. Like an inventory system where you had limited space, so you actually have to make difficult choices about what to carry (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did this to some extent). Near unlimited ammo and and regenerating health have become the Deus Ex Machina of gaming, killing decent game design. At no point do you have to take it easy and plan your moves due to low health, in HL1 if you wasted your rockets you'd find the game difficult if not impossible at some points. Now days, even in HL2 there is an infinite "box-o-rockets" where you engage anything that needs them. Now that's just for game-play, now let me get started on story.

Here's the story line for the next Gears of Duty game.

You are a red meat easting, muscle bound, flag waving all American hero (even if you've got a foreign accent but I'll get to that bit later) needless to say, you are 100% good and pure. Your enemy are the evil Nazi, zombie terrorists who want to blow up the White House with a dirty bomb (sound familiar) so they are unambiguously evil in every fashion. You will fight through a mixture of the standard tile sets (urban, jungle snow, desert) which are quite linear (any illusion of openness is optical) whilst never running out of ammo or health until you get to an unimpressive anti-climax where someone hands you a gun and you kill the ultimate Hitler Zombie Alien with one shot in a cinematic perspective. Further more, simply adding a foreign accent to this archetype does not instantly make them foreign. I cringe when I hear the British soldiers in COD as they are just Yanks with cockney accents. I'm sorry but this just doesn't cut it and why I'm glad they've never tried to use Australian characters (Bioshock again, Australia Day is 26/01 (DD/MM) not 01/26 (MM/DD) no Aussie would ever write dates in a yank format)

Personally I'm sick of it. It's like the publishers don't want me to see anything that could accidentally kick my brain into gear. I remember System Shock 2, you had a love-hate thing with Shodan, the ideas of the many were seductive, you could associate with the logs of the dead crew (Bioshock was a really, really poor copy of SS2's story with the intrigue taken out). Deus Ex where you weren't sure who was on who's side. I've been waiting 10 years for another game that could get my attention and imagination so completely as DX and SS2.

So yes, give me complexity, a deep involving story and some actual challenging game play. Also ramping up the enemies hit points to make things harder is cheap (Bioshock), design better AI.

Standard Disclaimer: this is for PC games and consoles pretending to be PC's. Casual games are a different kettle of fish all together.

Re:Most absolutely not.

[mccalli]

Games don't need to be dumber, the average age of a gamer is over 25, we aren't morons so stop treating us like them.

To me, this is both the conceit and the problem. "I'm older, so I want something more complex". Well, my current favourite game is the pinball machine I've bought, and I'm 38. Games that I play the most are short pick up'n'play things, not long complex involved ones.

I'm not suggesting games should become less complex, rather that there should be less complex games available. The two of us sound like we're in different markets and that's fine - your choice isn't wrong, neither is mine. However the idea that because you're older you need something more complex and involved - that's an idea I question. It's purely a matter of choice, not age. As a teen I played the excellent Dungeon Master and mapped things out on paper. My current incarnation wouldn't begin to have the time to do that and wouldn't particularly enjoy doing so either - it's not a function of age, it's a function of time and whatever you happen to be enjoying at the time.

Cheers,
Ian