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Are Games Getting Easier?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the kids-these-days dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I can't help feeling that this generation of games for both consoles and PCs are getting increasingly dumbed down and easier to complete. There's no challenge in today's games, most of which can be completed on the day of purchase. Triple A titles such as Halo, Modern Warfare 2 are the worst of the lot. The whole reason for this article is Medal of Honor, this can be completed within hours of purchase. Where's the fun in that?"

18 of 854 comments (clear)

  1. Where is the fun? by weachiod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In multiplayer.

    1. Re:Where is the fun? by jaymz666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yep, there's nothing more fun than being teabagged by some jerk who has no life or job so they spend 24/7 practising so they can feel their life has meaning when some wage slave logs on to go find some fun for a few hours.

    2. Re:Where is the fun? by mark72005 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This.

      I hate how game companies today are shoving everyone toward online play - though I understand, because it frees them from having to... you know... create content for the game.

      Some of us want to be able to play single player in exchange for our $60... it's not too much to ask.

    3. Re:Where is the fun? by abigor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Fully agree. That said, you just have to pick your games: Assassin's Creed 2, Red Dead Redemption, GTA4 and many others offer extensive single player content. I love stuff like the Modern Warfare games, but I make sure to buy them used and cheap.

    4. Re:Where is the fun? by Nemyst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wish I had mod points now. I'd often rather not have MP at all, for I barely ever do multiplayer. There isn't a whole lot of fun to getting shot at by people you don't know who'll rub it in your face in the typical well-mannered way a 14-year old can.

    5. Re:Where is the fun? by AstrumPreliator · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't know. My all time favorite multiplayer FPS is Starsiege: Tribes. It was only multiplayer and it was hard as hell to play. I was never one of the greats, or even really good but I always found it fun. Thing is the game is absolutely full of content. The multiplayer was amazingly complex for its day. Even though it had no multiplayer it was still seeped in Starsiege lore. You don't need to know any of it to play the game, but they did put a lot of time into it. So it's not like content and multiplayer are mutually exclusive.

    6. Re:Where is the fun? by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except for the fact there is a difference between simply losing and being told you suck repeatedly from people who have no life other than the game.

      The problem is, unless you are part of the "community" and can devote a lot of time to a game, you aren't going to have fun because the majority of people online are assholes.

      There is a line between simply being bad at a game and 14 year old kids cursing you out because you can't devote 8 hours a day to the game.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    7. Re:Where is the fun? by nschubach · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't mind multiplayer. In fact, I encourage it... but I don't do PVP. Most people equate multiplayer to competitive and that's where I think multiplayer gaming gains a big red "x" for some people. What we need to do is encourage developers to develop a storyline and allow jump-in cooperation from people you approve.

      Personally I feel like MP games need to break a bit from the linearity of single player gaming (and I know people will disagree with me on this.) I'd love to be completing storyline missions in one town and let my friend go off and sell loot from our last mission or whatever they like (even if it's breaking form the party and exploring that cave over there.)

      I spend most of my time investigating the cooperative aspects of games so that I can log in and play with friends and complete objectives.

      I don't have nearly as much fun in games when it's just me.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    8. Re:Where is the fun? by Moryath · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I'm really sorry to say this. But you are completely full of shit.

      Two things need to happen. First up, matchmaking desperately needs a better way to match players of similar skill.

      Second, whoever came up with the "play for X hours, get 'experience points' to unlock all the uber fucking gear" for Call of Duty, that every other goddamn FPS-multiplayer has been mimicking ever since, needs to fucking die. It's already bad enough that the lifeless basement-dwellers ruin the game for anyone else coming on to play for fun, now they get an extra advantage in more body armor and deadlier weapons too?

      No. Thank. You.

      I gave up on playing anything multiplayer on Xbox Live for one simple reason: I can't go on to anywhere, find a "new players" server, and get comfortable in the game. No, all that's available are the deathmatch and ctf-playing 14-year-old fatsos who live in their parents' basement, never see natural light, and scream "faggot" into their headset constantly if you don't do everything picture perfect and have a goddamn photographic memory for every little fucking nook and cranny and weapon respawn time so that you're standing right on the rocket launcher the moment it comes back up from their using the ammo up and dropping the last spawn.

    9. Re:Where is the fun? by demonlapin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I suck at FPS. So what? I don't have time to become good at the genre or memorize the maps. Just put me on a server with a bunch of other guys who don't know the maps and suck. We'll all have fun, while you guys who are good at it compete for the real glory.

    10. Re:Where is the fun? by Ephemeriis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm really sorry to say this. Most games are competitive.

      These days that's largely true. Which is part of my complaint. Cooperative and/or single-player games are getting harder to find. Which is a problem, if I don't feel like playing something competitive.

      If you're not having fun, you probably suck.

      I'm very willing to accept that I suck. I don't have hours to devote to practicing enough to become good. And I'm ok with that. You aren't going to insult me by telling me that I suck. I know this already.

      But simply losing at a game can still be enjoyable - if the people you're playing with are not jerks.

      There's a difference between playing a friendly match and losing to somebody who is a good sport, and playing with somebody who is screaming random obscenities and insulting you every time you die.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    11. Re:Where is the fun? by vlm · · Score: 5, Informative

      In the days before RS-232 we had current loop, which was basically the same idea, but used "current flow"/"no current flow" instead of RS-232 +15V/-15V to signal zeros and ones.

      MIDI 1.0 is a current loop serial port that runs at a bizarre baud rate 31250 bps. Yet it uses a nice standard async protocol of 8N1 just like a serial port.

      Depending on the peculiar non-standardness of your serial port, it might, with minimal hacking, be made to work MIDI.

      Take a UART chip, add a RS-232 level shifter like a MAX-232 or those ancient 1489 1488 level shifters, add a DB-25 and you've got a RS-232 port. Take the same UART chip, add some optoisolators and resistors, wire to a 5 pin DIN jack, and you're got a MIDI port. Not as different as you'd think. The software is a bit different of course.

      Or working the other way around, on the Atari ST, the MIDI ports could be connected in a "MIDI null modem"-ish cable, and you could play multiplayer games, although I never owned a ST.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  2. More players = More money by Manos_Of_Fate · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a business decision, pure and simple. The more people your game is accessible to, the more copies you sell. Why spend a lot of time developing a game 5% of the potential market will want when you can spend the same effort appealing to the other 95%?

    --
    Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
  3. Easy or Stupidly Difficult by VoiceInTheDesert · · Score: 5, Funny

    It seems the way to make AI these days is to make it really stupid and easy for the player to beat, unless the player turns it on hard mode, in which case, they see you from 5 miles away and one-hit you before you were aware the map had finished loading.

    Studios are under a lot of pressure to churn out games as fast as possible these days and AI is suffering. The solution to making games challenging is to make them either never miss and insta-kill the player or to just give them tons of health and attack power, but keep them stupid. Neither strategy is entertaining and it would be nice to have actual care put into building intelligent, challenging AI instead.

  4. I'm not sure... by brian0918 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm not sure - I haven't played a new game in years. Still working on Myst. I hope to have it completed by 2015, and then I'll move on to Riven. I may just finish this series before I die...

  5. ROI by Ryvar · · Score: 5, Informative

    (All opinions expressed herein may not reflect the views of my employer, and in fact we try to avoid falling into this trap but it's a pretty prevalent attitude in the industry right now):

    I work as a game designer on big-budget shooters for a living, so here's my take:

    Game companies are consciously making the decision to do this for two reasons:
    1) Easier games have broader markets, by increasing the likelihood and rate at which the user receives validation we increase sales, and much more importantly:

    2) It's unusual for more than 50% of the people who beat the first level of your game to beat the last level. Money spent on later levels is generally money wasted, and shortening the experience altogether is a function of the increasing development cost per hour of gameplay and ROI of even having more than 10 hours of content at all. If 95% of the people who bought the game complete the first level (as tracked by developers through achievement systems) but only, say, 35-40% finish the game, that necessarily influences how you invest your limited development funds.

    --Ryv

  6. Re:*yawn* by jarbrewer · · Score: 5, Funny

    What I wouldn't have given to only have to walk up hills. Everything was mountains in my day. And the 'game' was called Getting Poked In the Eye With a Stick. And we were grateful.

  7. Re:*yawn* by tool462 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a cheat code:
    Unix Unix Dem Dem Linux Repub Linux Repub Broadcom Apple Sun Start

    Instant +5, Insightful and positive Karma.