For those interested in another article (?) along the same lines, written by someone who has writing, not computers, as his profession, and therefore is quite good at it...
One thing which must be taken into account is the change that has happened in the profile of the "average player"... Computer games haven't been a "popular" thing for too many years yet. Computer game players used to be a much smaller group, and were much more likely to be programmers, etc, who LIKE complex games. Today's average player is someone who's barely computer literate (if even that) and who likes his games simple and straightforward. The kind of people who actually want to spend days learning how to, for example, fly a realistically simulated airplane, have not become more scarce, they are just vastly outnumbered by the 5-second attention span players... Absolute numbers may have even grown, but their relative amount (of all players), which is of course what the game companies look at, has decreased drastically...
Slashdot Mirror
For those interested in another article (?) along the same lines, written by someone who has writing, not computers, as his profession, and therefore is quite good at it...
n ning_was_the_command_line/
http://www.cyberpunkproject.org/lib/in_the_begi
The article is long, but very well-written and from the point-of-view of the USER. I recommend to everyone.
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. Dies nox et omnia michi sunt contraria
.
One thing which must be taken into account is the change that has happened in the profile of the "average player"... Computer games haven't been a "popular" thing for too many years yet. Computer game players used to be a much smaller group, and were much more likely to be programmers, etc, who LIKE complex games. Today's average player is someone who's barely computer literate (if even that) and who likes his games simple and straightforward. The kind of people who actually want to spend days learning how to, for example, fly a realistically simulated airplane, have not become more scarce, they are just vastly outnumbered by the 5-second attention span players... Absolute numbers may have even grown, but their relative amount (of all players), which is of course what the game companies look at, has decreased drastically...
.
. Dies nox et omnia michi sunt contraria
.