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So, about Modern Gamers... (very long rant)
12 years ago
So apparently an image I posted on tumblr (which was sent to me by a friend, so I dunno where it came from originally, sorry)...
http://naughtyjester.tumblr.com/image/50620288705
...has gotten a lot of attention. Some people slap their faces in agreement and sigh dejectedly at the state of things, but some people have made text rebuttals over 8 paragraphs long, stating that gamers today are just as smart and skilled as people were back in the early days of gaming. Very valid opinions, mostly. But some people even think that we are currently living in a "Golden Age of Gaming." ... No, if anything, we are in a DARK age of gaming, where corporations and bad decisions and copycats are the norm. What we ARE living in, is a golden age of gaming SALES.
But I'm not here to rant about EA. Let's talk about the credibility of the old timers. A lot of people are saying things trying to attack the credibility of those who came before. For example... "Everyone talks about how bad MODERN gamers are. But did you ever beat BATTLETOADS?" No, of course I haven't. Almost NOBODY has beaten Battletoads without cheating or exploiting emulators. And those that did had so much practice that you would honestly think they had no lives outside that game.... some didn't.
But you see, that's the thing. Battletoads was one of those games that was meant to be brutally, relentlessly challenging, taken to inconceiveable, near-impossible levels. Levels that graduated from "challenge" to "ordeal." Games that were about challenge more than fun, but tried to incorporate both. But to use that as an excuse for getting stuck in the first area of Super Metroid.... That doesn't work.
Super Metroid is NOT Battletoads. Street Fighter is not Battletoads. Star Fox, Mega Man, Donkey Kong Country, Bad Dudes, Castlevania, Mario, TMNT, Axelay, Actraiser, Chrono Trigger... they are NOT Battletoads. Using that comparison to discredit "old gamers" is like going up to a war veteran and telling them that their sacrifice was meaningless because they didn't win a medal of honor. Myself... I wouldn't consider myself "hardcore." I'd think of myself as more of an "enthusiast."
The problem with modern gamers isn't that they are inherently "stupider." It's that they have been conditioned NOT TO LEARN. That's what hinders people, not just the lack of clear instruction.
A lot of the games from my childhood were rentals. Every Friday I would rush my acne-ridden butt to Blockbuster Video to try something new. And surprise, Blockbuster seldom had instructions in the rental box with the game, because it had been lost by previous customers. Developers were aware of this. They were also aware that their audiences were fully capable of figuring things out on their own, simply by pressing buttons, and figuring out what things do. All you needed to do was PRESS A BUTTON to find out what it did. Press this to jump. Press down twice to turn into a ball. Try hitting Select, see what happens. What do L and R do? Oh, neat. But nowadays, gamers literally freeze up if they aren't told exactly what they have to do, in explicit tutorials. And even then, it's sometimes not enough. They want objective beacons. They want brightly glowing trails to follow. THEY WANT CORRIDORS. They don't want challenge. They don't want to THINK.
What angers me about the controversial image isn't that people are "stuck." Everyone gets stuck now and then. But this is a point in the game at which you should NOT be "stuck." Samus has such a small amount of territory to explore in the beginning, and gamers are so used to linear corridors now that it doesn't even enter into their head that the solution might be somewhere else. For them, the solution must ALWAYS be right there in plain sight, with large blinking arrows and idiot guides. Modern gamers are like the Cy-Bugs in Wreck-It Ralph. Unable to think rationally, and only able to focus on shiny beacons.
Always forward, never back. Sometimes you need to go back. They are so used to killing bosses on the very first try that upon their first death, they flee to the internet and ask "HOW DO I DO THIS" instead of trying to puzzle out the situation. The very idea of "experimenting" is abhorrent to these whelps, and that is why they (with very few exceptions) will never know what TRUE gaming, what TRUE challenge is. And that makes me angry... both for myself, and for them. I'm angry, not just that companies are diminishing their customers and gaming as a whole... but that modern gamers simply won't accept that things could be better, that they have so much more to learn, so much more to see.
Oh btw...
Shadowrun Returns is coming out in June. Hope your body is ready.
...
Still with us?
Okay, if you don't want to read all my ineloquent ranting, Egoraptor will clearly (but sort of obnoxiously) explain it for me:
http://naughtyjester.tumblr.com/image/50620288705
...has gotten a lot of attention. Some people slap their faces in agreement and sigh dejectedly at the state of things, but some people have made text rebuttals over 8 paragraphs long, stating that gamers today are just as smart and skilled as people were back in the early days of gaming. Very valid opinions, mostly. But some people even think that we are currently living in a "Golden Age of Gaming." ... No, if anything, we are in a DARK age of gaming, where corporations and bad decisions and copycats are the norm. What we ARE living in, is a golden age of gaming SALES.
But I'm not here to rant about EA. Let's talk about the credibility of the old timers. A lot of people are saying things trying to attack the credibility of those who came before. For example... "Everyone talks about how bad MODERN gamers are. But did you ever beat BATTLETOADS?" No, of course I haven't. Almost NOBODY has beaten Battletoads without cheating or exploiting emulators. And those that did had so much practice that you would honestly think they had no lives outside that game.... some didn't.
But you see, that's the thing. Battletoads was one of those games that was meant to be brutally, relentlessly challenging, taken to inconceiveable, near-impossible levels. Levels that graduated from "challenge" to "ordeal." Games that were about challenge more than fun, but tried to incorporate both. But to use that as an excuse for getting stuck in the first area of Super Metroid.... That doesn't work.
Super Metroid is NOT Battletoads. Street Fighter is not Battletoads. Star Fox, Mega Man, Donkey Kong Country, Bad Dudes, Castlevania, Mario, TMNT, Axelay, Actraiser, Chrono Trigger... they are NOT Battletoads. Using that comparison to discredit "old gamers" is like going up to a war veteran and telling them that their sacrifice was meaningless because they didn't win a medal of honor. Myself... I wouldn't consider myself "hardcore." I'd think of myself as more of an "enthusiast."
The problem with modern gamers isn't that they are inherently "stupider." It's that they have been conditioned NOT TO LEARN. That's what hinders people, not just the lack of clear instruction.
A lot of the games from my childhood were rentals. Every Friday I would rush my acne-ridden butt to Blockbuster Video to try something new. And surprise, Blockbuster seldom had instructions in the rental box with the game, because it had been lost by previous customers. Developers were aware of this. They were also aware that their audiences were fully capable of figuring things out on their own, simply by pressing buttons, and figuring out what things do. All you needed to do was PRESS A BUTTON to find out what it did. Press this to jump. Press down twice to turn into a ball. Try hitting Select, see what happens. What do L and R do? Oh, neat. But nowadays, gamers literally freeze up if they aren't told exactly what they have to do, in explicit tutorials. And even then, it's sometimes not enough. They want objective beacons. They want brightly glowing trails to follow. THEY WANT CORRIDORS. They don't want challenge. They don't want to THINK.
What angers me about the controversial image isn't that people are "stuck." Everyone gets stuck now and then. But this is a point in the game at which you should NOT be "stuck." Samus has such a small amount of territory to explore in the beginning, and gamers are so used to linear corridors now that it doesn't even enter into their head that the solution might be somewhere else. For them, the solution must ALWAYS be right there in plain sight, with large blinking arrows and idiot guides. Modern gamers are like the Cy-Bugs in Wreck-It Ralph. Unable to think rationally, and only able to focus on shiny beacons.
Always forward, never back. Sometimes you need to go back. They are so used to killing bosses on the very first try that upon their first death, they flee to the internet and ask "HOW DO I DO THIS" instead of trying to puzzle out the situation. The very idea of "experimenting" is abhorrent to these whelps, and that is why they (with very few exceptions) will never know what TRUE gaming, what TRUE challenge is. And that makes me angry... both for myself, and for them. I'm angry, not just that companies are diminishing their customers and gaming as a whole... but that modern gamers simply won't accept that things could be better, that they have so much more to learn, so much more to see.
Oh btw...
Shadowrun Returns is coming out in June. Hope your body is ready.
...
Still with us?
Okay, if you don't want to read all my ineloquent ranting, Egoraptor will clearly (but sort of obnoxiously) explain it for me:
Certainly the lack of learning I think comes down to the expectation of being told directly what to do in certain situations, usually through a prompt or a tutorial. Hand-holding is a common thing and quite the norm for these current gens and it is kind of sad as the occasional game shows up that does it well, no hand holding needed, just step by step demonstrating what you can do and ramping the difficulty accordingly.
Tis quite sad indeed. I mean I haven't even PLAYED metroid and I know you shoot the doors to open em, and you can turn into a ball and roll around in small areas XD
Monster Hunter is one of the few that remain so to this day.
There are no cheats, there are no EZ wins.
You eather learn how to play the fucking game or you lose. END OF STORY.
"Oh man, I never ran into this monster before, I hope it goes easy on me..." YOU WILL DIE IN 5 MINUTES.
Why? because you're not used to how it moves, the game never tells you how it moves, you have to get your face RIGHT IN THERE and learn it.
Literally, when someone can't beat a monsters, the only advice anyone can say is:
"Stop getting hit and hit it until it dies."
End of story.
Entering this game, you laugh that you have 50 minutes to kill a monster.
Sorry, this isn't god of war or some hack-n-slash.
You are a NOBODY who is fighting monsters that want you DEAD ten times over.
You don't get to see their HP. You don't get to see their stamina. You either hit it until it keels over and dies, or you fail.
As you do, you learn more about them, their habits, where they go to eat, where they sleep, etc.
Forewarning.
It's completely possibly to see what seems to be an easy boss monster and simply get your ass run over.
Also, no amount of "Oh, I beat this monster a hundred times, easy peasy." will keep you safe.
Sometimes a monster will decide "No, you will die." and it doesn't matter what your armor is, your HP, nothing. They will find a way to fuck you up.
well, I -started- to replace a couple of days later, because I needed to farm G level brachys for my next armor set.
I love the game design and the combat...but the mindless grind is terrible.
You know, that phantom mechanic that will leave you needing ONE of *insert item here* to finish your armor/weapon, and because you need THAT ONE item, you won't get it.
However, due to said grind, it does help you learn all the ins and outs of the monsters you are hunting.
better now...I think...
http://www.shapeways.com/model/2645.....ductBox-search
The Dark Queen basically says something like "Yeah, we're evil, but at least WE didn't cheat."
my game-radar really is completely broken since i automatically flag everything with "drm, don't buy". °-o
this is the same kinda stuff
its moder ones are just as difficult too, just no glitched unending respawns that aim to make ragequits galore. xD
only BT game i played was the Battletoads and Double Dragon game on the SNES.
OHHHH SNAP!
Anyway, I agree. I watched Egoraptors Sequeltitties episode on this before and I agreed there already.
People most certainly didn't become dumber. We became smarter since then! It's just that game design itself has made a step backwards. Some games are so complicated, cluttered and convoluted that you simply can't learn them on your own anymore.
A NES pad had two buttons and a D-pad. You can experiment with that, you can learn button combinations on your own. But in modern games you can just do so much, that makes it hard to teach the player everything.
There are really bad examples for this, like one of the worst games ever made (in my opinion)... Final Fantasy XIII.
Sure, it shows you how to shift the battle configuration of your characters during a fight but one thing that it simply doesn't tell you about is how to upgrade your weapons! You just dump various random items on them to increase stats and the level of that weapon. But different items have different effects, they change in effectiveness depending on how much you use them and on which weapon you use them but the weapon never ever tells you about that!
When I was using that system I constantly felt like I was doing something wrong, especially when new equipment that I found turned out to be worse than the weapons that I already enahnced. "Did I fuck it up now? Can I still find enough items to level my new weapons later on in the game?" So I just ended up not using that system anymore. And that is just one examples for the game's poor design...
But there are examples for modern games with great design as well. However, these games are usually not very complex and don't have to do with guns (and many of them are indie titles as well) so they often don't get any attention at all.
All in all I think it is sad that game devs and publishers always dump a shitload of money into their games, make them as generic and copy-pasty as possible and then declare them to be a failure if they fail to sell 50 bajillion copies :T Take Dead Space 3 for example. The guys from EA said that the game had to sell 5 million copies to be a success and to save the franchise. What kind of poor planing is that?
A good example for this is Dark Souls though. The devs just recycled and polished the engine and many assets from the prequel Demon Souls. Dark Souls didn't sell THAT many copies but since producing it wasn't very expensive compared to something like Dead Space 3 it was still a financial success.
Oh by the way! Since you were talking about Battletoads. Did you know that many super hard games of that time were much harder in the US and Europe than they were in Japan? That is because renting games and videos was (and maybe still is?) illegal in Japan. You had to buy a game instead of renting it and then finishing it over the course of a weekend.
So to make it impossible to finish these games in a couple of days they made them SUPER hard!
I think this is interesting because it shows that making people actually buy a game instead of renting it isn't a new practice within the industry.
Granted, that's basically triple AAA, but then you look at a game like Starbound, coming soon and the aforementioned Shadowrun Returns, and it's hard to think of this as the dark ages. Maybe the dim ages, for certain markets, but that's just the Halogen bulbs slowly cranking up.
As far as modern gamers having it easy, or games not taking player intelligence for granted, I'm not so sure how much of that I buy into. There was an entire industry built off of magazines, cheat code books, game genies, and gamer help hotlines that is largely defunct now. Did anyone not use the Konami code when hitting up Contra for their first time? On purpose? You might not have made use of the Kid Icarus maps, but they were awfully easy to get. You could hardly open a magazine without having the entire level spread spoiled for you. There were all sorts of leg ups, assuming the game bothered with them. Most that didn't were less about platforming and more about point and click quests whose margin for "isn't it obvious" wandered the scale from "duh" to "maddeningly obscure." That's not especially good game design either.
I dunno, I tend to file these sorts of things in the same bin as "movies aren't what they used to be" and "there's nothing good on television anymore." It feels less like a generational trend, and more like a rise in personal awareness. Which is not to say that EA isn't evil. Just that ET for the Atari 2600 existed and you can't unring that bell.
Whatever the case, it's all about the board games these days anyway. ^^
Fuck this nostalgia bullshit.
Really... the Battletoads arguement is perfect. A scant few people have beaten that game. Saying something more like "Megaman 2" or something would be considerably more believable, simply because most people CAN beat a game like that by just plugging away at it.
Speaking about difficult gaming achievements, I suppose one of my best was beating Megaman 7's final boss without using an E or S tank once... it was pretty intense, since that is probably the single hardest boss in the series.
No wonder Mega Man wanted to kill Wily after beating him in this, LOL.
The real challenge was dodging the bolts. It really involved a lot of trial and error in prior runs, but ultimately, good positioning, rhythmic jumping and sliding and a little luck got me through it. I maybe took one or two hits the whole time, but some of those dodges were badass, lemme just say =p
Fuck you Battletoads, you ruined my life, you and Richard Garriet
Everything afterward, however, yes.
Oh, and I got a laugh about the control scheme bit. That's how I am, to a certain extent...
Remember puzzles in games were designed using subtle things that players had learned threw out the level and not just assuming they can figure random shit out? (I'm looking at YOU Darksiders)
Remember when a story was enough to sell games instead of half baked multiplayer?
Remember when the point of a sequel was to expand one what previous game's universe and design instead of just releasing the same thing over and over again and claiming it's new when the only people you're fooling are the moronic fanboys who call betrayal at even the slightest hint at game changing innovation GOD DAMN IT HALO 4 YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!!!!!!!!!
....... I think I'm okay now -w-
With an addendum
And that's something I also hate. Kids. Kids that play nothing but shooters or M rated games because they think it makes them cool. IT DOESN'T. If anything, most M rated games these days are some of the most immature things I've witnessed and ridiculously easy compared to E-T games that require actual skill and thought.
Also, the hell is up with games not being games? Asura's Wrath. I wanted a game not a fucking anime with random button prompts! Fuck you game industry.
...and now onto Metro...
These people don't have the benefit of subscribing to Nintendo Power. They don't have access to cheating like game genie. It's not 'all the rage' that everyone is playing to ask local friends. So, they ask the internet, confused and uncertain.. just like they always have.
I actually get this problem with newer games. I have a problem with 'getting it'. MMOs, in particular, are very tricky, and there are a ton of players who 'don't get it', and quit after a month.
Personally, I feel that this is nothing new or surprising at all, and not really noteworthy of being mentioned.
As for the general state of gaming, I really have to disagree. The mainstream of gaming is for the most part dumbed down and made palatable for a more casual audience, yes. A good chunk of recent mainstream games are heavily scripted shooter roller-coaster hybrids, yes. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't good mainstream games, and that certainly doesn't mean that the mainstream is the only easily accessible library of games.
The indie game scene is BOOMING right now with the advent of steam and crowd sourcing. The past five or so years have been really catering heavily to consoles and the mainstream, but now we are finally starting to see some interesting new ideas with some actual money behind them. Look at something like Starbound, they have a great idea and managed to get over a million USD worth of pre-orders and crowd funding. In 2009, something like that would be nothing more than a pipe dream. Plus, look at the massive variety you have on steam nowdays. You have stuff like SPAZ, Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy, Cave Story +, Stealth Bastard, Awesomenauts, Don't Starve, Hotline Miami, FTL, the list goes on. There's something for everyone and a variety of challenge levels. Not to mention that as long as you do your research, you've got stuff like Bioshock Infinite and Far Cry 3, Dishonored, all kinds of awesome games with million dollar budgets that can take your breath away. Its a GREAT time to be a gamer.
Anyway, i heard these pics were fake because you had to use the morphball to get there. I also heard similar gaming woes about the new Ducktales HD remake. They playtested it and kids couldn't figure shit out. So they had to dumb it down . I don't know about you, but I don't remember that game being that hard, infact, it was one of the first games I actually beat as a kid.
But the problem with nostalgia is that time sweeps away the unworthy. How many great games can you name that were on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Let's be generous and say that there were fifty great games that stand the test of time to be as good now as they were then.
There were 709 games granted the license for release on the original NES.
Most of those games were dogshit. A nice heaping helping of them were pretty mediocre. A few of them were great. And most of them, regardless of actual end-result quality borrowed a lot from other games that were popular at the time. And I don't think you can really say that gamer's are conditioned not to learn, when damned near every game in existence has an extensive wiki made entirely through volunteer effort listing every easter egg, secret, tactic and trick. You might be tempted to call that proof, but it's not, because the people who made the game have nothing to do with it, it's gamers tracking down this information and putting it up. I put up as the gold standard of my point Minecraft, which is a game a lot of content and no tutorial, no documentation and a huge learning curve, and yet within hours of a content update everything in that updtate is figured out and laid bare on the Minecraft wiki.
The difference here is probably one of communication, or perspective being messed with by ease of communication, anyway. When we were kids in the 80s and early 90s, the internet was not really an option. You had no real way of knowing if a game was good or not except for gaming magazines (Which were and are really little more than advertisements) and word of mouth from people geographically close to you. Your friends might not know (Hell, probably don't) the best way to beat a given boss or how to get through a particular puzzle, so you don't have any option but to beat your head against it until you give up on the game or stumble upon the solution. And I don't know about you, but I don't think I knew anyone who had beaten more than a handful of games when I was a kid in the 80s. I don't really take that as any indication that the games were any better then.
(for a second I thought this was about tabletop Gaming, guess I'll have to do that rant myself later this week)
I check out the manual, look at all the stuff I can use and interact with that is listed, and put in the game and play it. Most gamers from the 90s can adapt to varying games because back then, the games were difficult, most didn't have a save system [NES LoZ anyone?]. With Dark Souls, after playing it for about a year now, I can safely say I have finally gotten good at the game. Died almost 150 times on my very first playthrough until I found something I was comfortable with [can't do shit with PvP but hey, everyone sucks at something]. Now I die about... maybe 10 times due to bosses that are somewhat hard to predict [Bed of Chaos!!!!!].
Kids today haven't had a challenge because they get games with an easier than easy mode at times. How much easier can a game get, honestly?!
An example is my cousin, for instance, instead of going 'Oh, I missed turning here' and correcting that, he starts yelling that the game is too hard. :| There is too much hand holding today in games, personally.
Kids these days...
what with no map systems, and having to just remember where the heck you came from.
now i wanna go replay those again...
Stuff in the past was cool, but then a lot of stuff sucked just like there's cool stuff now but a lot of stuff sucks. There's really no such thing as things being totally better now than they were in the past, since everyones perspective is different.
Good and bad are relative terms that depend upon an individuals own experience and perspective so you really can't say gamers now are better/worse than gamers then and vice versa.
People are really just people until you get to know them individually but you shouldn't ever base your opinion of every type of a certain kind of person based on one of or even a large group of that kind of person, y'know?
I mean, substitute a statement like "Modern gamers don't like to think" with "Modern black people don't like to think" and I think you'll see where there might be more than a little unfairness to your argument.
Yeah, I don't get nostalgia. I can appreciate an old game entirely on its own merits, although context doesn't hurt with games like Wizardry.
"You botched his resurrection, and STILL have the gall to demand 2000 gold?! Fuck you!"
Oh, Wizardry...
As far as modern games go, I blame the atrocity that is front-loaded tutorials. People expect their moves and abilities to be spelled out.
Advertising? More blatant.
Easy games? In the past it was just... the game was easy because it was easy. Now it's a bunch of tutorials, hand holding, objective markers, etc.
Linearity? Well, a bit more blatant, mostly more obvious due to 3D gaming over 2D. Of course, thst could be a problem in its own right, as you have games like FF13 that people call a massive hallway when, really, it seems that more should be done with exploration.
All that you described those is the natural evolution caused by growth on an industry and technology. We live in a multimedia world, so our advertising will be more multimedia. We live in a world where gaming is far more accepted and mainstream, therefore more advertising to reach that larger audience. There are a lot more games now and companies have to be aggressive so people will by their product.
Tutorials and the like are part result of technology and part the result of reach that now extends to the "casual gamer" who otherwise would not buy video games. Old games simply did not have the space needed for such things because ROM and later, early hard drives, were very pricy per byte so every simple byte had to be devoted to squeezing the game in. Today storage is extremely cheap and thus companies again take advantage by making it easier for casual gamers to join in. I just ignore the tutorials or turn them off, but the fact they exist doesn't bug me.
Tutorials were added as time went on, but it wouldn't be fair to say old games had no tutorials for lack of space. More often than not, to me, they seemed unnecessary to bother adding in when most were expected to have a game manual.
Personally, I don't mind a well implemented, unobtrusive tutorial.
I love when a game outright says "Okay, to beat this guy, you have to do this, but good luck actually pulling that off!"
You say it's a dark Age of gaming, and I agree, not lot of real progress is being made by the companies we came to expect excellence from. However, remember what came after the medieval dark ages. I think we are on the verge of a gaming Renaissance, that will change how games are made.
Keep an eye on the indie market, we'll probably see it there first.
This is why I love Fallout and STALKER.
They have a lot more to them then the main storyline.
I'm somewhere around 300-350 hours of play in both Fallout 3 GOTY and Fallout New Vegas Ultimate, and I don't think I'll be stopping anytime soon.
Let's be real, in the 80's and 90's, there were cash in's and selling, but now it's worse.
Also, as for your sequewelitis video... there was a response video made to that. A rebuttal video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H2m0uTa__8
how about speed running super metroid (only 4-5 tanks) and zelda link to the past (skipping blue mail)?
I remember a family member raving about a crappy car puzzle game on their phone a few years back. The art and sound effects were cringe worthy, and the game play was nothing more than swiping cars in order to park them. I remember chortling to myself about every one of its failings, there was simply no pride or effort invested in any aspect of the game. But he just looked at me and asked 'so what?'.
In that moment I finally got the 'new' gamer, and a part of me died. You say that it makes you angry that these types of people will never come to really experience what gaming really is... but 'so what?' That's not what they want. They don't want to 'earn' anything; to them there is nothing to accomplish. They don't want to concentrate or learn, or invest. They simply don't want to be immersed in the game. They seek instant gratification, not a challenge. For them, a game is a quick, detached form of entertainment. Something they can pick up and put down in the dull little pockets of their lives. That is the key difference between the old gamer and the new gamer... an old gamer will sit down to experience a game; a new gamer will stand up to avoid whatever experience is going on outside of it.
That is the new market.
Fuckthis Im goin back to play Metro again on Ranger.
Dude...sometimes I just don't know what to think. Elitism over video games? Humanity IS fucked.
I totally agree with you on this and remember the days before we could run to the internet and find answers. When I first played SM I never had the internet, I did it all myself and when I found something new on another play through, it BLEW MY MIND.
I think that's another symptom of the modern gaming mindset. It's something taught to modern gamers by games that can't stand on their own, games that need a gimmick to survive. I'm not saying that all multiplayer online games are a gimmick, but rather that not all games need that aspect to be fun. In many ways online capability detracts from the fun. Think of how the original Resident Evil would have been ruined if you didn't have the sense of isolation and low ammunition, but always had some random stranger popping into your game to kill the zombies for you.
As you said, modern gamers are trained to think they are helpless without certain things. Older gamers don't need a community or tutorials. They are autonomous, and just need a fun game and time enough to enjoy it.
I do, however, find it bad that a game cannot stand on single player modes. Okay, there are exceptions for mainly competitive games, like fighters or party games, but I say they should work on a strong single player, not have it be an afterthought.
And I don't mind tutorials unless they are in the way or implemented incorrectly? I remember Legend of Dragoon having, like, three tutorial fights spread over a couple hours of game play. That is fine. Stuff like Alia in Megaman X5, where the game outright stops so she can tell you something, is not fine. It depends on if it breaks game flow and whether or not what they are telling you is actually important.
I know, I know. You could say, "But what if you want to play the games without having to drive all the way over to each others' houses?" Then play another type game together until you actually CAN get together to party in real life. There are plenty of good games that were designed solely for online play. MMORPGs are especially fun to play with your real life friends, and there's a reason for that. It's because you're actually friends with those people, not 'guild-mates' or 'questing buddies' or 'murder spree accomplices ' or whatever else you might call it. You're real life, flesh and blood friends, and that makes a world of difference. When you make a 'party game' into online entertainment, just like every other faceless online gaming experience, you're actually doing the opposite of what those games were intended to do, which is to bring people together face to face.
Dark Souls was probably the last console title that I'd consider both immensely challenging and immensely fun. There's also Orcs Must Die 1+2, but thats a PC title.
The whole straight line, shooting gallery style game design, bugs the heck out of me! It's just so flipping boring! I mean, take Half Life 2, like titles such as Call of Duty it's a FPS. Unlike Call of Duty, the game is a flipping maze have the half. You're constantly going up, down, ducking through vents, swimming through underground tunnels, and all sorts of crazy epic stuff! In Call of Duty, you walk forward, shoot enemies as they pop out of some obvious cover, and then you keep moving forward. It's boring and repetitive as heck, and they only do it because they want to make every store front, and every yard of street, unique somehow. :P
So, yes, I'll be glad when they either figure out procedural generation, and can bypass that problem, or they just accept that they're going to use to re-use store front models and such every once in awhile.
There are an immense amount of people out there who are going to buy the latest Call of Duty based solely on the attraction to eye candy. The game developers know this, and they realize they can just keep dumping out the same old junk year after year, as long as it has excellent graphics and sound. They know they'll make money, and the horrible part is that the modern "gamers" (AKA "trendy consumers") are behaving exactly as predicted. There's no motivation for games to be made properly, just more flashy.
Makes me a bit sad, really, that people don't see the patterns they're trapped in.
Call of Duty and its clones are all essentially the same game, and can only be re-packaged so many times before their audience tires of them. Already, Call of Duty sales have peaked, as the last entry in the series sold measurably less than its predecessor, despite the fact that the console market had grown slightly since said last entry.
So, eventually these publishers are going to have to branch out into different genres.
If you dare, look up "Madden NFL" on wikipedia. That's just frightening.
Or JRPG's. That used to be a genre that sold fairly well everywhere. However, numerous cookie cutter titles soured a lot of people genre over time. So, it's gone back to being a large niche in America, and they really only sell really well in Japan.
Gun centric military shooters have been the big money maker this generation, but, as I've said, it already looks like they're losing steam. I have no idea what unicorn the industry is going to end up chasing during the next gen, but, at this point I'll welcome the change of pace.
I'll give a simple example, I'm a fan of the Elder Scrolls franchise, I played the main five titles, and it drives me INSANE how they get worse after the 3rd one (wich might be the best of the franchise). They get extremely dumbed down after the third one, and, I thought that they made it so they are easier to learn, BUT WITH EACH TITLE, THEY MADE EM MORE DUMBED DOWN AND THE TUTORIALS EVEN LONGER, EVEN IF THEY HAVE LESS CONTENT. Morrowind starts really simple, you are freed on an island, make your char, go to that room, all the items in the table do the basic stuff and explain what does each when you pick em up, go outside, pick up the ring in the barrel, it's magical, this is how you use magic (explained in 1 paragraph) Go out, be free to do whatever you want, you can skip the "tutorial" all together, but it takes less than 5 or even 1 minute after you create your character to go out and start the game.
Go to oblivion, a really long unskippeable history introducing dungeon tutorial, go to Skyrim, EVEN LONGER ONE, LESS CONTENT, LESS EVERYTHING.
And I thought, that this was just annoying, I didn't know how DAMAGING it could actually be, this practice has literally made retarded the current gaming crowd, you don't have to go back to the 80s to see well made examples and just experimenting, just go to freakin 2005 and below, after that is when companies just dumbed down their games (and their players)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw
It's an actual playable wad, and when you play it you notice a lot of little details that make the experience way funnier and showing more problems of modern games.
Kids are stupid, regardless.
Thank you very much for sharing it and sorry, I got a little passionate ^^;
There is so much hand holding and forced guiding, that when you're given free reign or no real direction people don't know where to go or what to do.
Most games give mini hints and ideas (Early FF and etc) or you stumbled upon the right direction, games no a days specifically guides you along like a lost toddler.
I'll admit, I love Dragon's Dogma, but after being so used to the guiding... once I had free reign I didn't know what to do because there was no real guide or info. I was trying to complete the quests like in a MMO, but quickly found out while you pick up a quest at level 1 you can't complete it till the 40s or 50s due to location and monster level.
Also, as for your point... Mega-Man (1 and Zero) are both considered on the same level of difficulty as Battletoads in many respects (those are the hardest two in the series).
Oddly, there are many games that I've beaten legitly Battletoads(Battletoads when it was released.. by some fucking chance in hell I hit the Speeder Warp and was able to play the rest of the game. I never even knew the speeder warp existed and thought the game broke.), Castlevania 1 and 3 and the DS Trilogy, etc etc and when I look back or play through them now.... I wonder "How the fuck did I do that so well" because at the time I had an easy time with the game...
Hell I am a huge retro gamer through VC and Emulation,
There are so many ideals and thoughts of yesteryear that are gone, games were made by small teams and meant to be fun.
Now games are made by teams the size of a city or even a small country, and are all about profit.
Everything is micro managed, micro transaction and DLC, and while we still have timeless and amazing games coming out now (I've noticed more stylized graphics survive SO Much longer then realistic.. ) it is mixed in with piles of utter crap around it.
At the same time, this was always the case. Street Fighter 2 ushered in the fighting clone phase, Sonic brought all the "Animals with attitude" bullshit in the early 90s.
We are truly living in the dark-age of gaming where instead of innovation mixed with tried and true gameplay we have a constant barrage of sequels that are the same BS every year with little or no difference.
Jimquisition pointed out that tried and true gameplay works if done right (Mario) and innovation should not be done merely for the sake of innovation, it needs to add to the game.
I completely agree with all of this and a good common ground for everything needs to be found.
there's just 2 differences; Videogames are no mainstream so you will get your mindless action games just in the same way we get mindless action movies
and we have the internet, so now we know about all the crap that's going on around us, we were just ignorant and ill informed as children. we had no idea most of those shitty games even existed.
I worked at a video game store when I was 16, even became a manager.... granted I was the only employee
I've always been well informed and I know ALL the shit they pulled.
The wall jumping hell made me reset if I fell into it, the shine spark's mechanics always eluded me... I finished the game with a 54% completion rating, mostly missiles and the energy tanks, in about 15 hours of total game time.
I've gotten a lot better at the game, it's entirely possible for me to beat the game in 2 hours with 100% completion if I get all the tricks right and hit what I need to. Basically, Super Metroid is not a game that you can get stuck in in the first 10 minutes of the game. The game has little things that pop up when you get a new item that requires different controls, including the morph ball, the bomb, the speed booster and the space jump. These are not hard things to grasp even if you're a 00s kid raised in the age of waypoints and checkpoints.
Also the chozo statue has a huge ass glowing spot in the middle of his chest. I thought we were programmed to aim at those by default in these sorts of games.
The sad fact is that all games have a learning process. You HAVE to learn the rules and controls one way or the other. The trick is how willing you are to learn. If you're willing to learn, you should only have to be told once. If you're not paying attention or feel you're too good to learn, you're going to fail, and suck, and die. The way I see it, like it or not, is you have two choices....
One, you can go the 'book method'. You're told, in menus, in manuals, in diagrams, etc, what things do. It may be annoying, but if you can learn that, it means they don't have to waste your game time learning. Ex. Dead Rising. DR only gives basic instructions, (what buttons do what, how to save), but no stratagies. The rest you learn on your own. DR is very much sink or swim. You either do well or you suck ass. People complain it's too hard. No it's not. If you're struggling, it means you're doing something wrong.
Two, the 'show method'. The game incoperates learning into it's acutal game, usually through eairly level missions or areas that are designed to teach in a non-threating manner. Ex. Grand Theft Auto. Most GTAs starting missions are all tutorials, designed to teach you how to play, (Driving, combat, game functions). With GTA, story and character interaction is still present, but the point is to teach you things one at a time without overloading you. It only tells you once, so you better damn well pay attention.
Overall, EgoRaptor is right: In a perfect world, we wouldn't need tutorials and would learn instinctivly. I have two problems with this. 1. Evidence has shown this is, indeed, NOT a perfect world. Suck it up and deal with it. 2. I'd find that a lot more valid coming from someone who doesn't such ass all the time. It's one thing to bitch about them, but when you ignore them and avoid them like them like the plauge, then spent half your time wondering what to do, that's YOUR fault, not the game's. (If you want an example go with their Sonic '06, where they spend a long ass time figuring out what to do at the lake, when there's a BIG ASS hint icon that they started RIGHT NEXT TO, avoid it, then bitch about the game being 'unclear'. That's epically bad.)
Quite frankly, I fell the only people that can bitch and complain about tutorials are the ones that are good enough that they don't need them in the first place. Chances are, that's not going to be you. (It's certainly not EgoRaptor). Trust me, just taking a few moment to learn the controls makes all the differenace in the world. Any problems AFTER that are more then open to critique.
You know why I shoot people in the head in shooters? Because they dumped reactive body damage a generation ago, shooting people in the balls or ass no longer has the same satisfying effect s it used to (except for bulletstorm).
And QTEs these are the bane of my existence. Being a PC gamer and using a KB and mouse I am forced to anticipate which of the 106 keys in front of me will pop up on the screen so I can dodge wesker's hole in chest cavity punch. Of course, console gamers and people who use controllers for shooting don't know about that because it's easy sauce for them... meh.
Game devs aren't letting us figure stuff out for ourselves, figuring out you could use the Metal Blades to kill Metal Man the second time was the best part about renting games with no manual (or game guide because this was before the internet).
No, we live surrounded by linear shooters (or their multiplayer counterparts with minimalist objectives) and Final Fantasy 13... Why think, right?
And for the record, My bro and I are on the extremely short list of people we know that beat Battletoads. And the only ones we know that managed it 2 player. Was a hell of an accomplishment, especially considering how much we wanted to strangle each other during/after that decent part...
so how are the people who play them the exception and not the rule when everyone played them?
It has always truly baffled me that experimentation does not come naturally to most people. They'll pick up a game and they'll do what the game told them to do. They say "This is what the game said to do and this is the way I'm supposed to do it" and they just go with that, never questioning the possible, never trying out all of the buttons, never exploring around to see what lies beyond the clearly designated waypoint..
The strangest thing is, sometimes these are people who are otherwise NOT stupid or unfamiliar with games by any means, and yet the WAY they play games is simple-minded and straightforward. I have a friend who is a couple years older than I am, college graduate, a professional software programmer. He was playing old PC games before I even picked up Mario Bros for the first time. Despite this, if we both pick up a game, I'm the one who solves all of the puzzles first. I'm the one who figures out all of the little secrets and tricks. I'm the one who finds an interesting way to build my character while he's doing everything the least creative way possible.
us and them (us= people who grew up with NES's etc., them = dang kids these days) have grown up in completely different worlds thanks to the advance of technology; when it comes to the internet, we're visitors, we grew up without it, it's not part of our upbringing. to them, a world where you can't just google stuff instantly or immediately message your friend across the entire planet in an instant, anywhere, any time is so alien. they grew up with the internet, it's just a natural part of their upbringing.
when we were kids, if we had trouble with a game, we talked about it with friends, looked up Nintendo Power and only if those didn't work THEN we'd keep beating our heads against a wall hoping something would work. You may have not done it in that order yourself but I'm just stating that humans are social creatures, we discuss things with our friends, we tell them about secret warp pipes, they tell us that becoming super sonic is actually a thing you can do.
now you come to their generation, where forums, facebook, any form of social media is as natural as just talking to your buddy and you will end up with posts like these. it's not a case of them being spoiled or "damn kids", it's that this is just a natural immediate solution to them, it's not to us.
My other meaning of 'it's the internet's fault' is the fact that we only hear about the severe cases, what about the kids that didn't have trouble with that part? they're not going to post up on the miiverse saying "done it, no problem" because they have no reason to post. so it's very likely that out of the thousands who played this we only got the few who had trouble.
As for what the younger generation want from their games, we can't say. they're different people just like we are, they want different things and they want them at different times. maybe sometimes they just want to relax and play a mindless shooter and sometimes they want to actually challenge themselves with games like Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma or maybe they want a laugh with games like Portal or Brutal Legend.
Tutorials are also necessary, your talk about figuring out controls, of course it worked back then, in most games you could only do 2-6 things anyway, the game systems were very simple, so the controls needed to be simple, which made them very easy to figure out. now with the amount of things that are possible in the games these days is incredible, they need to have tutorials, you can't expect to throw someone into a game like Civ 5 and just say "figure it out". Games like Journey, you can only do 2 things in. no tutorial needed.
We do live in a golden age of gaming, we're finally seeing the first steps in truly mastering the art and making it it's own art medium that can't be expressed through books, tv or movies. it's becoming mainstream and acceptable, we have people getting true recognition for being amazing at this medium. Story is no longer limited to text boxes underneath 8 bit characters. there's so many options, ideas and resources available to everyone, anyone can make their own game now and we have the amazing filtering process that is the internet, a huge collection of people share, discuss and make things together (would you have ever heard of portal, minecraft, dark souls or brutal legend if you were still only renting your games from blockbuster?) to help great game ideas, designers or developers get recognition and funding. people no longer have to shill to big corporations, a great idea becomes big on its own thanks to all of these technologies which is making this golden age of gaming that we're just stepping into.
and I mean BOOKLETS
Go to page 7 http://www.mariomayhem.com/download.....nual_-_N64.pdf Every move and detail Mario can do is fully outlined in the booklet
Same was true of Super Metroid http://metroid.retropixel.net/galle.....amp;image_id=5
We don't have this indepth anymore, it's all in a hand holding Tutorial.
The other problem is, to get where those people are.. they would have had to learn the morph ball first, and used it atleast once... also the booklet,move instructions and HINTs can be found on the WII and WII U by hitting HOME and selecting INSTRUCTIONS.
it's like watching a movie and not understanding ANYTHING, then saying "oh, it only makes sense if you read the comic", that's not good screenwriting.
games got away with it that long ago because the games were so simple that you would most likely figure out enough to get you through the game just by systematically mashing the controller till you figured out what does what :P
Mario 64.. the booklet helped...
So did you see my XBOX ONE journals hon?
Is that what we really want?
A generation of kids who literally don't have to work to understand anything, who will immediately give up when things get too hard, or when the slightest effort on their part is required? I agree that relying on booklets and instructions isn't very good game design. But neither is showing a "controller diagram" or introducing new abilities when you're almost completely finished the game. But for a game to completely hold your hand or rely exclusively on twitch-reflexes instead of analytical thinking and problem-solving skills... I'm not sure that's a good direction for games to be going.
What makes this worse is the fact that so many games have been so washed out, so homogenized and indistinguishable from each other, that people think that THIS: http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/a.....0/62660_v1.jpg ... Is "video games."
All this social media and networking having complete control over this new generation's life is just a couple steps away from full cybernetic assimilation. Our very HUMANITY is being stripped away, our desire to learn, to find out what makes things tick, and how to overcome obstacles. So yeah, you are completely right in saying that the internet holds a lot of the blame here.
As for Civilization 5... I basically did have to "figure it out" myself. :) I just had the attention span to read the text of all the stuff.
Sigh... I'm 31, and I already feel like the world has abandoned me, like a ragdoll that was tossed aside when a little girl discovered ponies or boys.
...
When's Wasteland 2 gonna come out...
that's because this is their generations version of asking another kid at school, without having to wait till school the next morning.
they're not quitting at all here, I don't know why you think that heheh.
your link doesn't seem to be working I'm afraid but you also have to remember, games aren't designed by kids. they're designed by adults, so it's not their generations fault, it's ours.