Congratulations: You Made It

Congratulations:

You Made It

Over the course of my life, I've noticed a distinct trend in video gaming, which is indicative of an unfortunate larger culture shift.

I own an original Nintendo and Super Nintendo (the systems of the 80's and 90's) and the games are very difficult - shockingly difficult by today's standards. They require lots of practice, skill, and trial and error to complete. In fact, there isn't any guarantee you'll *ever* complete them, so you feel proud when you manage to finish a game.

Today's video games have checkpoints, continues, and scaling difficulty, so it's all but impossible to lose. You never have to start over in modern games; they're just a continuous walk to the finish line alongside everybody else. When you finish, you feel like you participated in an interactive movie, taking preset actions on cue, instead of having accomplished anything remarkable.

Just read about this disgrace, for example:

In Super Mario 3D Land, it only appears after Mario loses five lives in a level that is not already completed.... Touching it ...will make him invincible, as the Star also does, but the invincibility lasts for the entire level.

There are exceptions, I'm happy to report, though woefully few. Dark Souls is a delightful throwback to the golden years of gaming. Oh, did you die? Sneak back to your corpse as an undead with half health to recover your items. Fail that? Start from the beginning, and this time the enemies are harder as your punishment. You want to "save" your progress in the level? What kind of a wuss are you? Now start grinding.

Man, was that game fun - every grueling, unforgiving moment of it. And it felt great when I finally beat it.

Fortunately, most games (namely, first person shooters) allow you to set the difficulty on a scale before you begin the game. The is set-up something like this: 

-Easy

-Moderate

-Hard

-Very Hard

-Extremely Difficult

-May God Help You

Many games include bonus content for those who venture into the harder difficulties. 

I remember Mario games as always being easy. Though, I think they've gotten a lot easier over the years. Or maybe I've just gotten older and better at playing video games. 

There's been a noticeable shift in the development of modern video games. Gaming companies are making that extra effort to appeal to casual gamers. And casual gamers tend to like easier games. So, the games become easier, more people are attracted to the games, and the gaming companies tend to sell more games as a result. 

There are a number of independent game developers who focus more on gameplay and less on story. These developers tend to make more difficult games. Indie games tend to be rather interesting and innovative, as well. 

So, I'm interested in this larger cultural shift to which easier video games seem to be a symptom. 

How is this shift identified/defined? 

Can it be summed up as "Little effort for maximum reward"? That's my take on it. 

Input a little effort, achieve bonuses (lights, loud noises, all signs of victory), and get the maximum amount of dopamine for the little effort given. 

I like dopamine rushes as much as the next guy. But, eventually, I crash if over-stimulated. 

I also killed mannny hours playing Wizardry on my Laser 128k apple lle compatable in the 80s,and Karateka...oh man green monochrome goodness!

Kyle - I've found that the easy/moderate/hard scales in modern games are a half-assed retrofitted solution for poor design more often than they accomplish real challenge. The way it works is they design a game on normal, then they tweak the time limits or enemy stats to be higher or lower for the different levels. This tends to make the games unfair rather than challenging, and there is a big difference. Inspired by my hardcore gamer friend in college, I typically turn games with these scales to the highest difficulty. But this can ruin the gameplay by resulting in Lvl. 1 rats with 1,000,000hp or infantry that take 4 headshots at point-blank range to kill. It's a symptom of the problem more than a solution (life doesn't have an "easy mode").

I think if you go back and play the original Nintendo Mario games you will be surprised by their difficulty. I'd bet a sizable amount of money you couldn't beat them on your first or even third play through without some sort of exploit. They are very challenging, especially Mario 2. It's as you say with the modern Mario games. They're like an ADHD kid's wildest sugar fantasy. Power up items and free lives literally rain down from the heavens the entire time you're running through a level. I can't even stand to play them at this point because there is no challenge left.

Jules, "many man-hours" is satisfactory.

Merlin,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Quest

Seems to work for me.  Um, it just doesn't work when you use "Preview with Spell Check", you have to use "Post / Preview".

Re: this thread:  Yea, its all about being able to sell to the unskilled casual gamer now.  Before games were made by and for the computer enthusiests.  The same process has happened to World of Warcraft from vanilla to the current expansion.

Tool assisted speedrun: http://tasvideos.org/

I'm also a big trivia enthusiast, so I was excited when the Quizup app came to Android earlier this month (previously only on iOS). I really wanted to compete and prove myself. I won a few games and received xp, gaining a level. But then I lost to someone in television trivia (wtf - I don't watch True Blood) and I *still* gained xp just for playing. Turns out you can only move up in level, so the ranking system is meaningless, solely a reflection of how much you play, like WoW and other roleplaying games nowadays. That lost my interest immediately.

My view of video games is changing a bit in light of the aforementioned trend. I used to think they were good for children by teaching them eye-hand coordination, logic, and patience. But now I think the instant gratification and "everyone's a winner" game dedigns can be damaging. I think I might start my kids off with SNES and Genesis and hold off on the Wii.

I think it’s a mistake to assume that just because gaming is more accessible to a larger population means that people, in general, have somehow lowered their standards for achievement.  I’m not arguing this has not happened, because it has.  We are becoming a participation award culture.  There are signs of that in gaming, but that’s not ALL that is going on here.

Like everything else where a profit is to be made, the gaming industry is about supply and demand.  Hard-core gamers are no longer the majority voice on the demand side.  Demand now also comes from:

·         Executives who find shooting zombies to be a stress-reliever at the end of a long week.

·         Fathers who accept that their son may not be NFL-material, but who know that they can get an hour of their kid’s attention with Madden 25.

·         Mothers who have put away the Monopoly board and taken up Dance Dance Revolution so that she can still have family game night.

·         People who don’t have time to get to the gym but who can take 20 minutes each morning to do some yoga on their Fit board.

I could go on, but the point is that there are a great many people who now enjoy gaming NOT because the standards of play have been lowered, but because play now supports their values and meets their goals. 

Just because their goals are not your goals does not make their goals less worthy. 

In regards to what kids can learn from gaming, again it’s a mistake to assume that kids ought to get out of the experience exactly what kids of the 80s and 90s did.  They don’t need to learn hand-eye coordination from video games; they get that in keyboarding class starting in 1^st grade.  They don’t need to learn patience from repeating the exact same levels over and over; they get that from reminding the grandma from Wyoming to hug the wall and stop standing in the fire.  As a plus, they also learn that there’s a super-cool grandma in Wyoming who likes the same things they like and who, even though she’s a disembodied voice in a headset, she’s a real person who might have something to teach them about real life while they’re waiting for the rest of the raid party to show up.  

Finally, consider my 9-year-old son.  He has many interests and likes a lot of different games, but he’s primarily a Minecraft enthusiast.  He loved Minecraft before it was cool to love Minecraft.  Because of that love, he can find his way around a .jar file way better than me, and I have a degree in computer science.  He’s currently learning video production because he was introduced to it through the Minecraft community.  On his own, through gaming, he discovered something technical that he wanted to teach himself, and he’s following through.  So yeah, I’m not concerned over much about his hand-eye coordination, logic, and patience.

Gaming has evolved.  I suppose you could argue that it has devolved, and maybe it has in some ways.  But I’m a glass half full kind of gal, so I have to disagree.  It isn’t what it was when I was a kid, but anyone who says it ought to be, should dig a little deeper.

Deanna - Thank you for your thoughtful comments on RoR, as well as on OL before that jerk MSK banned me.

To clarify, I'm not arguing all games need to be tailored to hardcore gamers, nor that all games need to have a high learning curve. The problem I'm talking about is rewarding people just for showing up and preventing them from making mistakes and improving. There are still great games out there that reward skill, practice, exploration, or creativity: you just named two of them, which are Minecraft and Dance Dance Revolution. Those aren't what I'm concerned about. It's the new shooters and Wii-Mario games that make it impossible to lose and don't encourage any growth or sense of achievement in the player. I'm not blaming any game designers either, I think that's unfortunately what most people want nowadays.

MSK is a posturing phony and a jerk, and I'll call him what he is. That's my decision. You can make your own decisions, and no preface or explanation is necessary.