Games for Everyone Else

[Low Key]

So, I see the latest issue of PC Gamer at the local Dillons/Kroger the other night. It's got a shiny cover on it flouting it's coverage of HL2:2, TF2, and, more importantly to me, Portals. (Yes, to me, HL2: episodes 1 and 2 will be the bonus for buying portals.. the original is just that cool to me) BUT WAIT! This thread is not about PC games. So calm down, console jockey.

This issue had an article written by Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games (google takes 0.14 seconds to get his result, do the leg work yourself) talking about what it is that makes games inaccessible to the same general public that has so much time to spend on movies, and tv, and books, and music.

His basic premise is that these particular art forms immediately and unpunishingly reward the patron. There is no work involved. No instruction manual to read (though I did go over our TiVo manual, and I live a better life for it), no complex series of buttons to mash to enjoy it. Just the reward, no work, no punishment (zomg, you died!).

This covers the first four paragraphs of the article. (And if you're including the current one, the same can be said of my post) The rest of his writing is about how games should strive to be more like the overly accessible, previously mentioned forms of entertainment.

At one point, and I swear this is not taken out of context, he even says, "We must never punish the player-never,ever." We shouldn't have game over screens (here I'm talking about the game designers), we should cut tutorials down to nothing, and we should keep dialogue and narrative to a minimum. He thinks this should be done because players are, ultimately, "who we, the game developers, work for."

He apparently sees dumbing down gaming as the way forward. Granted, to a degree, this has worked, financially at least, for the Wii. (Yeah, I was just going for 5 commas in that sentence, does it show?) But does making something more accessible and simpler count as evolution? If it does, is that what we, the gamers, want?

I'm slightly reminded of a review of Peggle on The Escapist, by my new favorite everything, Zero Punctuation. The middle part, really. It just seems like this whole thought process will push regular games into a more niche market, and niche games into an even more niche market.

I guess the only real reason I worry is that I don't want to end up playing Captain Bland's Monotonous Adventure. (It's at the end, for all ye who can't tolerate seeing Halo 3 insulted)

[blackize]

Meh Taylor seems to miss the fact that people don't buy games to be mindlessly entertained. They want to interact, explore fantasies, and be challenged.

Take a very cinematic game, MGS3 Snake Eater. Tons of people complained about the game forcing you to sit and watch for the first 2 hours.

When I used to work at Blockbuster, I'd talk to the guys who came in to rent games. When I'd tell them that I heard a game like True Crime sucked, they'd say "Well I just wanna take out some aggression doing [censored] I can't do in real life, like run around killing people."

Edit: Reading goofyballer's response it seems I may be reading too much into what Taylor is saying. To me it sounds like he wants to make games easier and dilute actual playing times with cinematics. I don't think that is the solution.

Now without altering what makes a game a game and not a movie, I think that the biggest thing developers can do to make games more cinematic is to weave better stories. I think we're already starting to see this.

[goofyballer]

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we should keep dialogue and narrative to a minimum.

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Granted, to a degree, this has worked, financially at least, for the Wii.

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DOES NOT COMPUTE

To give a serious response though, I looked up Zero Punctuation's review of Bioshock which I hadn't seen before and it reminded me a lot of that. BioShock basically did take System Shock 2, dumb everything down, update the graphics, and push it out the door, and it was a significantly worse game for it. I was struggling to understand why BioShock was consistently getting "best game of all time"-type reviews but he hit the nail on the head at the end when he said that console gamers who aren't used to these types of shooters will probably fall all over it when comparing it to Halo, but PC gamers will be like "yeah this has been done a bit better before" and then showed a picture of Deus Ex on the box, which was kinda funny since throughout the whole review I was thinking "yeah, SS2 and Deus Ex did all this [censored] way better" in the back of my mind.

If Taylor is trying to figure out how to make games more accessible to the mainstream market, then I guess his suggestions are probably valid when you consider the kinds of reviews that fairly average single player experiences like BioShock and Halo 3 (although personally, I would say Halo 3's single player is pretty awful and has been in every Halo game) have been getting lately. But games that "sell out" to the mainstream market don't necessarily have to be the direction that videogames are going to go. Lots of games have achieved huge commercial success (Half-Life, for example) by actually being really good games rather than by virtue of selling certain areas short to appeal to wider audiences. Furthermore, there will always be a market of video gamers that appreciate deep and intricate gameplay and will buy games that actually seek to advance gaming as an art rather than cash in on whatever genre is selling well at the time; indie movies still have a decent following, after all.

Lastly, these types of games have always been around. Myst was one of the top sellers, like, ever, but even though it was ridiculously simple we still see innovation in the adventure genre afterwards; in fact, although I'm sure many games tried to copy Myst, I don't remember many of them being that successful commercially. Maybe these types of games are just fads for people that are new to gaming - maybe the relatively new emergence of online "modern" shooters such as Halo is the reason why the franchise is so popular right now (and the "online" component is definitely key, because there's no way you can argue Halo makes any kind of significant advance in shooter gameplay other than the fact that it has a fairly solid story), and once people get over it they'll go back to demanding more out of the games they play.

[vulturesrow]

It seems like video games are becoming more and more widely played anyhow. And I find the things that Chris Taylor is advocating sort of odd since the games he is primarily known for are sort of the complete opposite of those premises.

The other thing that thing that I wonder is what does he mean by "the way forward". I think the whole videogame market (especially consoles) started blowing when I was wee lad (I'm 31 now) and from what I can tell, are pretty much ubiquitous among kids now. My anecdotal evidence is the fact that my 2 oldest daughters, 7 and 5, love video games. I'm sure some of this is my influence since they see me playing video games. But most of their friends, boys and girls alike, play video games. I dont think anything really needs to be done.

[AceLuby]

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Take a very cinematic game, MGS3 Snake Eater. Tons of people complained about the game forcing you to sit and watch for the first 2 hours.

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, this is the reason I like this game so much. I like the feeling of playing a movie. I actually wish more games would try this approach. Maybe not to the extent of MGS, but something near that would be great IMO.

[littlekeed]

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Take a very cinematic game, MGS3 Snake Eater. Tons of people complained about the game forcing you to sit and watch for the first 2 hours.

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, this is the reason I like this game so much. I like the feeling of playing a movie. I actually wish more games would try this approach. Maybe not to the extent of MGS, but something near that would be great IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem I have with games like this, is that if the story is not excellent, it will piss me off whenever the action stops and the story starts. I could not play Final Fantasy X because the story was mindnumbingly awful.

Back in 1992, Sega tried using the strategy of making games out of video. It was called the Sega CD. You know what happened? It led to the complete downfall of Sega as a console manufacturer because no one wanted to play FMV games (of course, the 32x did not help matters later on). The most popular games of the time were Sonic on Genesis, Mario on SNES, and DOOM on computers. What do they all have in common? Each game is full of action. Has the market changed since 1992? Absolutely. Everything became more complicated because the average gamer got older. We could handle doing more than hold right and hit A to jump, such as in Sonic. Unfortunately, this meant the end for the casual gamer. My dad and I would play Tecmo Super Bowl and NBA Jam together because they are really easy games to just hop into. Just about every year we go on a golfing vacation to Myrtle Beach. By the hotel we usually stay at, there is a very oldschool arcade. At least once a trip we end up playing Ms. Pac Man and Galaga. He likes playing games, but he would have no interest in learning how to play a game such as Madden. There is too much of a learning curve involved in modern games to make them instantly accesible to the average person.

The video game player from 1992 has been alienated, at least until Nintendo decided to come back to them with the Wii. Anyone can have fun with Wii Sports. I think it's good that a company is trying to market to every single person in the world with their product.

As for this guy... unless he is trying to market to children, I am not a fan of his ideas.

[AceLuby]

See I liked FFX, but not because of all the FMV. I hated the story for the most part, but liked the game. I also hated MGS2's story (since it was nearly identical to 1), but I still enjoyed the game. IDK, I guess I got hooked early to both of these genre's (MGS1 was amazing, as was FF7), so the lack of story, but still good gameplay was very enjoyable to me. FWIW I MGS2 & 3 I only played through once while I beat the first one about 20 times. Same w/ FF, but I tend to beat them on my own, then go and beat them again and get all the super weapons, armor, etc...

[Blarg]

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Take a very cinematic game, MGS3 Snake Eater. Tons of people complained about the game forcing you to sit and watch for the first 2 hours.

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, this is the reason I like this game so much. I like the feeling of playing a movie. I actually wish more games would try this approach. Maybe not to the extent of MGS, but something near that would be great IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem I have with games like this, is that if the story is not excellent, it will piss me off whenever the action stops and the story starts. I could not play Final Fantasy X because the story was mindnumbingly awful.

Back in 1992, Sega tried using the strategy of making games out of video. It was called the Sega CD. You know what happened? It led to the complete downfall of Sega as a console manufacturer because no one wanted to play FMV games (of course, the 32x did not help matters later on). The most popular games of the time were Sonic on Genesis, Mario on SNES, and DOOM on computers. What do they all have in common? Each game is full of action. Has the market changed since 1992? Absolutely. Everything became more complicated because the average gamer got older. We could handle doing more than hold right and hit A to jump, such as in Sonic. Unfortunately, this meant the end for the casual gamer. My dad and I would play Tecmo Super Bowl and NBA Jam together because they are really easy games to just hop into. Just about every year we go on a golfing vacation to Myrtle Beach. By the hotel we usually stay at, there is a very oldschool arcade. At least once a trip we end up playing Ms. Pac Man and Galaga. He likes playing games, but he would have no interest in learning how to play a game such as Madden. There is too much of a learning curve involved in modern games to make them instantly accesible to the average person.

The video game player from 1992 has been alienated, at least until Nintendo decided to come back to them with the Wii. Anyone can have fun with Wii Sports. I think it's good that a company is trying to market to every single person in the world with their product.

As for this guy... unless he is trying to market to children, I am not a fan of his ideas.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's an interesting take on things, but a partial one, and so it falls short. The popularity of simulations argues against your point. They were huge back then, and one of the the identifying things people thought of when they thought of PC games, at least. Many of them were immensely difficult to get into, and still did very well. Falcon, Nascar, Apache Longbow, etc.

Those games have since pretty much exited the market. Many of today's games are actually simpler. Far simpler.

[Corpsebean]

Chris Taylor sucks, and so do his games. He's already been making games in the crappy way he described which is partially why Dungeon Siege II was so terrible.

[Blarg]

Taylor rocks and Total Annihilation was great. However, I can't play Supreme Commander on my machine, so I don't know how well he's carried forward his previous greatness.