Games on the PC getting dumber and dumber?

[motsm]

This was in 1992. 21 years ago. I'm not saying it's not true, I'm saying nothing has changed, and nothing here is a new phenomenon. To think that any of this is new or just applies to today's games hasn't been paying attention.

I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think his point was more about how sequels are often dumbed down from the originals, not so much that the abundance of them is the problem. There were certainly sequels in the 90's, but the trend was typically to keep what made the original work, and in the best cases improve on it. A lot of people get frustrated by sequels now that are labeled as a game they loved, but play nothing like it, because the publisher made major changes to it in order to reach a larger audience.

As for examples, this is where you get into rather meaningless semantics, as both sides will of course have their cherry picked games. The thread has always just been about a trend in the industry, and we could sit here all day throwing individual titles at each other.

Complainers are a dime a dozen, praises are hard to find.

True enough, but don't say it doesn't work. One of the biggest reason ports of the last couple years have been getting more attention is because of the countless complaints publishers were seeing about their dreadfully lazy ports of the XBOX era. You can trace certain trends in PC ports back to single threads on publisher forums.

 

[Red Hawk]

Are games becoming more elegant and refined on whole as the medium crawls out of its infancy and discovers what features and gameplay elements draw people in consistently, and what features tend to turn people off to a game and confuse them? Yes. I don't think there's any sort of downward trend in game development on whole. There have always been developers more focused on churning out games just to make money, and there will always be developers who prioritize making great games that people can enjoy first and foremost.

And I should note that depth and complexity are not the same thing. If a game is too needlessly complex, that holds people back from getting into the game. Complexity needs to come with depth. Extra Credits did a video explaining how depth and complexity relate:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/depth-vs.-complexity

Mass Effect -> Mass effect 2

The first Mass Effect is actually a prime example of a game with too much complexity to the gameplay and not enough depth to make use of it. The obvious example is the inventory -- why are there not only a dozen of each type of gun that does the same thing with a just a few stat differences, but also ten different levels of each gun? How is my game experience different if I go with a Tornado VI instead of a Tsunami V? The same could be said of the skill progression. What's the point of all those tiny incremental stat changes? What does it matter if my biotic lift lasts .5 seconds longer? If I deal 2% more damage with my sniper rifle instead of having an extra 2% health?

Mass Effect 2 made an effort to bring some depth to the gameplay (different guns that actually do different things, more varied and unique abilities), but it could also be said that the game went a little too far in oversimplifying things. Mass Effect 3 struck the right balance IMO.

 

[MalazanEmpire]

How can i reason with a guy that thinks that ME3 was the best of the series. OR are you simply referring to the inventory/usebles/consumables management?

IF i started this thread for any reason, it would be that the developers do not spend time on important things like SENSIBLE story and character development, instilling moral and other values that contribute to personal development of the player?

And as an off note, there is a difference between doing 100% damage, and 102% damage. As a gamer you should know that. Secondly choosing between doing more damage and having more health goes in line with choices and the desired character development. Aka more tanky or more to the damage side.
I am not saying that me1 or 2 or 3 got this right, what i am saying is that this is not the point of the thread.

If a dev in the 90ties spent 95% of his budget to develop the actual game, and today they spend the same amount to market the game, do you see where the issue lies?
How does hiring a certain Megan Fox help the gameplay of Call of Duty game? Would you rather have that amount spent on QA Testing and end up with a less buggy game?

And YES, they do plan all of that before the project starts, because every project is assigned a budget. Analysis Design Development. What use are the blizzard cinematics that cost one sadsafsadfasgfsgillion each if i hit 7 character models for 50 years.

There is a trend, and i do not claim i know the reasons or the ways, that makes the games dumber IMO. And having lived in the time of the olden golden days and now, i can say with some certainty that my concerns are justified from my perspective. More and more games receive day 1 or day 7 patches that fix critical bugs that ruin the gameplay. More and more games are unplayable online for the first month after release.

Not just dumber games i guess, but maybe even games whose intended purpose is a simple cashgrabs.
Or maybe i am all confused up from too much reading and education. THE SYSTEM WASHED OUT MY BRAINZZZZ!!!!!

 

[thedosbox]

Play more indie games.

Precisely, games like FTL have plenty of complexity. The OP's thesis indicates that he's most likely playing so-called AAA games.

 

[motsm]

Precisely, games like FTL have plenty of complexity. The OP's thesis indicates that he's most likely playing so-called AAA games.

The indie game thing really misses the point, as has been explained.

 

[Red Hawk]

How can i reason with a guy that thinks that ME3 was the best of the series. OR are you simply referring to the inventory/usebles/consumables management?

I was referring to the gameplay with regards to the combat and RPG mechanics, not the writing.

IF i started this thread for any reason, it would be that the developers do not spend time on important things like SENSIBLE story and character development, instilling moral and other values that contribute to personal development of the player?

That really has nothing to do with "streamlining experiences".

And as an off note, there is a difference between doing 100% damage, and 102% damage. As a gamer you should know that. Secondly choosing between doing more damage and having more health goes in line with choices and the desired character development. Aka more tanky or more to the damage side.

There is a difference on paper, but is it a difference that really changes a player's experience? Having a checkpoint for something placed 5 feet further away is technically different, but it's not a difference that really changes the experience for the player. Thus, it does not add depth.

Extra Credits defined depth as follows:

"The number of emergent experientially different possibilities or meaningful choices that come out of one rule set".

Getting a 2% damage rate bonus or a 4% longer power duration does not change a game experience in a meaningful way. Larger numbers, like a 25% recharge speed increase, do. And more unique individual powers at another level of meaningful choices on top of that. Mass Effect 3 does these things, and that's why its mechanics are fundamentally better than Mass Effect 1.

There is a trend, and i do not claim i know the reasons or the ways, that makes the games dumber IMO. And having lived in the time of the olden golden days and now, i can say with some certainty that my concerns are justified from my perspective. More and more games receive day 1 or day 7 patches that fix critical bugs that ruin the gameplay. More and more games are unplayable online for the first month after release.

That's sort of a different issue. Yes, there is a disconcerting tendency in modern gaming to rush a game out the door with a lot of bugs and apparently intending to fix the bugs post-release. This happened because this console generation was the first to fully implement online functionality, and it's expected that most people will be able to go online. Thus, all the console game developers that used to do a lot of QA because they would never get a chance to fix it post-release can simply release a game and patch it later. This inevitably leads to a certain amount of laziness and rushing which would have been disastrous before but is seen as tolerable now. Another factor is that games are in fact becoming more and more complex, leading to more possibilities for bugs. In all it's an inevitable issue, but one I do wish developers would spend more time on fixing.

 

[MalazanEmpire]

A valuable input. But if you say " That really has nothing to do with "streamlining experiences"", do you thing that inserting REALLY in there makes the point more valid?

You had a deep game first time around, with rich and developer characters and a less than awesome gameplay. The second time you have let us say AWESOME gameplay and crap characters and general plot points with numerous holes and out of character behaviour.
Does that imply anything for you?
It makes me think that we should follow the money trail. Where was it spend, and how come that a story driven experience turned into a shitstorm of ideas that are fired at the player with awesome fluidity?

I am not saying i know how things work, i merely state stuff that i can base on some sort of data. Since we were talking about mass effect, i can find no better example for this point.

Inevitability of bugs is the main reason you would increase your budget to handle QA and reduce it on other less relevant areas. If a player cannot access your content, it doesnt matter if it is the most awesome content ever created.

To bring all of this in friendlier waters thread wise, it is good that we acknowledge the TREND of stupid decisions that lead to less than memorable games.
And for future reference, INDIE games topic has been discussed. It is irrelevant for the discussion and please do not bring it forth again.

Also, if you do not see me state that i ONLY play tripple A titles do not make inferences that are not backed with written evidence. I dont want to be forced to play indie games IF i can have a memorable experience with a AAA game. I do not even consider the term INDIE of any use in any discussion. It is a game, just like any other and it is for me to judge it as a player and not as a some kind of apologist that praises the geniuses who can make better things with less resources. AAA, INDIE. AA.B are just denominations of budget sizes, nothing more.

 

[Red Hawk]

A valuable input. But if you say " That really has nothing to do with "streamlining experiences"", do you thing that inserting REALLY in there makes the point more valid?

Um...no?

You had a deep game first time around, with rich and developer characters and a less than awesome gameplay. The second time you have let us say AWESOME gameplay and crap characters and general plot points with numerous holes and out of character behaviour.
Does that imply anything for you?

I think there's a difference between a deep story and deep gameplay. I was talking about deep gameplay. But as far as story goes, at least with regard to the Mass Effect series, I felt it had great characters and a good overall plot throughout. In fact many characters were developed and improved over the series (Liara, Garrus, Tali, Kaidan).

 

[thedosbox]

The indie game thing really misses the point, as has been explained.

Only if you believe culture is static. If you want to play games from the 90's, play games from the 90's.

 

[motsm]

Only if you believe culture is static.

A large segment of the culture has proven it wants older style games through all of the highly successful Kickstarter campaigns. Almost all of the high profile Kickstarters were either direct sequels to older games, or used their influence as a selling point. Crowd funding has luckily put some life back into mid tier productions, which is all I really want.

:Edit: I would add that a large part of the culture has absolutely changed, and enjoys what I would consider a dumbed down game, I don't have any complaints with them, and they should have their AAA titles. To expand on what I said above, I'd just like mid tier productions that allow a budget enough to give developers fewer limits, but not so large as to limit them from marketing to a niche audience; but now I feel like I'm repeating myself.

 

[AViking]

As someone who has been gaming since the early 1980's I feel like games are not so much getting dumber but that the more popular a game gets the dumber it gets. So a really good game will undoubtedly be turned into garbage after a while.

You guys keep talking about indie games that are good. How about a sticky where we could hear about them?

 

[turn_pike]

Are you fellows fearing this trend?
Every year we step back from proper gaming into STREAMLINING experiences.
Don't you hate that word?

No.
With the rising development cost it is only logical for AAA titles to be streamlined in order to be attractive to the broadest possible market base.Yet I am not concerned as the gaming industry is now big enough to have developers focused on serving the niche.

Previously minor developers like Paradox (EU4, CK2), From (Souls and Kings Field series) and CD Project (Witcher) have become highly successful both financial and critically even though their games are neither easy nor shallow. Moreover their success seems to have helped their newest games becoming even better.

Titles like Minecraft and Terraria might look like crap next to Crysis 3 but are highly successful commercially. They are not the only one to buck the so-called trend. Amnesia, Grimlock, Hotline Miami, Binding of Isaac, Mark of the Ninja, FTL are just a some of the many excellent titles in recent years that I would not describe as mainstream yet are successful financially.

If anything games are becoming more varied and of higher quality than ever before. This year alone we have :
- awesome new titles : Antichamber, Fez, Last of Us or Gone Home
- sequels actually being better than their predecessors : Bioshock Infinite and the rebooted Tomb Raider, Metro Last Light
- kickstarted games emerging from development and being successful e.g. Shadowrun Returns


Not everybody has the time or inclination to read 400 pages of manual so they can play War in The East (add another 40 pages for the actual tutorial and hours of learning the interface). But these types of games exist if -you- want to play them. That games like Sangfroid, Teleglitch, Antichamber or Spelunky were released successfully in 2013 proved to me that there are places for many types of games in the current market.

So... no, I dont hate streamlining.
No, I do not think games on the PC are getting dumber.

 

[thedosbox]

To expand on what I said above, I'd just like mid tier productions that allow a budget enough to give developers fewer limits, but not so large as to limit them from marketing to a niche audience; but now I feel like I'm repeating myself.

The niche audience is the issue. People who gamed in the 80's and 90's have less time to do so now. Smaller market = smaller budgets.

You guys keep talking about indie games that are good. How about a sticky where we could hear about them?

Pretty sure you can do some of your own reading. indiegames.com and rockpapershotgun.com have good coverage.

 

[TeknoBug]

Since 2006 or 2007 games has been getting more dumbed down.

Red Orchestra 1&2 and a handful of Half-Life 2 mods are still raw games with a learning curve, yet aren't as popular as the dumbed down arcaide-ish games.

 

[turn_pike]

You guys keep talking about indie games that are good. How about a sticky where we could hear about them?

*lol*
Isnt this the kind of behavior that spurred the widespread use of quest markers / glowing items in games.

Rather than searching for a quest item (google / research something) people would rather just follow the quest marker (ask someone to do their research for them). Instant gratification ftw.

 

[MalazanEmpire]

*lol*
Isnt this the kind of behavior that spurred the widespread use of quest markers / glowing items in games.

Rather than searching for a quest item (google / research something) people would rather just follow the quest marker (ask someone to do their research for them). Instant gratification ftw.

Good point. You can see this in the rest of our culture i suppose. People getting lead by hand on every thing imaginable. I remember reading reviews that took points off the score for having a steep learning curve. I know this is a personal thing, but overcoming a high curve is a reward in and of itself. For me.

 

[Borealis7]

meanwhile i was trying to play X3 (the original) and ZOMG! the complexity was overwhelming at first.

have you played Legend of Grimrock? that game made me tear out my hair. the puzzles were TOO much and it just became un-fun.

 

[NickelPlate]

Yeah in general it seems games are being dumbed down for the simplistic interfaces of today's hot devices (tablets, smartphones and consoles). It's the market that's driving it. I think Anteaus stated it correctly that the target audience is different than us old school gamers that have seen and played so much that it's hard not to be judgmental.

 

[irishScott]

Not getting dumber and dumber so much as getting more and more popular.

Back in the 80s/90s the majority of PC gamers were essentially nerds. People with higher levels of technical skill, capable of solving more complex problems, etc. It was much more a niche, and games were geared towards that niche's expectations.

With the explosion of computers into everything over the last 10 years, everyone and their mother (literally) has a computer. That turns the gaming market into an entirely different animal. Non-technical people have different desires and expectations. They don't typically get thrills out of spending hours juggling numbers and tweaking something to perfection, they find it tedious, worthless and annoying. They don't want or need technical depth to be entertained.

For my part I can go either way. I enjoy the modern, "dumbed down" games like Halo just as much as I can enjoy immersing myself in the original XCOM for hours. It's a different variety of entertainment and completely dependent on my mood/how much time I have.

 

[Maximilian]

Honestly i don't really see it. Theres complex deep games out there for those that want them.

Personally i think gaming today is better than its ever been, its changed a lot and there's been casualties along the way like the entire RTS genre (which i used to love :'(), simulation games minus the sims but theres new games to fill the gap such as MOBA's and the array of free to play stuff. I just completed path of exile, its a lot like Diablo II, down to some of the piss annoying things that irked me 10 years ago, not bad for the price of free.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

You guys keep talking about indie games that are good. How about a sticky where we could hear about them?

A long list...some good, some bad, depends on your style. http://www.pinterest.com/pixelprospector/indie-games-the-mega-list/ or here:http://indiegamereviewer.com/category/platforms/pc/ A couple good ones Black Mesa (Half life "remake"), Dear Esther, I have no mouth and I must scream, Amnesia. And Minecraft, Witcher series, Stalker all began as "Indie" games, though on a much larger budget.

 

[Ns1]

related:

 

[Majcric]

At OP, not really, bad games existed back then as well. More often than not the sequels are improvements in gaming, unlike movies.

Two sequels that I do find to be very disappointing are Grid 2 and Dragon Age 2.

 

[MalazanEmpire]

Thanks everyone for their opinions, i hope that we all can get something out of everyone's combined input. I know that i did.
Hope dies last, eh fellas?

 

[futurefields]

Games are getting way better thete was nothing like Minecraft or Terraria back in the day and most genres in general are improving.