Lets take a trip back in time if you will, back to the early days of my generation of video games. Remember when NES and SNES games were $60-$70 a game? Yeah, they were that expensive, hard to believe right? As a kid that was a lot of money...that you didn't have. You did all of these chores and behaved yourself so that maybe over the summer you'd end up saving enough money to buy it, or have your parents pick it up for you. Remember when you played that game for months on end? You played it with friends, family or even alone just for fun. Then you would set the game down for a little while, come back to it later and still have that same sense of joy and excitement years later. Those were the days...
So why is it now, that most(and I use that term loosely)video games of today's generation seem "easy"? As mentioned in a way above, back then you could buy a game, play it for quite a while, set it down and then come back and have fun all over again as if you've never played it before. The replay value on games and the difficulty has gone near completely downhill. Today you can purchase a game for $40-60(depending on the system, basing this on a new game price)and be done with it in a matter of hours or days, and then just be done with it all, never to pick it up again.
The question remains, why? The fact that the quality of rendering graphics have definitely gone way up in scale, but as a trade off the game-play time is reduced to the point of where replay-ability is near non-existent. Today games are more about just earning some stupid number(achievements/trophies...which I suppose can be quite rewarding at times), but at the same time is kind of stupid. While it does make someone work towards a goal, the overall course of action eventually becomes all about just getting every "achievement/trophy," and it usually amounts to not having fun, because this is something that you absolutely need to have in order to validate yourself as a gamer. When does working hard to obtain something you don't care about ever sound fun? Now I understand that some gamers are "Completists" which is fine, to each their own. You don't need a panel with squares and witty text to be as such, in fact It's robotic and boring.
The reason you pick up and play a game in the first place is because you think it may be interesting/and or fun. Everything else can fall into place as you go along, it should be about the adventure and the experience that should count in the end. Imagine back to a time where your group of friends all played one game, separately of course but all at the same time. Not everyone plays in the exact same style, you'd have all of these different stories and experiences, all from the same game. The goal would be the same, but that path leading up to it would be different for each and everyone of you. Usually that would be how you end up finding all of these random secrets, and it would only drive you to further explore the game again in another play-through. It made you work hard on your own merit, and gave you a sense of great fulfillment when you obtained it.
So what happened to that magic? Does it still exist? Absolutely, however very faintly the light still burns. Video Games should be about enjoyment, if they're fun then nothing else will matter. I want to remember a character because a part of them I can see reflects on myself, I want to remember a story because It's the kind of adventure that I would want to go on, or have been though. I want to remember this game because I couldn't see myself wanting to forget this moment, feeling the way that I do right now...ever.
Was this inspired by the super easy auto mode of Bayonetta?
ReplyDeleteEither way, I agree with you though I totally don't remember NES games being that expensive! Damn!
And you're so right - nothing feels quite as good as finally owning that final boss :)
sort of, this is actually something that has been bothering me for a while now, just didn't really have a good outlet for it beside talking it out with my roommates
ReplyDeleteWell, if you make games too hard. You turn off a huge amount of potential customers.
ReplyDeleteGames have no replayability because they don't focus on that anymore. No more secret codes or levels. Usually just, unlock a harder mode. MGS 4 had good replayability in that you unlock new stuff everytime you finish it. Oblivion has alot of replayability, but it's openess may be too much for some (myself inlcuded).
Basically, the "general population" = the more people = the more $$$ and they like being guided through a story. 20 hours for $60 is better than $10+ for 2 hours at a movie.
These days it seems everyone is focused on "the choices you make in the game affect the end" to try and get replay value out of that. Oh, I have to play as good and evil. And if your Fable II, all endings suck, doesn't matter if you were good or evil really. I think alot of people lost what replayability means, and replaced it with customizable characters with no real person there (Fall Out 3, Fable II) because you make the person. The old days, you were given a character, and you had to connect with that character instead of making yourself.
Just my two cents. Now to find some time for a good long session of FFVII. Waiting on XIII and XIII Versus so badly and ME2.
Yeah I hear you on that one man, I'm just sad to see such a change from the way things were. Though change is always something that will happen at one point or another, it just seems like the meaning persay has been lost through the ages.
ReplyDeleteI agree, and too much copy cating is going on. Every desiger is trying to recreate what they loved as a kid and fail at it. It's iterating on that and taking it to the next level that makes it special. Here is to Tim Schafer and Brutal Legend, I think he understands it the most.
ReplyDeleteOh, I feel a lot of nostalgia fever coming from this one.
ReplyDeleteAnd memories are difficult to fight off when they've been engrained into your mind due to 3,000 retries of the Airman Stage. Or the unfortunate amount of quarters you put in trying to defeat Sagat at the arcade. Maybe even the hundredth time you tried to barrel roll out away from Andross's annoying polygonal projectiles. Everyone has theirs.
But I think it's important not forget that our generation of gamers (meaning late 80's to late 90's) are now adults. And we are way more judgemental now about gaming than we were as kids.
You ask a 7 year old now what they think about the current trends in level design and story development and it's very likely you won't get much an answer out of them other than, "Pikachu is awesome!". Kids are kids, and the games they play now they'll probably love when they're older too. Just like we do.
That being said, there definitely is a huge change in the industry.
It's bigger. The "gamer" demographic is much larger than it used to be. The types of genres have expanded. There are more people making and playing games. And the more games there are, the more crap games there are. But that's not to say you don't find a diamond in the rough every now and then.
Between online gaming advancements and portable gaming becoming bigger than it ever has, I think the amount of options we have to chose from is fantastic, and much larger than it has ever been in the past. It'll just mean having to sigh dejectedly ever now and then to "Pony Trainer 3" for the DS.
I guess my not-so-clear point is, every time I catch myself complaining about "games these days" and them not being "as good as the games I grew up with...", I can't help feeling like that old man who says, "I can't figure out this 'iPods' nonsense. I miss my vinyl records!"
We've gotta embrace changes in the industry. As long as things like bump-mapping technology and cell processing power doesn't make us lose sight of the most important part of gaming:
Games should be fun.
very good point there, the main point always boils down to "games should be fun," which they are still but for our generation the term "fun" is seen in a different light.
ReplyDelete