fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2420 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2420 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 064 secrets from Secret Submission Post #346.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Except it's their hobby, their money, and their spare time. If they have more fun playing on easy mode, how is it harming you (if there are multiple modes it doesn't change your gameplay to just ignore easy mode.)

I never touch Let's Play or watch videos of games I haven't played, part of the fun of games is the interactive element and it helps me to connect to the characters.

But interactive games don't have to equal hard as hell games. I don't see why we can't have both worlds, both hard mode and easy mode. It also makes more financial sense for video game companies to include every type of gamer there is; especially since consoles are doing really horribly. Sorry but casual gamers have made a whole market in facebook games/mobile games and hardcore gamers are just NOT ENOUGH to keep consoles going, so you can either get over yourself, or watch the industry self destruct because you were too much of a snob to let other people play games how they want.

The problem is triple-A games have become so expensive to develope (because nowadays it is expected that games absolutely have to look stunning or no one will play them) that the devs are forced to make the games accessible to the widest audience possible. This pisses off gamers who play for the challenge.

Weirdly enough it's mostle hardcore-gamers that will complain about ugly looking games (especially shooters), ignoring that if they were to support games with graphics that wouldn't force you to update your graphics card every few months, game developers would be able to take more risks with gameplay, because creating a more challenging game alienating a few customers would no longer mean their entire company going bankrupt because they spent a blockbuster budget on particle effects.

You know, given the number of hardcore gamers who shriek about bad game design and omg nerfing wah wah when devs do put something out that requires a bit of cleverness rather than grinding through with the exact same strategy they've used for the last fifty games they've played, I don't think it's actually the casual folks who are forcing a dumbing down.

Casual players want health and damage outputs that let them survive. Hardcore players don't want to have to adapt and vary their playstyle. Only one of these actually forces boring, regurgitated game design.

I guess I shouldn't only have mentioned casual and hardcore gamers. Or rather, we aren't talking about the same kind of passionate/hardcore gamer.

Let me rephrase that: I live in central Europe. Gaming culture used to be different from US gaming culture (I am sorry, I am assuming here that you are from the US, or any other state with a different gaming culture from ours, on this community that is likely), but in the last few years (let's say, mid-2000's) there has been an understandable trend for gaming companies over here, even with large fanbases in their own and neighbouring countries, to appeal to the US market.

This has forced a changed in how games are developed over here. They have become easier. More comfortable. Less adjusting to new environments involved. Less need to take notes while playing. Less need to get to know each and every corner of a hand-crafted map that didn't come out of a sandbox tool-set.

In short: These "americanised"* games have less personality. Each game now uses the same helpful devices (like quest markers and crap like that) to dumb down their games, instead of forcing the gamer to immerse themselves completely into the gaming world. Instead of giving each enemy a certain kind of weakness, to make a game harder, there are now simply more enemies. Instead of creating open worlds in which a player can from minute 1 stumble onto a monster that is a hundred levels above their own abilities, that will slaughter them within a second, games are now rail-roaded to minimise so-called "frustration".

Devs now spend less time on creating a cohesive world, and more time on implementing shiny special features that will yield you an achievement on Steam, impressive fight-moves and spectacular finishers.

And passionate games, the fans, hate it. These kinds of things cannot be adjusted by a different difficulty setting, because they are integrated into the game- & level design. And it's shit.

*I have no idea why they think these things would endear them more to an US audience, but apparently it works, or they wouldn't keep doing it. But this kind of game design is the complete opposite of the kind of games me and my friends and their siblings and sometimes their parents even have grown up and fallen in love with.

See, the problem is the homogenization of game design has absolutely nothing to do with casual gamers who want a low-difficulty play mode. The U.S. game market (at least, the larger companies, there's more variety amongst indie games) by and large attempts to appeal to a very specific subset of gamers - generally achievement hounds and competitive gamers who want to win, and will tolerate no obstacle to their winning. The target market, rather than not being terribly good at games, tends to be very good - but very static in both their skills and their wants.

On the other hand, games that are created specifically to have a broader appeal - to draw in different demographics, or be accessible to people who aren't amazing at shooters, or be easy to put aside and come back to for players who don't have solid chunks of time to devote - tend to be more innovative. They're free of the constraints of the checklist most games targeted to the normal audience tend to operate under.

tl;dr your complaint - both about the homogenization of North American games and about your local game companies following that model to appeal to what they perceive to be the North American market - is valid. You're just blaming the wrong people.

Are you completely sure that the fact that games are becoming more and more cinematic and less interactive is not somewhat due to pandering to customers who play for the plot? I. e. the OP?

Competitive gamers usually do not care for the gameplay either, that it true and just as harmful. But they don't normally cry for an easy mode. That would go against their competitive streak, wouldn't it?

[ SECRET POST #2420 ]

Re: I'm going to be completely honest here...

Re: I'm going to be completely honest here...

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