"casualizing" of games

Hm? He never said turn-based combat wasn't fun. He said older style RPG's were turn-based and implied they were better. The average punter prefers real-time because it's more accessible (less options, more feedback).

There is a difference between "accessible, simple, easy to learn" and "easy to master", to bring up that famous line with a little twist. The idea of streamlining, getting rid of complicated schemes, controls and unnecessary features, that easily add up when we are talking about a longer series of games, I'm all for that. However decreasing the difficulty of the challenge, the difficulty to complete the game, to make the title more appealing to a broader audience is misleading and dangerous, because I don't think it will win you new users, it will just alienate your current user base. You need to design new games, catered for exactly that type of audience and not make the sequels to your existing hardcore gamer franchises easier to master. My mother couldn't care less if the new Gears of War got easier, it will still be a game about Aliens and chainsaws (which *SURPRISE* is not a very appealing theme to her in the first place).

Quote from Taylor

Hm? He never said turn-based combat wasn't fun. He said older style RPG's were turn-based and implied they were better. The average punter prefers real-time because it's more accessible (less options, more feedback).

what i think he implied was that people don't only play for fun, referring to "classic rpgs" as an example. so i ask, is a "classic rpg" not fun?

Quote from Sentura

what i think he implied was that people don't only play for fun, referring to "classic rpgs" as an example. so i ask, is a "classic rpg" not fun?

In conjunction to what Taylor said, I think Stepp implies quite the opposite Sentura-san!

fine. it just doesn't make sense how he is quoting skjalg then.

either way, those mentioned franchises would have died out fast if it wasn't because people were enjoying them. so yes, maybe there was a degree of "casualization", but let me ask you: where do you draw the border between inventing something new and "casualizing" a game?

games change because people change and our technologies are expanded. chances are that some of those people who played the original rpgs didn't quite like the way they played out, and as such jumped the bandwagon when games like diablo came out. i can see how people would want to put blame onto either players or games, but honestly, blame has no play in this game. blizzard just catered for a market that either hadn't been catered for before, or made it more visible to those who wanted it. so let people enjoy their games and instead focus on making games your way, not the way to please the public. because the public will never be pleased entirely.

...or put in another way: there are more good games in the world than there are good people.

another example of this is the way mirror's edge was received. an innovative game with a different art direction than anyone else had previously attempted (cynics might say "replace brown with white"). if you take a look at metacritic, which takes a variety of different reviews into account, the game scored relatively low for a polished game on the scale from 1 to 100. looking at the mixed reviews of the page, i could see that the top and bottom reviewers gave it score based upon the same thing: the originality of art and (game) design; the high ones because they believed it was something groundbreaking, and the low ones because they believed it to be visually dull and difficult (source).

in my mind there's no doubt that dice made the right decision in making this game, but the public will never understand it. instead they will say it's good because they like it or think it's "original", or because it isn't "normal" like the other first person games out there. however, when i said that you cannot put blame on neither company nor player, i meant it. it's not a question about one is right and one wrong, it's a matter of friction between those two groups.

in the same sense, you can make the "worst" game ever and it will appeal to the public and you can make the "best" game but won't get any acclaim. people writing or reading this thread probably have a list of contenders to both thrones, and can't understand why this game or that game is played by so many, or why this brilliant game is only played by so few; which does nothing but further proves my point, stated in the previous post.

Quote from Steppenwolf

What i was saying is that rpg's used to be mindful fun, not mindless fun. And this fits perfectly in this topic.

yeah, but I was talking about games today. I do not think you would be able to sell a game (massively) that had puzzles that took hours to think out, or even 10 minutes, since most people just wanna shoot and aim and see fancy effects.

You can say whatever you want about how you are not like that, hell I'm not even like that myself, all I'm saying is that this is how I think the majority of players are.

Great discussion tho, I'd love to hear everyones opinion on the matter.

Quote from Steppenwolf

What i was saying is that rpg's used to be mindful fun, not mindless fun. And this fits perfectly in this topic.

what exactly is the difference? was your comparison with diablo done in order to display mindful vs mindless fun?

i might be the short sighted guy here, but as far as i know, fun is fun. whatever adjective you put in front of it still makes it, well, fun.

Quote from Sentura

what exactly is the difference? was your comparison with diablo done in order to display mindful vs mindless fun?

i might be the short sighted guy here, but as far as i know, fun is fun. whatever adjective you put in front of it still makes it, well, fun.

i guess mindless fun = just simple shooting/run and gun action type fun

mindful fun = games in which you actually have to THINK and be strategic but which are still fun. or adventure games with a deep story etc...

they are different types of fun

Mindful fun* and mindless fun are both “fun” but subjectively people prefer one over the other. I like the mindless fun of JRPG’s, but prefer the mindful fun of SRPG's. I like shmups because you can play them both ways (survival or score), the same reason a lot of people like RTS and fighting games (comp’ stomp or competitively).

* I'll go with it, but “Mindful” means to keep something in mind. Not something that requires the mind!

Quote from Skjalg

You can't generalize it like that. There are still a lot of games that don't fall into this category and that do generate sales.

If it was that simple there would be no more strategy games, rpgs, etc...

True enough, you got the fps/rts which (if they are good enough) will fall under the competitive games genre that people play to win because thats the most fun part in the game. But there are no rts/fps games that I know about that became popular because it was so hard.

It's an action game but the revived Ninja Gaiden games rode the difficulty out for a lot of success, it was marketed basically by Tomonobu Itagaki saying the game was for the hardcore only, saying only 10% of people will finish it on hard, and that anyone who couldn’t was a “dog.” The game itself was extremely patronising and cruel – die and it asks if you want to continue, but die 3 times and it asks if you want to quit. Quitting unlocks a mercy mode where your assistant makes fun of you and you wear a big red bow.

The second game has got universal acclaim for being ‘hardcore’ and you’ll see internet kids talking about how great they are for completing it it is for its difficulty level. This has transcended the fact Ninja Gaiden 2 was a terrible game that entirely reused assets from the first and Sigma, had no graphical upgrade from the generation leap and the infamous ‘difficulty’ was only hard if you include terrible level design, bad enemy design and cheap fake difficulty.

Making a boss kill you in 3 hits, making it ambiguous what can be blocked and what can’t, and having a camera more likely to look up Ryu’s shiny behind and at a flat badly textured wall instead of the things trying to kill you is difficult for the wrong reasons. There’s a giant boss who attacks as soon as the cinematic ends, if he chooses a certain attack you’ll be instant killed even if you are psychic and dodge at the end of the sequence. There’s a nonsensical giant fire armadillo in the arctic that will explode and instant-kill you if you’re close to it when it dies. That’s not hard, that’s stupid, but people are easily suckered in by the marketing and “hardcore only” claim.