"casualizing" of games

[Steppenwolf]

Playing a couple of different games recently i noticed something odd.

As we all know many AAA games these days get dumbed down (or "consolized") in an attempt to make them more "casual-friendly" so the stupid masses are able to play them and finish them. For example yesterday i finished Mass Effect, which is supposed to be an RPG. But to do so i had to solve virtualy not a single puzzle, i maxed out the credits the game can handle (9.999.999) and reached the max level for first play-tru(50). So there was really no intelligence from my part necessary to finish the game. (i would say my gamer skill level is below average to put this in perspective).

Other examples that pop in my head are the CoD singleplayer with its regenerating health or the unsinspired dungeon design in Oblivion or the world leveling together with the player in the same game.

Then on the other hand we have the market for casual games. For some reason we find a lot of puzzle games in that sector that actualy need some brain to finish them. Braid (a platform puzzle game) for example was one of the most praised and succesfull casual games this year. I really enjoyed playing it and i found it more challenging then 90% of all AAA titles that i played in the last 2 years. Portal is like the only 3D game that plays in the same league but i believe its counted as casual game too.

So due this discrepancy between "casualized" games and actual casual games i ask myself and i ask you if the mainstream mass of gamers actualy want dumbed down games? Or did game designers and publishers just tricked themself in a self-fullfilling prophecy over the last couple of years where someone started a casualizing hype and soon everybody believed this to be true? Regenerating health for example. Just because one succesfull game had it started a hype that most game designers nowadays believe its a necessity for a game to get accepted by the mainstream. But honestly i think this is just the wrong way of thinking. CoD 4 would have been just as succesfull with oldschool medpacks imo.

I don't believe that gamer types should be categorized in casual or hardcore when we talk about difficulty as it's done in most discussions. I rather think there are gamers who like challenging games and gamers who like relaxing games and they can be found in both these categories. The problem is that too many game designers and publishers of big budget games got blind on the eye for the gamers that like challenging games.

So whats your opinion on the matter?

[Jetsetlemming]

You seem to be interpreting some straight up bad design decisions or aspects of game cut back for time/whatever for making things "casual", like Oblivion's dungeon design, which was done because there are a million of the damn things and it would've taken Beth years extra to make each one unique.

For dumbing down games though, I agree it's an awful concept and I really don't understand why publishers keep pushing it. It's not like gamers themselves are demanding it, either vocally or in sales. Really complex games, even on the consoles, still sell. Metal Gear Solid 3 for example made me giddy with delight in how much complex, detailed stuff they put into the survival aspect of the game. Camo ratings that dynamically change depending on where you are, your stance, and lighting. Catching animals or killing them and having them potentially going bad. Letting you equip items like these animals and throw them at people, and being able to poison them with bad food or scare them with a frog or something. Hidden things in the game world. Tons of dialogs and complex explanations of technical crap involved in the plot.

JRPGs are still as complex and spreadsheet-happy as ever, and that genre's doing fine. WoW, like all MMOs, are complex and they've got 14 milion subscribers. Hell, the fucking SIMS is complex and in depth with all the options you get, all the characters you keep track of, and all the stuff that can happen, and that's the best selling game series of all time.

Trying to make a game more accessible to non-gamers or "Casual" gamers is a losing game (lol pun) in the first place- the crowd playing The Sims and Bejeweled are either multi-interest gamers and are perfectly willing to play a "complex" game (I can't believe we consider a game complex now just for having a fucking health meter) as well at a different time, or won't touch your icky shooting game with its guns and blood and terrorism. You're not going to attract that crowd of teenage girls and stay at home moms to play your shooter just by making it more forgiving for the player.

I wish the game industry would start ripping off better ideas more often. For health systems, systems like Max Payne and FPSRPGs of having a health bar and being able to pick up and store health restoration items for later works PERFECTLY, solves that problem I hear quoted as the reason for health regen (players getting stuck with low health and can't progress), or Chronicles of Riddick's restoring cube bar system, which as far as I know only Far Cry 2 has used.

Another game concept I am boggled as to why we don't see more: Deus Ex's motherfucking tool belt. I haven't seen a single goddamn FPS since Deus Ex use it. Just RPGs like NWN and WoW. WHYYYY!? It works great, it allows the player to customize his character the way he wants, it's onscreen so he can easily remember which button goes where... It's pretty much the perfect way to handle live inventory usage, imo. Every time a new game comes out with the number keys locked into specific weapons or categories like "pistols", I cry a little more for the poor forgotten tool belt.

[dux]

I look to Ken Levine in these times of crisis.

Everyone here already knows I don't like modern consoles so I won't start baiting an argument.

[Minos]

I blame this phenomenon to trend of big corporations buying out every and each small company. Small developers had a lot more freedom a decade ago. They could actually make games they would enjoy playing and try new formulas without worrying too much pleasing the publisher or marketing trends. As more and more devs got bought out by big companies, they had to stick to their publishers marketing vision and needs. Considering these publishers invest a shitload of money in triple A games they want these games to be as risk-free as possible, forcing developers to stick to proven marketing formulas and dumbing down their game to please more casual gamers. This is specially obvious in games like Spore, where you are hardly punished when you fail. (It happens nothing but respawning in your nest when you die) This works well with casual or kid gamers but piss the shit off of hardcore gamers.

Some casual games are actually pretty good, despite hardcore gamers' prejudice. There are many challenging and refreshing games on the DS and on Steam. Elite Beat Agents (DS) and Audiosurf (Steam) comes to mind.

Personally, I hope devs start giving players the ability to customize difficulty settings just like we do with advanced video options. It would be awesome to be able to choose whether or not you want auto-regeneration or health kits, infinite continues or not, etc... That would represent many design challenges but would be worth the effort in the end.

[Jetsetlemming]

I look to Ken Levine in these times of crisis.

Poor, poor Bioshock.

[Cybbe]

Everyone here already knows I don't like anything at all so I won't start baiting an argument.

But to be honest, I've felt this "progress" as well. It seems that modern day gamers prefer to be held in their hands through the entire game rather than actually be challenged. The outcry when megaman 9 and Bionic Commando Rearmed illustrated that very well. Both are games that give no mercy at all, and people complained that they were too hard and it ruined their game experience, when that was exactly what made the experience for the rest of us (And to be fair, BCR wasn't all that hard).

Then there is the "new" trend of waypointing everything. All games have come down to you just following an arrow through the entire game without really thinking about where or why. I understand it can be a help at times where you might be lost - and there it's a massive help. But really, that's just up to the game to make sure you don't get lost and at least add the challenge of letting you find something for yourself. It seems lately that everything is just given. I miss the times in morrowind where I had to follow a signpost to find the cities, or search around the city to find what I needed instead of just popping up a map and looking at the waypoints and points of interests. Granted, I spent a lot of time looking for things, but when I found them, it was my exploring that did it, and not just because some silly map marker told me where I need to go.

I also seem to feel the difficulty levels get easier and easier. What used to be "medium" really feels like "easy" now, and "hard" feels like medium. So if you want a challenge you have to go for "insane" or whatever they call it. I don't know why they have to dumb all this down, but I partly blame the Halo generation of gamers. Not Halo in particular, I'm sure a bunch of you think it's a wonderful game, but the people who grew up with Halo as THE FPS really don't have a lot else to match it up with, and when they suddenly turn into the target audience, all the complexity we've developed since Doom sort of goes down the drain in an effort to make things more available to the attention-span of a 12 year old.

I really miss dying in a game. It's been so long, sometimes I just do something stupid to get the feeling again.. But it's not quite the same. And I really miss having to fight for some advancement through puzzles or stealth or just plain STOP TELLING ME WHERE TO GO. Gaming has almost become as mindless as TV is now. I know a lot of people like to just sit down and play casually and not worrying about doing something wrong. But really, it spoils the fun for the rest of us when you do. We like to do something wrong. We like to have to use cleverness to complete a level with only 1% health, finally use all those grenades or mines we've been carrying around, and get that adrenaline rush and that sigh of relief when we finally find a medkit bringing us up to a total of 21%, at which point we start acting like we're invincible again. We like running out of ammunition and having to resort to close combat to finish off our targets and finally get some more ammo. I don't get why people just don't like a challenge anymore.

I know these are just a few points, but if I actually took the time, I could list a lot more points that really just take most of the rush away from gaming and just serves to guide us by the nose to all our objectives until we've completed the game.

Congratulations, you've now watched a movie - but instead of actors, you get sub-par graphics and bad voice acting.

[mjens]

All I can say is "Yes, you're right" and thats really sad. I can writa about my worries of game's future but all I can now say is that I miss adventure games like Day of The Tentacle, Gobblins 3 etc. and other old good games where developers didn't made games for "fun casual play" but to have an adventure, feel the atmosphere of the game world... Ahh good old times

[kleinluka]

It all started when they turned Monkey Island into a 3D game

[Pericolos0]

there's probably way more point and click adventure games being made today than in the lucasarts days, why don't you guys play those? There's a reason why they aren't huge sellers..

[kleinluka]

What reason is that?

Also, Monkey Island wasn't just ANY point-and-click adventure. It was a phenomenal game with amazing story and great artwork and music. So just saying "lol why dont yyou just play one of the other point-and-click games" it's like saying "Why do you have to play CoD4. There are lots of indie companies making great FPS games for 5 dollars why dont you play one of those" :roll: It's not the same. I miss you, Monkey Island

[Skjalg]

I still think peris has a point.

When people play games they do it to have some very easy mindless fun (which is why the games scene has derailed into every game being the same generic simple minded achievementsy game.)

Point and click adventure games doesn't fall into that category, and I know for my part it's because the last few ones I've tried was too hard and I don't want to spend 10 hours looking for the right lever to pull in 50 different drawn rooms.

[KoKo5oVaR]

there's probably way more point and click adventure games being made today than in the lucasarts days, why don't you guys play those? There's a reason why they aren't huge sellers..

Well it's funny you say that, because i play point&clicks from time to time. I'm a big fan of the Broken sword saga, especially the second opus. So i tried the 3rd which is kinda the recent generation of point&clicks (3D and all) .. And well even broken sword was "casualized", you can't imagine the number of crates i had to push all along the game to climb somewhere or activate something, this is the kind of gameplay you'll see in zelda. Solving the game was simple and easy compared to the previous ones, and i found that really annoying.

[kleinluka]

When people play games they do it to have some very easy mindless fun

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...

[FrieChamp]

Let's ask Peter Moore what he has to say on the matter shall we?

At times, our games have been too hard. We need to make our titles much more approachable and accessible to the new consumer.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/32359/Peter-M ... the-future

[KoKo5oVaR]

I don't know who this "new customer" is, but it's certainly not me.