I found this article interesting if anything else. Thoughts?
Stupid typical old man shit. Yeah games and gamers aren’t what they used to be. So what?
not sure if you read it all the way…the guy actually agrees with some of the direction that games are headed. One thing that didn’t sit well with me personally was this excerpt (if you haven’t played GTAIV and plan to at some point don’t read the quote)
That kinda bugs me.
I agree with all of it and I don’t find most of the points to be negative.
I’m used to grinding due to older games like Asheron’s Call but no one should have to put up with it. Especially in games that heavily utilize states and RNG which are counter intuitive to engaging the player on a meaningful level. My tolerance for text in games has sharply lowered. I don’t care about your meaningless story lacking in any sort of thematic relevance. I tried to replay Golden Sun months ago. I have no idea how I conquered that game as a kid, the moment I stepped in I was bombarded with squeaking text from my digital mother. Who gives a shit who gives a fuck. I want to play games.
It’s almost endearing that he didn’t mention how little people even want to play games these days. Quicktime events are quickly becoming pervasive. Some games feature them so readily I hesitate to call them games. I don’t know who thinks complete loss of control to your character other than the use of a single button is a good idea, but fuck them and fuck anyone who likes it. Add in all the cutscenes and talking/dialogue…and what the fuck man.
Kids are definitely taking shit in games for granted. I grew up in a time when all we had were zaps, booms, beeps and boings, and still-screen text endings. I STILL love games with lots of speech samples, and video between stages and for the endings (as long as there is more gameplay than movies.) Kids today are all “Eh, fuck that” while jamming on the “skip” button.
Interesting article, but Idk how I conquered “Bryans quest” as a kid and golden sun
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hmm… I need to re-read this.
I agree with him on some parts, most games these days are way too easy. I can think of games that could have benefited from a difficulty spike. Games like Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood which give you the ability to hire Thieves and Mercenaries to distract and fight guards, which is almost useless since the game is so easy. I had Super Meat Boy for months before I 100% completed it and it’s just so much more satisfying to complete a difficult game, SMB being a fantastic game as it is.
I disagree with him on other parts like cut scenes, I feel like he overgeneralizes games here. Not every game is filled with 10 minute long cut scenes and if you’re just mashing the skip button to get through the cut scenes you might as well just play the game’s multiplayer online, which almost every game has these days. When I play a game, I like to watch all the cut scenes and pay attention to the story to get the full value out of the game. Otherwise it just becomes a mindless task.
Cutscenes should not be able to be skipped upon first viewing. During a second or third playthrough, however, I should be able to.
Isn’t Casltevania SotN like that? You have to watch them on your first playthrough, but once you clear it, you can skip them on your second and successive attempts.
Am I the only person who actually felt playing games helped their reading skills? I read all the intruction manuals and text in the game to be able to understand what was going on in the game and get the most of it. Looking back on it things now I especially fell that way with RPG’s. I was one of those kids that was actually a bit reluctant to read and I’d try to get my mom to explain something to me and her was response was ‘go look it up’. If I wanted to enjoy the game I had no choice but to know what the NPC’s were talking about. Looking back on it dialog heavy games are almost like interactive books imo. I’ve pretty much all but contemplated intruducing my kids to some dialog text heavy game that I’ve played in the past like Chrono Trigger.
Umm…
Yeah… back to…
Apparently, considering reading ability and writing ability are positively correlated.
lol internet forum. I said reading not writing. Being on the internet has definitely dumbed my writing skills. If I wasn’t typing in a lazy manner I’d actually put more effort but I’m not because you obviously understand what I’m saying. I’m not trying to turn in a graded paper. As long as I don’t start typing and abbrieviating shit that doesn’t need to be shortened then I think I’ll be fine.
I think grinding is dumb. i always lol when people are like “go back to WOW ez-mode” when people complain about the grind. fact is, grinding does not take skill. it is just clicking of the same buttons over and over again. kill, loot, repeat indeed.
That’s why competitive gaming is vastly superior. Its a grind, but its a skilled grind that makes you improve. RPG grinds are good if you are a fat unemployed dude living in your parent’s basement.
I also agree that cut scenes ruin immersion. That’s why Half Life was considered a revolutionary game, because there were no cut scenes. The story unraveled in real time, in-game. The opening credits intro was all in-game and absolutely brilliant. Half Life 2 continues that tradition. Great storytelling.
However, I do love reading in games. Favorite RPG series is Baldurs gate. You could pick up books that contained lore, and a lot of magic items you identified also contained lots of lore as well. I loved reading that shit. It makes the game world a lot more rich.
lol @ people using internet typing as a sign of whether or not someone knows what proper grammar is
so, gonna just give my opinions as I read this.
I absolutely agree with #5, kids do NOT tolerate losing. I don’t think it’s just the new generation of gamers that feel this way. I think even to some extent, old gamers feel this way. it’s a psychological thing. gamers who have felt the pain of a loss over and over again tolerate losing better than gamers who don’t feel the pain of a loss at all, but even those gamers have a limit. the trick is figuring out where to draw the line.
grinding, I don’t completely understand. I’m getting that the idea is to make yourself better able to handle certain things, but… I thought that was a general human skill? so there are people out there that think that if they can’t accomplish something, it means the game is broken? Wtf. the way we play games, esp. competitive, if you fail you look at why you fail and try again. the knowledge you gained from your battle should tell you whether or not you’re equipped enough to take them out. if you weigh out that you’re not equipped enough (generally, you do), you re-equip… whether that means finding items in the game or changing your battle strategy. then you try again, because that’s all you could do, other than admit that you’re a punk bitch and quit.
here’s a quick example. there’s this boss on one ninja gaiden game I remember fighting that would hit me with this lightning ball no matter what and it was impossible for me to dodge (btw, later saw someone playing a TAS playing against that same boss without getting hit, so i don’t think it’s totally unavoidable). upon realizing this, I entered the boss battle with a new plan: I’m gonna out damage him. that didn’t work as well as I thought… but I took 3/4ths of his life, so I knew my plan wasn’t a total failure. this time, I thought to make accomplishing that my absolute #1 priority. don’t remember what I did really, I was just a lot more adamant about doing damage to him. including the way I’d take his hits. I killed him.
reading. I think the REAL problem with reading is that it’s not interesting enough. I’ve been linked to things that’ve been like miniature PDFs. I’ve finished those because they were interesting. then I’ve been linked to other things that were like a paragraph or two long that I CANNOT finish because it bores me to death. this is basically how it goes for me in games.
cutscenes are same as reading. if they’re not interesting, skip.
last one, I whole heartedly agree. games don’t need stories. games need objectives.
The point about grinding (the second point in the article) is dead on. I just wish even more modern games dropped the grind.
I disagree and prefer the Kingdom Hearts approach; hitting Start pauses the cutscene and you could choose to skip it. Mix that with something that lets you re-watch cutscenes and you’re golden.
No way man, I disagree. MGS4 got this perfect outside of those stupid adverts at the beginning. Add a pause function which allows you to skip or resume. This way, if by some miracle I lose my save (Which happened to me several times recently) the game doesn’t think it’s my first time playing and doesn’t force me to watch cutscenes I’ve already seen. I pretty much stopped playing God of War 3 after the first 2 playthroughs because every time you start a new game, you have to watch the cutscenes.
I do enjoy watching cuscenes though.
No. The game I mentioned before, Asheron’s Call, certainly broadened my vocabulary. The way they delivered the story were through writings within journals or saying by NPCs. Every month they’d patch the game with new content and include a story teaser which would allow players to speculate on what is happening within the story and what will happen next. It certainly wasn’t the greatest, but it was enough to catch my interest at the time. My choosing to read into the story
The difference is presentation. You could play the game without the story getting in the way. That’s different than many other games which use story to impede your play of the game, shoving it in your face as if it were some brilliant edifice to be gazed upon when it’s really comparable to a crumbling brick wall scrawled in novice graffiti soon to be torn down by the city governance . Combined with an awfully banal and disengaging gameplay design, it makes a poor product.
So yeah, when he says “If They Want to Read, They’ll Buy a Fucking Book” he means it. I agree too. Reading a book your chances are much higher in finding story of worth. I’d rather read a book with a really good story and play a game with really good gameplay, then play another game that’s pretty shitty at both. Which happens way too fucking often.
I only glanced over the article real quick. As someone who started gaming in the general vicinity of the old school all I have to say is fuck grinding. That shits boring as fuck.
Will read rest of article later.
I didn’t mind grinding so much when I was a kid, no online games on consoles back then so anything that made a game last longer was a bonus, but now, with online modes extending games and keeping them feeling fresh longer it just feels like a waste of time, it’s more bearable in multiplayer or portable games since you either got other people with you spicing up the grind, or would be doing sod all on that bus journey/wait for the timer to check up on what you’re cooking/whatever, but grinding by yourself on a home console game just feels like a chore.