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Game with no challenge removes challenges
- Thread starter Jokzore
- Start date
GrainWetski
Arcane
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- Oct 17, 2012
- Messages
- 5,097
How can someone be so full of himself while at the same time be so utterly retarded?
I know pretty much all gamejournos live on these high horses and think they're some kind of gatekeepers, but this fucker surely takes the cake.
I know pretty much all gamejournos live on these high horses and think they're some kind of gatekeepers, but this fucker surely takes the cake.
Dexter
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2011
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- 15,655
It's not a "Blockbuster", but in 2015 before Dark Souls III came out the franchise had sold ~8.5 million copies: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-01-dark-souls-series-sales-surpass-8-5-million
These are the numbers on Steam alone as of now:
DARK SOULS: Prepare To Die Edition: http://steamspy.com/app/211420
DARK SOULS II: Scholar of the First Sin: http://steamspy.com/app/236430
DARK SOULS III: http://steamspy.com/app/374320
And there are other games generally considered "Difficult" with Sales in the millions:
XCOM: Enemy Unknown: http://steamspy.com/app/200510
The Binding of Isaac: http://steamspy.com/app/113200
FTL: Faster Than Light: http://steamspy.com/app/212680
Super Meat Boy: http://steamspy.com/app/40800
Hotline Miami: http://steamspy.com/app/219150
Even if they're not Blockbusters breaking records around the world with every release, they can generally be commercially successful and sell well with a moderately large market.
Meanwhile, this is what these kinds of cretins want ALL/MOST GAMES TO BE LIKE since they hold these up as "examples" as what games should/could be and spend untold amount of time doing free PR for their Indie clique friends making Walking Simulators (Remember how defensive they got after gamers attacked the Firewatch devs a few weeks ago over PewDiePie, outright trying to get Steam to gimp user reviews in response? They wouldn't have done this for just any "game", they wouldn't have done it for Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed or PUBG). The main reasons why some of them are having Sales that high in the first place being that they sell them in Bundles or "gaming journalists" tried to bamboozle people thinking they're something they are not:
Dear Esther: http://steamspy.com/app/520720
Firewatch: http://steamspy.com/app/383870
Gone Home: http://steamspy.com/app/232430
Proteus: http://steamspy.com/app/219680
With many of them (especially lately after people learned their lesson with the likes of Gone Homo) failing to break through and even leading to their developers going defunct:
Virginia: http://steamspy.com/app/374030
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture: http://steamspy.com/app/417880
Sunset: http://steamspy.com/app/287600
Tacoma: http://steamspy.com/app/343860
You just have to look at for instance the RPS glowing "coverage" and outright shameless shilling towards some of these "games" as compared to others.
RPS coverage for:
Tacoma: http://archive.is/oGPaZ
Sunset: http://archive.is/fiR4K
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture: http://archive.is/SuNC7
Virginia: http://archive.is/loASb
Gone Home: http://archive.is/bHUHA
Proteus: http://archive.is/owzUg
Firewatch: http://archive.is/Qfek0
Dear Esther: http://archive.is/QZahl
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollyw...ial-failure-forces-developer-out-of-industry/
http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2017/09/25/chinese-room-closes-its-doors-for-the-moment/273419/
This makes them bitter about their subjects not accepting their enlightened "vision" of what gaming should be, since as people have stated before in the thread they want games to be considered "artsy" and be praised by their in-clique instead of scoffed about, they can't handle it if they're only entertaining, fun to play or people are having fun with their competitive nature in Multiplayer, so they're trying to sneak these design elements into AAA games now while scoffing at the backlash.
Meanwhile, if you look at the Top50 Best Selling games of all times across all platforms, it's almost all Pure Gameplay with large parts of them having either Multiplayer or some sort of Cooperative Play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#Video_games
Tetris at the top, followed by Minecraft and Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart, Pokemon, New Super Mario, Diablo III, the entire Call of Duty franchise, Kinect Adventures, Wii Fit, Frogger, Lemmings, Terraria, The Sims, Need for Speed, Battlefield 3, Gran Turismo etc. Most of them either don't really have a story, are mainly played for their Multiplayer or it's just there as a pretense to justify the gameplay e.g. "Save the Princess".
The few exceptions on there like the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption are generally Open World and also very gameplay-intensive with an overarching story leading to more gameplay opportunities, but it'll be a cold day in hell before some sort of artsy "Walking Simulator" makes it's way into the Top 50 or even Top 100 of best selling games.
Also LOL:
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Eh, being an artist is a hard life, but the Sunset folks' meltdown is hilarious.
They really should befriend a rich boy with old money instead of hanging with journos... I think that is the only way they can get their "art funds"
Capitalism wins once again.
They really should befriend a rich boy with old money instead of hanging with journos... I think that is the only way they can get their "art funds"
Capitalism wins once again.
Ash
Arcane
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- Oct 16, 2015
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- 6,507
There's a legitimate space for games with minimalist gameplay/interactivity, as a niche. The issue is such games are dominant these days, held on some pedestal representing the height of the art form (yeah, because these extremely straightforward one trick pony games are more accomplished and profound than something like the original Deus Ex, right), and it seems like there's no room for actual games, with game rules, challenge, and meaningful depth anymore. Well, not seems. Such games barely exist on the modern market anymore by my standards. The "game" in video game is very much compromised.
I don't mind these pseudo-artsy games existing at all, as long as they keep to their corner. I'm more pissed at AAA games (such as the game series related to the article) featuring a boatload of "gameplay", hours upon hours of it, where it's the most mind-numbingly tedious bollocks. And it's that way by design to retain those with a short attention span or no point of reference for what truly great gameplay can actually be, to the point they think gameplay is something that should be skipped. Yeah, no shit, because you're playing a shit game with hours upon hours of unengaging tasks that it's difficult to derive entertainment or meaning from it.
Hey, keep "gamers" as a collective out of such matters. What you meant to say is a subsection (or majority, idk) of the Firewatch/PewDiePie community attacked the devs over PewDiePie. You'll never see me rushing to attack developers over PewDiePie. I don't even care what the context is. He's done enough damage to gaming himself.
I don't mind these pseudo-artsy games existing at all, as long as they keep to their corner. I'm more pissed at AAA games (such as the game series related to the article) featuring a boatload of "gameplay", hours upon hours of it, where it's the most mind-numbingly tedious bollocks. And it's that way by design to retain those with a short attention span or no point of reference for what truly great gameplay can actually be, to the point they think gameplay is something that should be skipped. Yeah, no shit, because you're playing a shit game with hours upon hours of unengaging tasks that it's difficult to derive entertainment or meaning from it.
Hey, keep "gamers" as a collective out of such matters. What you meant to say is a subsection (or majority, idk) of the Firewatch/PewDiePie community attacked the devs over PewDiePie. You'll never see me rushing to attack developers over PewDiePie. I don't even care what the context is. He's done enough damage to gaming himself.
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karoliner
Arcane
It's so cute that the only people agreeing to him in twatter either don't make games at all (Rami Ismail) or only make walking simulators (Tale of Tales).
Lord Romulus
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2014
- Messages
- 765
How do people like John Walker managed to not kill themselves already? He goes out of his way to antagonize readers for the most petty and pointless reasons like using the word "gameplay", then he spends the rest of the day (sometimes even several days) tweeting about how he's not mad and that its everybody who disagrees with him that's mad. The guy hates his job so much at writing about video games that he's dedicating his life to removing gameplay, challenge, and content so that all the games he has to play for his job are 1 hour walking simulators that are shorter than movies with stories that can be summed up in a paragraph.
RoSoDude
Arcane
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- Oct 1, 2016
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- 730
What a disaster of an article. What do this joker think games are about? He spends 16 long paragraphs spectacularly missing the point, and has the gall to blame it on "toxic gaming culture". Yes, because gamers are all immature babies who need acknowledgement that they're better than everyone for finishing a game... well, okay, that's true of anyone who cares about achievements, but that's not the issue. The issue is that increased accessibility DOES drag games down and makes them worse for those of us who want to be challenged. Forget the integrity of the experience, the problem is that developer time is limited, and the tension between accessibility and hardcore design is something like a zero-sum game in terms of development resources.
The example on my mind is PREY (2017). The game was originally going to feature survival elements a la System Shock 2, but Arkane/Zenimax deemed them too hardcore for the average player, and they were thus cut. This gimped the game's complexity and challenge and my engagement along with it. You might think the solution is obvious -- just have a Hardcore mode for people like me, and forgiving difficulties for everyone else! In fact, that's basically what the author here is suggesting. But that ignores the fact that developing and refining game systems takes time. The developer has a choice to make between the widest market appeal and the quality of its design to create interesting challenge. Unless they have proof that the latter will pay off (or if they have some integrity about their design), developers will choose the former. And so the constant catering to the "riff-raff" legitimately gets us worse games. This is how decline operates. By reducing the barrier of entry so low that the scale is always tipped towards the people that can't even make it through Assassin's Creed.
Now, obviously some amount of accessibility is necessary. To my mind, there's nothing wrong with System Shock 2 having an (optional) tutorial that teaches you the controls and a user interface that stores your objectives. This doesn't hinder the depth or tension of the experience. But when the market's skill distribution is so bottom-heavy that every game needs to have objective markers, for example, the design is stretched thin. How likely is it that the developer will create an clear visual language for the game with effective signposting when they know they can just rely on the dotted line to carry the player forward? Like it or not, this is precisely how "one’s own isolated experience of a game is cheapened, lessened, impacted in any conceivable way, by the isolated experience of someone else playing that game". It happens over time, in a detestable race to the bottom to see who can capture the market of people who can barely move and aim at the same time. This includes the journalists too, because how else could they appropriately judge how well a product sinks to that level if they're not already swimming in the depths?
This really highlights everything that bothers me about these arguments. There is a reason games are about overcoming adversity. That is what gives the activity meaning. Human beings have gravitated towards hero stories across time because they reflect our deepest desires -- to rise to the challenge of life and be transformed into the best versions of ourselves. That's why The Matrix, cheesy as it is, resonates with people -- we want to be Neo becoming the master of reality. It's badass. It's everything we want as human beings. Games are unique in that they let us inhabit that character, and experience the Hero's Journey for ourselves.
These people would rather games be reflections of the tedium of their own existence -- I can't wait to play "Sit In Bed All Day Depressed and Eating Cheetos Simulator 2018". That'll be fun.
The example on my mind is PREY (2017). The game was originally going to feature survival elements a la System Shock 2, but Arkane/Zenimax deemed them too hardcore for the average player, and they were thus cut. This gimped the game's complexity and challenge and my engagement along with it. You might think the solution is obvious -- just have a Hardcore mode for people like me, and forgiving difficulties for everyone else! In fact, that's basically what the author here is suggesting. But that ignores the fact that developing and refining game systems takes time. The developer has a choice to make between the widest market appeal and the quality of its design to create interesting challenge. Unless they have proof that the latter will pay off (or if they have some integrity about their design), developers will choose the former. And so the constant catering to the "riff-raff" legitimately gets us worse games. This is how decline operates. By reducing the barrier of entry so low that the scale is always tipped towards the people that can't even make it through Assassin's Creed.
Now, obviously some amount of accessibility is necessary. To my mind, there's nothing wrong with System Shock 2 having an (optional) tutorial that teaches you the controls and a user interface that stores your objectives. This doesn't hinder the depth or tension of the experience. But when the market's skill distribution is so bottom-heavy that every game needs to have objective markers, for example, the design is stretched thin. How likely is it that the developer will create an clear visual language for the game with effective signposting when they know they can just rely on the dotted line to carry the player forward? Like it or not, this is precisely how "one’s own isolated experience of a game is cheapened, lessened, impacted in any conceivable way, by the isolated experience of someone else playing that game". It happens over time, in a detestable race to the bottom to see who can capture the market of people who can barely move and aim at the same time. This includes the journalists too, because how else could they appropriately judge how well a product sinks to that level if they're not already swimming in the depths?
This really highlights everything that bothers me about these arguments. There is a reason games are about overcoming adversity. That is what gives the activity meaning. Human beings have gravitated towards hero stories across time because they reflect our deepest desires -- to rise to the challenge of life and be transformed into the best versions of ourselves. That's why The Matrix, cheesy as it is, resonates with people -- we want to be Neo becoming the master of reality. It's badass. It's everything we want as human beings. Games are unique in that they let us inhabit that character, and experience the Hero's Journey for ourselves.
These people would rather games be reflections of the tedium of their own existence -- I can't wait to play "Sit In Bed All Day Depressed and Eating Cheetos Simulator 2018". That'll be fun.
HansDampf
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2015
- Messages
- 1,471
Another effect is that it breeds generations of lazy gamers. If you have to enter a cheat code, you will at least try to beat the game legitimately until you hit a brick wall. With a Casual Mode available from the start, how many people won't even make the attempt? They'd pick Casual Mode out of fear, even though they would be perfectly capable of overcoming the "challenge", ultimately robbing themselves of the experience.
Why play games at all then? What's the point?
8 minutes a month... But I bet op is staring at the TV for hours a day or browsing facebook. Priorities.
John Walker said:
Proteus. Dear Esther. "Games."
Why am I reading Johnny's tweets now? Reminds me of why I'm not on twitter.
Dexter
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2011
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- 15,655
FeelTheRads
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2008
- Messages
- 13,716
Banning words. 
Banning game related words when discussing games.
Banning game related words when discussing games.
cocorulverde
Educated
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2009
- Messages
- 57
Well, to make a good buck from games, you need to make games for people who do not like to play games. The same applies to gaming journalism. Apparently, to make a living from gaming journalism, you have to write stuff about games for people that do not like to read stuff about games. Or something like that...
Mark Richard
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2016
- Messages
- 1,192
Don't know what he expects. The article is nothing but paragraph after paragraph of antagonistic sanctimonious jabs at an amorphous gaming culture, offering nothing outside of the same tired comparisons to movies. It reads as if the journalist hasn't had to sit down and persuade someone with a diametrically opposing viewpoint in years. Why bother? You don't have to be respectful or persuasive if you believe you're right. The hostile responses the writer complains about on Twitter are following the tone he set.
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IncendiaryDevice
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2014
- Messages
- 7,407
Jesus, what a knee-jerk reaction.
"God forbid they play the game"? And what if there is a part in an otherwise decent game that I don't particularly enjoy playing? Or what if I played that part <seven times for the story> before and want to get it over with? Meanwhile, games have featured cheat codes since... pretty much the beginning? What's the difference?
I would never have seen the conclusion of VtM:B if I had to dredge through hordes of trash mobs towards the end manually. It was a fucking torture in how repetitive it was. Thank Troika the game had Godmode.
Stop playing shitty games, you say?
I get it, no one likes the difficulty degrading further and further, and it doesn't help that the topic was brought up by a retard who can't shut up about toxic gaming and incloooosivity. But having a way to skip certain content is in no way bad.
cheat
tʃiːt/
verb
- 1.
act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage.
"s/he always cheats at cards"
Games never have had 'easy modes'. Easy mode was level 1. You played the game until you couldn't play it anymore. Whenever you started the game you started in easy mode and then you progressed.
What would 'easy mode' in Super Mario be? Permanently flying with automatic monster avoidance? What, so you can look at all the pretty chickens? So you can marvel at all the bricks? Why would you even need to collect coins, power-up and one-ups? What are you even doing but... looking at pretty pictures?
What would 'tourism mode' look like in Call of Duty? A guy walking around a battlefield taking in the pleasures of watching people being shot?
There's already an entire genre for people who have this mentality, it's called the Simulation genre. There is no reason why anything that does not wish to be a simulation should be required/bullied into turning their product into a simulation.
And all of this is irrelevant anyway as all of this bollocks is merely a political off-shoot from the "no more violence in video games" lobby, a vocal minority group who make a living out of over-analysing every little thing in existence and convert it's inherent qualities into the ravages of man and the inequality of nature with the aim of proclaiming themselves as the one true lord of the power of censorship. They can't remove the violence from video games, so they try to force violent games to include non-violent options, in the hope that, down the line, they can 'encourage' devs to not see the 'value' in having the violent content, because people are only buying the game for the non-violent option anyway, because they're only promoting the games with non-violent options and only reviewing the non-violent content...
Which is all so utterly convoluted and patently obvious you'd have to be part of the cool-aid or living in a vacuum to not 'get' what's going on.
Oh right, it's all about 'choice' is it? Then how come they don't simply 'choose not to play the game'? A developer who doesn't account for providing a simulation version of their game is not scamming anyone, not acting in any underhand way, not excluding anyone beyond the most basic sense of natural consumer choice (such as 'choosing' which movie to go and watch, because they are all designed to appeal to different people). It's just a political left-over of that vocal "OMG violence!" wing of the looney tunes bullshit brigade masquerading as something else.
"act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage."
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Ranarama
Learned
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2016
- Messages
- 604
Alright, Planescape: Torment, not a game according to you.
As if losing were so integral to the point of games. All you ever lose is the time of waiting for your save to load. Is experiencing that tedium so important to the experience?
Nevill
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2009
- Messages
- 11,211
Yes. That's why people remember IDDQD, IDKFA and IDCLIP 25 years after the game is out. Because everyone frowned upon using them. Or was it because Doom2 was a turd? Can't keep up with the party line.
"RPG Codex: Because you are having fun wrong."
The level of righteous indignation in this thread is through the roof. I don't think people hear what's being said anymore over the sound of screeching over some dumb tweets.
:trigglypuff:
Well, technically, there are 4-5 places you can get a Game Over screen. Rare as hell, but it's there.
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IncendiaryDevice
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2014
- Messages
- 7,407
Everyone?
Who is this 'everyone' of whom you so proudly speak and base your entire argument on?
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IncendiaryDevice
Self-Ejected
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Yes, Plansescape: Torment is indeed considered less of a 'game' than a regular RPG, do you not read any threads on this site or do you just spurge your own beliefs and then log out?
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