BioShock, Fallout Designers Say Console Gamers "Lack Patience"

[boholikeu]

Funny how they worded it. I would've said that "console gamers lack the tolerance for crappy tutorials that PC gamers seem to have", but whatever.

But then, I guess that's why PC gamers can stomach a mess like Dwarf Fortress, whereas the rest of us are happy to wait until he comes out with a UI patch.

 

[CrashBang]

They're right. I'm not trying to imply that console gamers are all ADHD-riddled adrenaline junkies but, at least in my experience, they tend to have far less patience for spending time getting to grips with fiddly or complicated game mechanics. Honestly, I personally prefer it when my games have a certain level of complexity (which is part of the reason I've pretty much exclusively a PC gamer), but that's just my personal preference.

Yup, I'd agree with that. I'm a console gamer and I struggled to get to grips with even something relatively simple like Dragon Age. A lot of PC gamers are big-headed about playing more complex RPGs but the truth is they should be because, even though RPGs are my favourite genre of game, I still struggle to get to grips with some of them

 

[Dexiro]

I think it's the title of the thread that's ticking me off :/

I'd agree that some console gamers lack patience, maybe even most, but i feel like I'm falling victim to a generalization here.

I play games like Dwarf Fortress and rogue-likes regularly, since i have a crappy computer, and i know a ton of PC gamers that would be too way too impatient for things like that.

 

[DayDark]

I completely disagree. What's come of this mentality aren't "easy to learn, hard to master" games. They're easy to learn and easy to master. Look at Morrowind vs Oblivion for an example of this. Morrowind had everything. Depth, customization, complete freedom, great story and side-quests, everything. The one complaint most people had with it was that the combat was a bit clunky. Well, in Oblivion, they streamlined the combat for consoles. Which was fine. The problem is that they "streamlined" (see: dumbed down) everything else along with the combat. The game is still a sandbox but quests feel a lot more linear. There's no sense of difficulty in it even when you turn up the slider. The game's depth was almost completely gone because it was damn near impossible to break your character in Oblivion. Every skill/class choice was combat-based. Guards are automatically alerted to crimes, so there goes any immersion that Morrowind carried. And the setting looked prettier to show off those console graphics, but ultimately was just the same patch of land copied and pasted a million times over.

I disagree, I find Morrowind easier than Oblivion, I've never understood those who find morrowind hard, but oblivion easy. I In Oblivion I have to pay attention, in morrowind, I pretty much play it casually.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Yep.

I spent 4 hours learning the battle system in Resonance of Fate. THANKS USELESS TUTORIAL!

I can't think of many other people that would have done so.

 

[Edward Heffner]

They're right. I'm not trying to imply that console gamers are all ADHD-riddled adrenaline junkies but, at least in my experience, they tend to have far less patience for spending time getting to grips with fiddly or complicated game mechanics. Honestly, I personally prefer it when my games have a certain level of complexity (which is part of the reason I've pretty much exclusively a PC gamer), but that's just my personal preference.

i think every game should have a pc version

 

[Jumez]

I dont understand, why can't i just be a gamer, why do i have to be Console or PC... i have both, i enjoy Halo(fast game), i enjoy starcraft(slow-ish game),... why must we hate eachother... where is the love?

 

[zombiesinc]

They have a point, a hellofa lot of console gamers are casual, or impatient, or young... unfortunately for the few of us who would rather more of a challenge.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

LULWUT?!?!?! hey did even have the patience's to develop the damn games right, hell both are twitch lulz fest games!
*fume fume fume*

 

[zutagonecver]

Couldn't care less about consoles. Can't afford to spend 300 euros on a gadget that you can only play games with. What I do care is that developers tend to make RPGs for consoles first and later port them to the PC with as minimal effort as possible. The UI for Oblivion was cumbersome and inconvenient, but at least it had a friggin inventory. Seriously no inventory screen for Bioshock was pure BS.

 

[Gralian]

I'm afraid i have to agree with the designers. I worked in a game store very briefly back when Oblivion was new out. This guy came in and picked up the game and said it looked interesting. The very next day he came back asking for a refund because he, literally, "did not have the patience for it". Made me feel a little pissed off since it just reinforces the stereotype that console owners are nothing more than XBL jockies who play Halo 3 all day long and scream down the mic when someone headshots us with a sniper rifle. Not quite the Counterstrike stereotype, but close.

Anyhow i suppose it's because console players feel limited by the way in which they control their medium. In English it simply means that the controllers we use have far more limitations and feel more limited in terms of control than a mouse and keyboard. You could never, for example, play an MMO on a home console. I tried to play FFXI on the xbox and it was the worst experience of my life. Hence why games for consoles tend to be simpler and easier to learn and control. This is also perhaps why DAO was more of a hack n' slash on the consoles than a D&D NWN style game on the PC.

 

[ShadesOfGrey84]

Wow, once again it's showed that us gamers, whatever system or genre we like, are a insecure over defensive bunch. Just look how well that one blog from Ebert went a little while ago.

If anyone has any experience in making or publish *any* kind of media, wether it's books, film, music, magazines, games, anything, you always have to take your audience in mind.
Anyone in the content bussiness wants, or at least needs to make money.
That means that you most money is in the largest generalised demographies. Even though it can pay of to publish for niche audiences due to lesser competition, these are also the most demanding (snobbish?) audiences and have lower sales potential.

The point made in the article isnt "if you play consoles you are dumb and have a low attention span" but that in the market in console gaming, the general customer base plays more casual then the general pc customer base and expect the games to be more plug&play.

This might be because consoles are in themselves more plug&play then pc and the control schemes are (or need to be) simpler, and people get *brought up* in a plug&play culture and expect games to be that way,
or it could be that people who are more casual gamers gravitate more to console systems.
Matters, it does not.

And on the other hand, because mainstream gaming has pretty much become console centric, developing for the pc has became niche in itself. That means that if a company want to develop exclusively for the pc, it must compete with console and thus focus on the difference. Thus, increasingly any pc game becomes more complex, further widening the whole "hardcore pc" vs "casual console" thing going on.

If anything, the article isnt about what your choice of system tells about you, but that the customer they have in mind when develloping on a system differs.
No one ever fits under the "ideal customer" label the publishers think of, but it's a necessity of economy and design to have one.

It's just inefficient to make "hardcore" games for the wii, because *most* owners of a wii dont buy that game and the target audience is on other systems. It's inefficient to make a barby playhouse game with complex control schemes because small kids dont get it.

It's inefficient to make a rpg for a console with a heavy focus on tactical positioning of a complete team with an emphasis on huge amounts of spells and lots of inventory managing, if that means that a satisfactory control scheme requires a mouse and keyboard to pull of well. That means you need to streamline your design to accommodate a control pad.

 

[Ewyx]

I dont understand, why can't i just be a gamer, why do i have to be Console or PC... i have both, i enjoy Halo(fast game), i enjoy starcraft(slow-ish game),... why must we hate eachother... where is the love?

the love disappeared when they destroyed great games, with excellent potential, so console gamers could play them (BioShock, Fallout 3... etc.)

 

[Ravek]

The issue, according to Levine, is that console gamers "don't have the patience to wade through the introduction of systems." He pointed to the opening sequence in Oblivion, in which the player helped Captain Picard out of a tough spot, as a "perfect example" of how to familiarize gamers with controls without making them sit through a less-engaging text-based tutorial.

Instead of a text tutorial, which you can skim/skip through in two minutes, they make you sit through a boring, horrible experience of an action tutorial. Great design guys!

So yeah, this is not a guy I take too seriously if he claims most console gamers have no attention span, even if I think he has a point there.

 

[BiggityB05]

Console gamers being impatient? Maybe they just want games to be fun where they can jump in and play for an hour or two after work or school or whatever. Gamers dont want to spend hours reading how to play a game before they play it. Not everyone is a WoW person thats spends 10 plus hours a day on a game. A game is supposed to be fun, not feel like work. I think one of the dumbest things RPG makers can do is the wall of text that some people mentioned. I rented an RPG game a few weeks ago that looked pretty cool but when I saw that all the non cinematic conversations had to be read I promptly sent it back. People dont want to read when they play games or be taught a whole bunch of new stuff, they get enough of that from work and school.

 

[Katana314]

I'm a PC gamer, but I'd like everything to be this way as well. I can definitely recall some games that introduce every mechanic at once, revel in your new freedom, and then watch as you forget about the most crucial gameplay mechanic of them all and lose 3 times against the most basic enemy.

Reminds me of how Crysis was originally going to have the nanosuit be something you found partway into the game. Then they figured it was too awesome to leave for later, so you get it from the start. I really would have gone with their first plan; maybe even introduce the suit powers one by one (and have everything unlocked less than halfway into the game)

Also, the calm explanatory tutorials suck. There's no reason not to get us excited going in. Example: Call of Juarez demonstrated its bullet-time multi-targetting mechanic by presenting you with 5 enemies with their backs to you, and pausing briefly to show you the control you should press. They weren't training dummies, you weren't in boot camp, you're out in an actual battle, but they still managed to set up a safe atmosphere for learning.