I've received several messages along similar lines in response to game difficulty so I am going to try and respond to them all with one post. I tried to multi-quote, but like usual I couldn't get it to work right, so apologies for that. :/
Answering some of the counter points made back gets a bit off subject. When it comes to things like how "well games tell stories, and it's not right for people to be unable to finish the stories", I can't help but disagree with that implicitly. Games are not books, or movies but something entirely differant. One of the things that defines a game is the risk and the chance of losing. Outside of certain action games with a "credits" system attached this risk does not exist since people can continously restart from checkpoints, save game files or whatever else. That's sort of like someone shooting craps and being able to roll the dice until they finally win. In the case of a story-based game (and let's be honest, games like Might and Magic *DID* have storylines, even if they weren't high art) the risk should be not being able to finish the game and see how things end.
It comes down to what I've said about the attitude of current developers, that if someone buys a game, they should see all the content in the game. Indeed a lot of developers seem to increasingly not like developing content that only a small group of people are going to see as well.
There is also truth to the fact that back in the days of "Might And Magic", "Death Lord, "Ultima IV" and similar games there were less gamers. However it is incorrect to assume that these games were played because there weren't other options. Rather those games existed (and similar ones kept being created) because that is what people wanted. Understand that it was a smaller, more elite group. Simply using a computer at that time required a degree of intelligence that just isn't nessicary today due to systems like "Windows". Heck to do telecommunications and call BBS systems was a heck of a lot harder than it is now to just hit an icon for "Internet Explorer" and go web browsing.
The differance is that with computers being dumbed down and the mainstream being brought into gameing, like many other things beforehand gaming has also been dumbed down to increasingly cater to the lowest human denominator. It happened gradually as the requirements to use computers gradually reduced, along with the increasing userbase and the lowering of the quality of users. It was not a sudden jump from the days of the "Commodore 64" to Windows based machines.
The thing is that the casual gamer doesn't want to be challenged, and honestly for those that do, what challenges a casual is not going to be much of a challenge to a somewhat smarter breed of gamer.
On a lot of levels I think one of the cool things about video games is that rather than catering to the lowest human denominator, they are entertaining enough where they could be turned into an avenue for self improvement. Games can inspire people to think deeply enough to eventually be able to beat them, especially if a compelling narrative can be established to make people really want to see the end of a story so to speak.
What's more competition is a good thing on a lot of levels. If you can get people who want to "be the guy" (even though my opinion of that game is very mixed) badly enough, even if they don't get there, they are going to improve themselves by trying.
See, back in the day computer games could actually get someone a degree of respect. If you played a game like "Might And Magic", or "Wizardry" people would assume you were pretty bloody smart, and they were usually right. Simply to get those games to run meant you knew more about computers than 99% of the population (though this did not apply to console games really). Today no variety of gamer gets much in the way of respect in any form because how things have degraded. Truthfully I think that lack of respect is what has opened the door for a lot of the current crusades against videogaming, as misplaced as they might be (but this gets onto another subject).
I guess in the end we are going to have to agree to disagree, but I tend to feel that dumbing down games is a bad idea in general. I also think games being designed with the idea that anyone buying the game should be able to experience it fully is counter productive to the idea of a game.
Investing time has little to do with "talent". I'm an RPG man, so I mostly use games of that genere with an intellectual component as an example. I referance the first "Might And Magic" as an example largely because winning the game ultimatly didn't come down to how much time you put into it. In the end you had to decipher puzzles (some of which were pretty decent, especially for the time) with pieces hidden throughout the entire game. You could put a thousand hours into the game and if you couldn't figure them out, you couldn't win.
I do not consider the occasional "really hard to get" achievement to be the same thing, because it represents one tiny thing in the scope of a game usually, not the abillity to succeed at, or complete a game itself.
In the end now that a market has been hooked, I think rather than degrading games even further, the industry should be taking an increasing "carrot and the stick" approach with the audience when it comes to the games themselves, to get people to try and improve themselves in order to succeed. Actual tests of problem solving abillity should make a return, rather than simplistic physics based puzzles. I think cluebooks and "strategy guides" should go back to being just that: collections of hints and strategies, rather than walkthroughs with exhaustive instructions on how to defeat every aspect of a game.
I say this because I've failed to beat a lot of games over the years. Today it's mostly a result of problems I won't go into, and my abillity to remain focused. However years ago there were a few I couldn't defeat despite putting in a decent amount of time. The thing is that I'm hardly one of life's "winners", but I think I'm actually better for the attempts
and experiences.
Elitism DOES enter into this, don't get me wrong, but I do believe an elite, if defined by the right things, can inspire rather than subjugate so to speak.
