"dumbed down for the console gamer"

[Talshere]

Various actions and functions are more difficult to perform within the restrictions of a pad and so are removed, for example in dragon age on the PC, you can pause the game to issue commands to your party, if my house mates are to be believed, this function is missing on the console, because this reduces the "tactics" you can use the difficulty is also turned down so its not actually needed. They also tend to be less interested in platform and puzzle solving game-play then say, blowing shit up. Unless I missed the general genre demographic.

From a more technical standpoint, a lot of PC games either build their rigs themselves, had a hand in building it (IE picked hardware for someone else to build) or have a fair bit of knowhow in the software department, or any combination of the above. Console gamers buy a box, in the box is another shiny box, they plug it in and this magical tray comes out on which you put a shiny round thing. Tray thing then closes and it does what you want. End of user input in the setting up department.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Cut features plain and simple. For example Morrowind made for the PC alone had more skills and item types than its follow up Oblivion that were designed for multiplatform.

And Daggerfall had about twice as many skills as Morrowind.

The reason that they reduced that down to a much smaller skillset is because most of them were utterly pointless. IIRC Morrowind has three different armour skills plus unarmoured, but since there was no practical difference other than weight between armour types, there was no reason to have different skills for them other than to annoy the player by locking them down to a particular type based on what they'd managed to find early in the game or making them gimp their character whilst they ground out the new skill.

Another example is the choice of Bioshock removing the inventory completely and Dragon Age avoiding the issue of inventory mannegment completly by making it a list instead.

Or maybe those are just instances of developers realising that inventory management is dull, people play games to get away from dull.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

How about dumbed down for the average media consumer, thats more like it, forget console gamer they are aiming their sights even lower!

But what it means is the game or media is simply polished simplification to make the project easy to make or easy to sell either way it destroys quality and rapes mechanics/game play...

 

[Netrigan]

Another example is the choice of Bioshock removing the inventory completely

Only if you declare Bioshock a defacto sequel. Otherwise, it has an inventory system as complex as the vast majority of FPS. The SS2 system has been used like twice in 15 years. That's pretty much a system adopted by one person, the man who designed those two games.

And I would maintain the inventory management system of SS2 and Deus Ex were too complicated for a shooter. Having to play Tetris with my inventory was a poor design choice. Weight and size could be factors but the system would need to be more automated to work properly. Tell me I need to free up three size units to pick up a rocket launcher, not force me to drop half my items and physically rearrange them. It's a first person shooter, not a first person arranger.

Bioshock is one of few shooters that can use an inventory by the way it is set up with gathering, equipment and even crafting, Much like System Shock, Deus Ex and stalker. To compare it to a normal shooter is to sell short its additional aspects.

So much for your assertion that they removed the inventory completely (see bold)

My assertion has always been that it's more complex than most FPS games (only a rare few surpass it). While it shows a few signs of being "dumbed down" for the console, it's got more options available than the Jedi Knight games, which is pretty much the high water mark for the non-RPG hybrid shooter. And I find it far easier to use the plasmids in Bioshock than the force powers in Jedi Knight (which required me to find some place close to my movement keys to map frequent powers and meant that there were certain powers I almost never used... a process that had to be redone if I made the switch from light to dark in multiplayer). The Bioshock control scheme is amazing and (aiming issues aside) on par, if not better, with anything I've encountered on the PC. I actually preferred playing it on the console, because the weapon/plasmid selection wheels are so handy... even if they dumb that down by pausing the game when active.

Another thing that I've noticed since FPS made the jump to consoles... they're much more likely to have RPG elements in them. System Shock 2 and Deus Ex were really rare beasts (even though Deus Ex sold over a million copies, no one really jumped on that band wagon). But these days, seems like every game has some upgrading system. So even though they're dumbing down certain elements (usually to make the game more newbie-friendly), they're adding new content that PC devs resisted for over a decade.

The switch to consoles has created a number of trends. Some are good, some bad; and Bioshock isn't untouched by the bad trends... but I think it's a rather shining example of a lot of the good ones and it was successful enough to spawn imitators trying to match or exceed it.

 

[Netrigan]

How about dumbed down for the average media consumer, thats more like it, forget console gamer they are aiming their sights even lower!

This I think is the vast majority of the "dumbing down".

Look no further than id software. This was the kind of FPS developers for the longest time and the last gameplay innovation they came up with was in Doom 1. Lots of technological innovations, but their gameplay was always well behind the curve. Most of this was done in service of multiplayer, but even when they switched to a pure MP game, they got their ass handed to them innovation-wise by Epic's Unreal Tournament, which came up with two or three brand spanking new multiplayer options that are *still* being used today.

id was the king of dumb, brown shooters. Even when they jumped on the Half-Life band wagon with Doom 3, they still turned in a dumbed-down, brown, shooter with absolutely zero innovations in game play.

EDIT: I think I completely mis-read your point, but I like my point

I think the problem is simply mainstreaming a game, which is almost always done by dumbing it down. Consoles are a bit more mainstream than PC gaming, so suffer from it a bit more... but it's a tendency that is always there.

 

[Netrigan]

Another example is the choice of Bioshock removing the inventory completely and Dragon Age avoiding the issue of inventory mannegment completly by making it a list instead.

Or maybe those are just instances of developers realising that inventory management is dull, people play games to get away from dull.

Then you get to call me dull for liking the immersion it gives me micromanaging my char, and I get you to call dumb for not having the patience for putting mittens on your hero and wanting to get to the action. And we will all go home being pissed at someone on the internet for having a different opinion of what is fun in a game.

I've been known to enjoy inventory management, but I think devs should always be on the lookout for ways to streamline the process without sacrificing functionality. Like in RPGs there's the whole bit where you go back to town and sell off all the equipment that you gathered, making sure that everyone has the best gear possible. Having the character sell them off one at a time (ala Fallout 3) is pretty dull and a lot of modern RPGs have much more automated systems for this. Same outcome, less fiddling about, full of win.

I've mocked the Deus Ex inventory system as Tetris blocks and it was one of my hopes that the Deus Ex 2 would figure out a way to simplify the system so I didn't have to go into inventory every time I looted bodies to remove the multiple packs of cigarettes that just about every enemy soldier had on their person... or force me to drop half my items in order to re-arrange my inventory just so the four open slots I had were the right four open slots for the new piece of equipment. I liked being forced to make decisions on what to carry, but I didn't want to have to constantly fiddle with it.

Inventory management brings a nice bit of depth of gameplay, even if it's Halo style and you have to decide which two weapons to bring along. More than once in such games, I've kicked myself for hanging on to a sniper rifle when I realized I really should have opted for the shotgun.

 

[Omikron009]

Its probably because you have ruined every awesome franchise, EX: look at Fallout 2 compared to 3. One was awesome, the other was a dumbed down buggy piece of trash. Just please play Halo Wars, and leave the rest of the RTS's alone.

Since Fallout 3 is an absolutely fantastic game that I've almost never encountered serious bugs in, I assume you're talking about Fallout 2, an unfinished game full of half-implemented features. See? I can be unreasonable too.

Almost never encountered serious bugs? I'm not being unreasonable, it just when you call a game Fallout I expect more to it than an even buggier Oblivion clone. And "half implemented features?" atleast I wasn't a dick and gave examples of why I think this way, of course you'd actually have to read other posts. (and frankly I'm unsure if you have the ability to do that)

I gave as good an explanation as you did. I'd say calling a game "unfinished and full of half-implemented features" is as descriptive and less poisonous than calling a game a "dumbed down buggy piece of trash." I also appreciate the baseless and unnecessary attack to my intelligence at the end of your post. Stay classy!

 

[bue519]

Its probably because you have ruined every awesome franchise, EX: look at Fallout 2 compared to 3. One was awesome, the other was a dumbed down buggy piece of trash. Just please play Halo Wars, and leave the rest of the RTS's alone.

Since Fallout 3 is an absolutely fantastic game that I've almost never encountered serious bugs in, I assume you're talking about Fallout 2, an unfinished game full of half-implemented features. See? I can be unreasonable too.

Almost never encountered serious bugs? I'm not being unreasonable, it just when you call a game Fallout I expect more to it than an even buggier Oblivion clone. And "half implemented features?" atleast I wasn't a dick and gave examples of why I think this way, of course you'd actually have to read other posts. (and frankly I'm unsure if you have the ability to do that)

I gave as good an explanation as you did. I'd say calling a game "unfinished and full of half-implemented features" is as descriptive and less poisonous than calling a game a "dumbed down buggy piece of trash." I also appreciate the baseless and unnecessary attack to my intelligence at the end of your post. Stay classy!

Evidently you only read the parts you want. I said I have made other posts on the subject, and your about the tenth person who has complained and moaned. So I apologize for not offering more of an explanation, but if you want one then search thread.(cause posting the same thing ten times isn't really worth my time)

 

[Omikron009]

Almost never encountered serious bugs? I'm not being unreasonable, it just when you call a game Fallout I expect more to it than an even buggier Oblivion clone. And "half implemented features?" atleast I wasn't a dick and gave examples of why I think this way, of course you'd actually have to read other posts. (and frankly I'm unsure if you have the ability to do that)

I gave as good an explanation as you did. I'd say calling a game "unfinished and full of half-implemented features" is as descriptive and less poisonous than calling a game a "dumbed down buggy piece of trash." I also appreciate the baseless and unnecessary attack to my intelligence at the end of your post. Stay classy![/quote]
Evidently you only read the parts you want. I said I have made other posts on the subject, and your about the tenth person who has complained and moaned. So I apologize for not offering more of an explanation, but if you want one then search thread.(cause posting the same thing ten times isn't really worth my time)[/quote]

Evidently I wasn't able to interpret parts of your poorly worded post. I didn't know you had already responded to others, and therefore was rather confused when you said you gave examples of why you hold your opinion. I don't have the time to read through a ten page thread, just as you (reasonably) don't have time to give the same response ten times.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

I find the controller more accurate then the mouse. Part of that is probably tuning the setup on my mouse for different games. Playing PC games hurt my hands, as I have messed them up in the past, so playing my 360 is more sensible. I don't like the saying because I use them both. I think it is outdated and is only used by PC Fanboy Elitists. There are many of those here.

...as well as everybody on the planet with a desk job.

Mice are "outdated"? What a load of rubbish. If you cannot use two hands independently and use a keyboard without hurting your hands, maybe you AREN'T all that bright to begin with...

Are you fucking illiterate? I said the saying, referring to the topic of this thread, is outdated. Not mice. Read.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

I think it is outdated and is only used by PC Fanboy Elitists. There are many of those here.

I agreed with you up until there.
Please explain how the mouse is outdated.

I never said it was. Reread my post. I said the SAYING, about games being dumbed down for consoles, is outdated.

This is the second post about this. Can anyone here read? Or did saying "PC Fanboy Elitists" turn them into a blind rage?

 

[Continuity]

As lots of people have already said "dumbed down for console" is largely about controls and importantly the effect that the consoles simpler controls have on the game. Plus, and this is a generalisation, you do tend to get a preponderance of low brow games on consoles as opposed to the "PC platform" e.g. You get more action or casual game on the console and you only get watered down versions of simulation, strategy, or to a lesser degree RPG games.

I think it is also fair to say that you get more niche and Indie titles on the PC, fostering a broader and deeper selection of games pitched in more individual ways, where as presentation on the console tends to be more homogenous.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

How about dumbed down for the average media consumer, thats more like it, forget console gamer they are aiming their sights even lower!

This I think is the vast majority of the "dumbing down".

Look no further than id software. This was the kind of FPS developers for the longest time and the last gameplay innovation they came up with was in Doom 1. Lots of technological innovations, but their gameplay was always well behind the curve. Most of this was done in service of multiplayer, but even when they switched to a pure MP game, they got their ass handed to them innovation-wise by Epic's Unreal Tournament, which came up with two or three brand spanking new multiplayer options that are *still* being used today.

id was the king of dumb, brown shooters. Even when they jumped on the Half-Life band wagon with Doom 3, they still turned in a dumbed-down, brown, shooter with absolutely zero innovations in game play.

EDIT: I think I completely mis-read your point, but I like my point

I think the problem is simply mainstreaming a game, which is almost always done by dumbing it down. Consoles are a bit more mainstream than PC gaming, so suffer from it a bit more... but it's a tendency that is always there.

No you got it and polished the point I was trying to make, gaming like film in order to be popular in order to sell better it has to be dumbed down.

I don't think ID, Raven and Epic for that matter become king of dumb brown shooters until their games started having little if any game play narrative. Doom 3, Quake 4,Wolfenstine 09(?) all very simple dumbed down games using the generic gun and run design standards of the time. And epic started to waver before then with UT03.

 

[Netrigan]

I don't think ID, Raven and Epic for that matter become king of dumb brown shooters until their games started having little if any game play narrative. Doom 3, Quake 4,Wolfenstine 09(?) all very simple dumbed down games using the generic gun and run design standards of the time. And epic started to waver before then with UT03.

I'm not sure id ever really got narrative terribly well. The original Doom is an amazing premise and great game-play with the only narrative being some text between episodes. Doom 2 is more of the same but with new enemies. Quake is two great premises mixed together into a okay premise with good game-play and no narrative that makes sense to a sane person. Quake 2 is a good premise with an okay narrative with good game-play. Quake 3 is no real premise with no narrative and good game-play. Doom 3 sacrifices a lot of the game-play elements that made id who they were (namely MP) in favor of a stronger narrative, but they don't really aim high enough to notable ten years later.

One thing that I noticed in playing these (Quake 3 excluded) was that the single player game got easier. Quake 2 and Doom 3 are among a very small handful of games where the Final Boss did not kill me on the hardest available skill level (not counting Nightmare which was locked). Only other times that happened was in games where the boss was meant to be an anti-climax.

Raven had a stronger narrative, but I found they shared a similar lack-of-difficulty curve, except they enjoyed employing super-fast whack-a-mole style bad guys (that speedster Nazi woman in Wolfenstein) and cheap-ass sniper tactics (Wolfenstein & Jedi Knight II). I'm still a bit annoyed at them for Jedi Knight II because the first level was so hard I had to drop down a difficulty level to squeak past it (I could not bust into the Imperial base on hard no matter what tactics I used and that was the first real fight)... then was bored the rest of the game because there was no difficulty, except for the sniper and stealth levels, which are just cheap-ass ways to take an easy game and make it frustrating.

Epic... those guys tend to have really good ideas, but their narrative sense is pretty weak. First Unreal is amazing, but having to do the scavenger hunt thing in order to read the story is not a great narrative device. Biggest problem I see with the Unreal Tournament series is that they set themselves up to Madden Deathmatch, with the first installment having the lion's share of innovation, with newer version looking prettier with a handful of gameplay tweaks. They got their groove back with Gears, where they came up with a few reasonably innovative things and wrapped a solid (albeit boring) story around it. Their next project is a FPS that mixes some RPG elements and lots of wild combat elements I've not seen mixed before, so they remain this company I always follow, but end up being a little disappointed in.

I've forgotten what my point was supposed to be, but I typed all this, so I'm posting it

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I don't think ID, Raven and Epic for that matter become king of dumb brown shooters until their games started having little if any game play narrative. Doom 3, Quake 4,Wolfenstine 09(?) all very simple dumbed down games using the generic gun and run design standards of the time. And epic started to waver before then with UT03.

I'm not sure id ever really got narrative terribly well. The original Doom is an amazing premise and great game-play with the only narrative being some text between episodes. Doom 2 is more of the same but with new enemies. Quake is two great premises mixed together into a okay premise with good game-play and no narrative that makes sense to a sane person. Quake 2 is a good premise with an okay narrative with good game-play. Quake 3 is no real premise with no narrative and good game-play. Doom 3 sacrifices a lot of the game-play elements that made id who they were (namely MP) in favor of a stronger narrative, but they don't really aim high enough to notable ten years later.

One thing that I noticed in playing these (Quake 3 excluded) was that the single player game got easier. Quake 2 and Doom 3 are among a very small handful of games where the Final Boss did not kill me on the hardest available skill level (not counting Nightmare which was locked). Only other times that happened was in games where the boss was meant to be an anti-climax.

Raven had a stronger narrative, but I found they shared a similar lack-of-difficulty curve, except they enjoyed employing super-fast whack-a-mole style bad guys (that speedster Nazi woman in Wolfenstein) and cheap-ass sniper tactics (Wolfenstein & Jedi Knight II). I'm still a bit annoyed at them for Jedi Knight II because the first level was so hard I had to drop down a difficulty level to squeak past it (I could not bust into the Imperial base on hard no matter what tactics I used and that was the first real fight)... then was bored the rest of the game because there was no difficulty, except for the sniper and stealth levels, which are just cheap-ass ways to take an easy game and make it frustrating.

Epic... those guys tend to have really good ideas, but their narrative sense is pretty weak. First Unreal is amazing, but having to do the scavenger hunt thing in order to read the story is not a great narrative device. Biggest problem I see with the Unreal Tournament series is that they set themselves up to Madden Deathmatch, with the first installment having the lion's share of innovation, with newer version looking prettier with a handful of gameplay tweaks. They got their groove back with Gears, where they came up with a few reasonably innovative things and wrapped a solid (albeit boring) story around it. Their next project is a FPS that mixes some RPG elements and lots of wild combat elements I've not seen mixed before, so they remain this company I always follow, but end up being a little disappointed in.

I've forgotten what my point was supposed to be, but I typed all this, so I'm posting it

This might sound silly(tho coming from a zippy I doubt it) for me all narrative is superfluous but the "gameplay narrative". The gameplay narrative is the "story" the gameplay tells minus everything else. Looking at DOOM and most of its top tier clones(hertic,hexen,Dark Forces,Duke3D,Blood,Quake,Unreal,ect,ect) you had a maze set before you, percent counters to tell you how much of it you have completed, secrets to spice things up and enough monsters and weapons to keep things humming along.

Today the "gameplay narrative" is derived from the over all story narrative and graphic design theme this limits it and then mechanics themselves are treated the same limiting them, everything is polished and cleaned to gray and bland level leaving an over simplified package that corporate so loves selling en mass.

From a story stand point ID sucks LOL Epic had more thought put into their story, I think raven for the most part is the same as ID but managed to add some real writers to their staff eventually, Valve dose story well a shame they lost alot of "gameplay narrative" with HL2 .

Quake 1 was the only game I noticed that was not maze enough, Q2 was better, hell Q2 was awesome only blood and Duke 3d were better.

 

[adrian_exec]

Fallout 3 is a totally different genre of game than Fallout 2, and quite good in it's own right.

Then the game shouldn't have been called Fallout 3. Don't get me wrong I think Fallout 3 was pretty good game, but it's "weak" when compared to Fallout 2 or Fallout 1.

My 2 cents.

 

[Continuity]

Fallout 3 is a totally different genre of game than Fallout 2, and quite good in it's own right.

Then the game shouldn't have been called Fallout 3. Don't get me wrong I think Fallout 3 was pretty good game, but it's "weak" when compared to Fallout 2 or Fallout 1.

My 2 cents.

Agreed. mainly because Bethesda missed out a lot of the characteristic humour and atmosphere from the first two games... Bethesda just have this talent for making things bland.

 

[Zechnophobe]

this is a phrase i see alot on the escapist but what exactly does it mean, i think as a console gamer its a misrepresentation, the majority of console gamers are mature but there is a loud majority that gives us a bad name.

i can understand that keyboard and mouse is more accurate and your average PC can process alot more than a console which is fair enough but when you say "dumbed down for console audience" its implying that they will simplify the gameplay to suit us and suggests that we are not as mature

so i want to know why this phrase is used, i can accept if it relates to the control scheme or the processing power but its misrepresenting to say that its because we are dumb

EDIT: its good to see that people are taking this well and not resulting to blind fanboyism

I think there are actually two different concepts here:

Consolitis: A disease that afflicts games making them less good due to trying to make them work well on a console but not so much on a PC.
PC vs Console turf Wars: Wherein people who own one or the other (sometimes both) was to just talk random shit to each other.

The first one is really the problem with 'dumbing down'. That is, the mechanics or UI of a game is made less good so that it conforms with the console market.

For examples of this: A computer runs at a significantly finer resolution than a TV, and also people sit closer to it in general. A UI that works for a PC is often too hard to read for a console because of this. So in many cases if graphical elements are larger than normal, this is a sign of consolitis. Oblivion (Elder Scrolls 4) is a great example, as is Borderlands. Both had problems displaying information in such a way that a console player could read it, so they mde things bigger. PC players with good resolution though had to suffer through huge scrolling windows (Or just missing text in the case of borderlands!) to get information they could easily have read if it had just been smaller.

Controls for a PC allow for a mouse, a very fine pointing device that allows for a 'point and click' scheme. You can't really do this on a console very well (Super Smash Brother style is about as good as it gets) due to their controllers not giving fine enough control to select things. Mass effect (the first one) had very bizarre systems to activate skills of your allies for this reason. Bioshock removed its inventory system completely. These are all side effects of inventory management or control problems.

Consoles are very single purpose. That's great for a developer, but often causes games on them that are also on the PC to not interact with the rest of the gaming environment all that well. Can you alt-tab? Windowed mode? What happens if it crashes? A lot of games designed for a PC and a console do not handle these cases all that well.

Console games are (until very recently) immutable. A PC game has all of its files there, often exposed to some degree so that a user can modify them. Lots of game settings, control setups, Mods, resource modification, etc can happen. In many games, where they have also been released on a console, these assets that we've gotten used to tinkering with have suddenly been closed to us.


As for the turf war part? Eh, that's just people being people .

 

[Zechnophobe]

Fallout 3 is a totally different genre of game than Fallout 2, and quite good in it's own right.

Then the game shouldn't have been called Fallout 3. Don't get me wrong I think Fallout 3 was pretty good game, but it's "weak" when compared to Fallout 2 or Fallout 1.

My 2 cents.

Well... sorta? I mean consider Zelda. A classic 2d game that was re-imagined into 3d for the n64. After playing it, it was clear this was still a great zelda title. No one really batted an eye that it was associated with the product line.

Fallout 3 is actually fairly similar to 1 and 2 conceptually, just not in how you interface with the game. I think the only reason it feels it needs distancing is because, unlike Ocarina of Time, Fallout 3 isn't absolutely awesome.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Fallout 3 is a totally different genre of game than Fallout 2, and quite good in it's own right.

Then the game shouldn't have been called Fallout 3. Don't get me wrong I think Fallout 3 was pretty good game, but it's "weak" when compared to Fallout 2 or Fallout 1.

My 2 cents.

Well... sorta? I mean consider Zelda. A classic 2d game that was re-imagined into 3d for the n64. After playing it, it was clear this was still a great zelda title. No one really batted an eye that it was associated with the product line.

Fallout 3 is actually fairly similar to 1 and 2 conceptually, just not in how you interface with the game. I think the only reason it feels it needs distancing is because, unlike Ocarina of Time, Fallout 3 isn't absolutely awesome.

I had issues with the limit dungeon setup I mean a link to the past had like 12 dungeons and OOT had 6, for the most part the game play was there but beyond that it was iffy, sure its a great game but still they could have done more to make it better.

Unlike OOT which is more a new game with weaker rules oh wait...no...FO3 is a new game with weaker rules.... LOL

Ya your right the only problem with FO3 is that it was not awesome LOL